They offer a program where you can get in the water and feed the sharks and rays. We had such a fun time doing this and it was well worth the $25 fee to particpate in the hour-long program. This is a picture of Codey handing Chris a spongey starfish.
And here I am holding a sea urchin. It would suction itself to your hand and you actually had to pull pretty hard to get it off. It was definitely sharp so I can see why you wouldn't want to step on one in the ocean.
I thought this starfish was just beautiful.
After getting our feet wet playing with such innocent sea creatures, we moved on to the hammer head sharks!
We stood in the water behind some lava rocks that you can see in the lower left of the photos and threw fish out to the sharks, which they quickly swam to and ate.
It was pretty cool to be so close to them. I'll take my shark sightings in such a protected area any day. Hopefully this will be the only way I see sharks and that I'll never encounter one in the ocean
We had a great host/teacher named Tracy who has lived in Hawaii his entire life. He was very patient with all of our shark-related questions and answered all of them. We learned a lot. Apparently, Tracy just goes over to Kanehoe Bay and catches these sharks for the hotel lagoon; and when they get too big or aggressive toward him, he catches them again and lets them go in the ocean. So, the lesson here is that Kaneohe Bay is sharky (note to self, do not swim in Kaneohe Bay).
After throwing fish to the sharks from a safe distance, we got to feed the rays some squid. Gross.
We learned from Tracy that the sting rays don't bite you but that their jaws are so strong that if you finger gets caught in there you would have a severe crushing injury. As such, we stood behind a lattice fence and then put the squid through a hole in the fence. That way, your fingers were always safe from injury.
The sting rays would come right up to the fence and suck the fish from your fingers. They made a very loud sucking sound as they were eating, which was quite entertaining.
We could also reach over the fence and touch the stingrays. They were not at all the texture you would expect and I can't even think of the words to describe the feel. Squishy? Slimy?
1 comment:
Cool!
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