Honolulu Tide Pools (Correct Submission)

At 4 I was given a dip net and catch bucket. The net’s wooden handle kept me at arms length from the creatures I scooped up, while the bucket had a metal spring against the top flap where only air escaped through breathing holes. I’d fill it with ocean water, then in went bright, tropical fish that were living in the Hawaiian rock walls. In went octopuses that gripped my arms. In went squid – some so young they were a pea in my palm and I touched their silky body to watch them ink. And in went sea cucumbers that kept clinging to rocks, squirting water from their chunky bodies when lifted into the air. I’d examine them later.

When I stopped over a shallow pool and blocked the glare, a myriad of brown forms appeared: decomposing crab legs, prostrate sea cucumbers, guppies camouflaged as fraying coconut husks, and the glassy legs of shrimp that were difficult to spot in daylight. The invisible creatures weren’t seen until night, when my headlamp caught the sparkle of the shrimp’s tangerine eyes and those of other night foragers. As the moon waxed, microscopic organisms were illuminated in the shimmering and slick currents. Tides burgeoned and busied with inchoate life – eggs, sperm, and larvae, gametes spawning from coral and sea sponges to fish – then retreated and left thin pools under the lunar pendulum.

I still reach into the tide pools or swim along the reef, grazing my fingers across sea anemone tentacles and urchin spines, diving for shells and dropped coins, pocket knives and fishing weights. I walk across the islands of sandbars, through miniature pools and against the small waves that lap at my feet on their way back to the deep sea. I’d wanted to be a reef or the vast Pacific ocean when I grew up.

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I’d wanted to be a reef or the vast Pacific ocean when I grew up. I walk across the islands of sandbars, through miniature pools and against the small waves that lap at my feet on their way back to the deep sea. I still reach into the tide pools or swim along the reef, grazing my fingers across sea anemone tentacles and urchin spines, diving for shells and dropped coins, pocket knives and fishing weights.

Tides burgeoned and busied with inchoate life – eggs, sperm, and larvae, gametes spawning from coral and sea sponges to fish – then retreated and left thin pools under the lunar pendulum. As the moon waxed, microscopic organisms were illuminated in the shimmering and slick currents. The invisible creatures weren’t seen until night, when my headlamp caught the sparkle of the shrimp’s tangerine eyes and those of other night foragers. When I stopped over a shallow pool and blocked the glare, a myriad of brown forms appeared: decomposing crab legs, prostrate sea cucumbers, guppies camouflaged as fraying coconut husks, and the glassy legs of shrimp that were difficult to spot in daylight.

I’d examine them later. And in went sea cucumbers that kept clinging to rocks, squirting water from their chunky bodies when lifted into the air. In went octopuses that gripped my arms. In went squid – some so young they were a pea in my palm and I touched their silky body to watch them ink. I’d fill it with ocean water, then in went bright, tropical fish that were living in the Hawaiian rock walls. The net’s wooden handle kept me at arms length from the creatures I scooped up, while the bucket had a metal spring against the top flap where only air escaped through breathing holes. At 4 I was given a dip net and catch bucket.