

















I was swimming north at Airport beach with a friend, Kristen, looking for hawksbill turtles or whatever else
might be around. Up ahead at the very limit of what I could see or discern, I saw a white flash of something
very large and quick. My immediate thought was shark but as soon as I could see it it disappeared as did a
good portion of the reef as if being cloaked. I also thought I saw flippers of a turtle in a quick glimpse. I got my
camera ready as I swam towards this unknown and took a couple shots not knowing what I might be seeing or of
the camera would find focus and even take an exposure. Kristen missed the action and when she caught up to me
I told her I thought I just saw a really big shark but it might have been a large monk seal. I doubted the seal guess
because its color would not change from white to the ambient gray. When I got home and looked at the pics,
I realized that in one I had captured an image but barely. In the photo below, I tweaked the contrast, shadow
and highlight to the limit and you can possibly make out the profile of a shark and a turtle it was chasing.
I further enhanced the image by converting to gray scale and then enlarged the image to 300% where I
traced the profile as best I could of the shark and then masked it. I darkened that portion of the image
relative to the rest of the background to bring it out in contrast. . Consensus is that this is a tiger shark.


To the best of my recollection, I believe I witnessed the shark circle the turtle a couple times and then
they both headed further north and out of view. Kristen did find a hawksbill, Melinda a little later on:





On a different day but somewhat related:


At Olowalu, we visited the two cleaning stations. The one in the sand seems to be as much a R&R spot as a
cleaning station whereas the one out on the reef is all about fish working over the turtles. I set down a GoPro on
both locations: