O good grief, I just finished this long and wonderful (yes, I think it was wonderful)  post on honu.  I was cleaning up a couple typos, pushed a key that turned a few lines grey, tried to get out of it-----and bingo, the whole thing is gone. Gone!  Did all the little tricks I could think of, nothing worked. So, what does work is called Doing it Again. Bet you"ve been there, done that at some point.

So I will press Save as I go, but I think the same thing would happen. Oh,well.

Here's  to honu . This is written so kids can learn from it, adults too.

Honu. We pronounce  it HO-noo.

Honu is singular. Honu is plural.  Hawaiian language is like that.

First of all, some clues as to what the honu is/are.

Honu live in the ocean. (ok, narrows it down.)

I swim with them most every day .  More accurately, they swim with me, because they are endangered and we humans are required by law not to move in closer than 10-15 feet.

Of course, nobody told that stay-away  law to the honu,.  And they are curious about us humans, so  sometimes they come right up to us, to take a closer look. It's okay to let that happen, so long as we don't take the lead. And don't touch.

They breathe air (so okay, honu live in the ocean, but they are not fish.)

Weight??? The ones I swim with, are mostly between 100 and 300 pounds. A few older ones  have weighed in at around 400 pounds. And the younger ones, still less than 100 pounds???They apparently live way out at sea for many years, where we don't see them. 

They breathe air,  by swimming up  and poking that cute little head just above the surface, taking one easy breath in, and going back under. Maybe then a second breath ,  or maybe not for a couple minutes. When it is time to rest, a honu does one of two things. Sometimes it goes partway down to the bottom of the coral reef and tucks into  the  concealment of  a lava rock ledge where it can rest for a few hours without needing to come up for a breath!  Or, during the sunny hours, it might (haul out) as we say, onto the sandy beach or onto an exposed lava rock our on the reef, and bask in the warm sun for hours. 

So now you know the honu can come up onto the sand, so you know we are not talking dolphins or whales.

There-s a couple more guesses you might have, but I'll just tell you. The honu is the giant green sea turtle .

Turtle it is, of course--with an enormous shell or carapace (we say CARR like we were going to say carrot or carry,  CARR ah-pass. A head, four flippers and a tail, none of which they can ever draw back into their shell.

Giant, you get that part. And the sea for where it lives.

But green? When we look at them in the water, they are obviously brown, with lovely little golden flecks.  You don't see the green part.  It's their flesh inside, turned green color  because they munch in their sweet toothless way all day long on a certain green seaweed we call limu (LEE-moo.)

And they are endlessly curious about humans when they get used to you. So I have my turtle friends who come over to see me sometimes when I am in the water. The other day I was out there with facemask and snorkel as usual, and two came over at once, gumming away on their limu. Right up to my facemask, one angled out at about 111o"clock and the other angled off at about 1:00.  Staring their deep silent stare.  Now, their eyes are on the side of their heads, dark and inscrutable.  Going eyeball to eyeball with two at once, was certainly an experience. Made my day.

Sometimes the honu need assistance. They can get awfully tangled up in broken-off plastic  fishing line.  One swam slowly up to my face one day, so I could see several inches of plastic fishing line hanging out of its mouth, with a weight still attached.  It stayed totally still in front of me while I removed the hook from just inside its mouth.  As soon as I was done, it swam slowly off.

Ancient (they've been on the planet since the dinosaurs), silent and mysterious.  I am so honored we are friends.

Diane, reefswimmer