Scientific Adventures in Hawai’i:

Spontaneous Awakenings & The Big Island

keith harmon snow

(Published in ANA Wingspan April 2002)

Nightswimming? It is my last night on this island, a cold rain is falling and I have been lured into a night dive. I never swim in the ocean at night and fear is turning my guts. There was a shark attack here. And so I am inventing reasons not to dive. Dr. Suzy is talking but I am oblivious. I am stalling. It takes me 20 minutes to get my shoes off. The sky is overcast, but the moon is full. We have one dive light to share between us and it is so dark that we cannot cross the rocks without it.

Dressed in pink booties and blue-checkered boxer shorts, I am about to swim in black water and breathe through a tube with rubber and glass strapped across my face, and more rubber strapped to my feet, and I am thinking about the superchiasmatic nucleus of a shark. That is the quirky terminology I learned from my new dive buddy—Dr. Susan “Suzy” Renn—a biologist who studies the circadian rhythms of Hawai’ian Drosophila flies, large, elaborately marked relatives of the common fruit fly. The superchiasmatic nucleus is the main cog in the biological clock that regulates mammalian behavior. Dr. Suzy earned her Ph.D. splitting flies brains and the like.

Islands of Extinction

Human existence on the big island revolves around the east-west fault between the towns of Hilo and Kona, but nature imposes itself vertically here, from the summits of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa—two 13,600-plus-foot volcanoes—down to the sea. It is a knee-cruncher for me, circumnavigating on an over-loaded bicycle with swim fins hanging off the back, and the pedal from Kona to Hilo on Highway 11 is now etched in my biology like this: zero to 1,500 feet to zero to 2,000 feet to zero to 4,000 feet to zero. Day one is spent climbing. And sweating. And climbing.

Over 90 percent of Hawai’i’s native flora and fauna is endemic—found nowhere else—and the Hawai’ian islands were once celebrated as “islands of evolution.” The archipelago is today the frontier of extinction. To conservation biologists it is dream and nightmare. The big island akiapola’au bird, for example, a Hawai’ian kind of woodpecker, is an endangered species in decline. Focused on habitat restoration, conservation biologists have lured the akiapola’au into former cattle pastures reforested over the past decade.

The few hardy ancestors in each genus that survived the vast Pacific crossing to colonize Hawai’i did so with abundant opportunity. This led to hundreds of species of birds, thousands of plants and mollusks, tens of thousands of spiders and insects. There were no predators. There was very little competition. Defense mechanisms were maladaptive and they faded away. The Volcanoes National Park brochure aptly summarizes the evolutionary results: “Nettleless nettles, mintless mints, stinkless stink bugs and flightless birds.”

Human invasion with its ingenuity and arrogance led to wholesale extinction as introduced and domesticated species proliferated. The largest non-extinct, non-domesticated, non-feral, non-aquatic mammal on Hawai’i today is the hoary bat. The elusive monk seal is the other native mammal here. That’s it. Feral cats and rats and a small Indian mongoose have decimated native birds. Feral pigs destroy the understory of forests, and the mosquitoes that breed in muddy pigsties infect birds with avian malaria and pox.

These alien species invade my consciousness: the wild pigs snorting in the night, mongeese flat on roads, and the mynah birds are everywhere. Exotic fish and plants too have spread. Circling the sky with eyes on food are the endangered hawks of the big island—the Hawai’ian ‘Io—and I see them while biking. I am peddling on a road bulldozed and paved level out of an expanse of black and crusted lava. One day I find that the lava has even swallowed the road.

Molten lava tends to obliterate on a path of least resistance. Islands of forest—kipukas—that survived incineration flourish amidst seas of lava. Some kipuka are ancient; others are new colonies of plants. Elevation dictates more islands of biodiversity, the rise and fall of species set by temperature and climate. Stretches of desert on the Kona Coast can see less than two millimeters annual rain. On the lush Hilo side it rains in feet some 265 days a year. Hawai’i is an island of microclimates.

Path of the Gods

To drop off Highway 11 and fall to sea level on a bike means to exert an inordinate quantity of energy to conquer gravity and regain altitude. A descent of miles is measured in minutes, the ascent in hours. A sleek 4.5 miles down Napoopoo Road and I am at the Kealakekua Bay Marine Park. Kealakekua means “path of the gods” and it was across this bay on my birthday—St. Valentine’s day—in 1779 that Captain James Cook was mistaken for the reincarnation of the god Lono, and ultimately killed for not living up to that standard. On Napoopoo beach I find a local man strumming a ukulele singing “You Are My Sunshine.”

“I am one hundred percent Hawai’ian born and raised,” he says. “And this bay is the most beautiful place on earth, hey bro?” Every other bay on this island is also the most beautiful place on earth. With rubber strapped to my face and to my feet I find that it is, also, the most beautiful place on earth underwater. It is endangered by terrestrial pollution and overtaxed by tour boats ferrying higher forms of life that have forgotten how to walk or swim but who still want their day in the sun. Spinner dolphins frequent this place, too.

Snorkeling across the bay you will see all the standard miraculous fish that are brightly painted and labeled on laminated fish ID charts, and you are simultaneously distracted in every direction by the richness and diversity of life forms both fixed and mobile. A manta ray floats through, and various large, pastel fish hovering like dirigibles with tiny butterfly wings, and huge skipjacks, and those sleek, stainless steel needlefish drifting just beneath the surface. Looking up at these from below it seems like they are swimming on a mirror, and they do not swim in schools, but at right angles to each other, at slightly varying depths, and they will come close to your face, and their eyes stare like seahorses, unless you poke them, and then like a strike of lighting they are gone. If you poke them you will laugh out loud underwater. They are very contemplative fish. One can communicate with such fish. Joy translates into bubbles in these places.

The Hawai’ian Way

A few days later and Tory and Lewis—two mischievous aspiring architects—have snuck me into the Honaunau Refuge to see the hawksbill turtles and the puuhonua burial grounds of old chiefs. The sea is old news, it is their backyard, and they don’t bother to snorkel here. They swim. Fight. Throw each other in. Play “kick the can.” Laugh. Play jokes on tourists. Disappear.

Evening finds me at the home of Norman Allen and Purna Zei. Their home has no walls or electricity. Solar lamps light the yard at night. The house is one with the forest, and sheets of tin and plastic collect the water, and so in a drought there is none, and you jump when nuts and lizards crash on the tin roof. Herbs and bananas grow in the yard, and Purna calls it paradise. Due north on the McCandless Ranch is the last nesting pair of alala—the Hawai’ian crow—endemic to the Kona coast. Due south is the largest development subdivision in the world.

Norman Allen paddles off Honaunau. I think it was he who first confirmed the story of the shark. A woman was paddling off Honaunau when the shark surfaced and chomped her outrigger canoe, just behind her elbow. It was a tiger shark, about ten feet of fins and teeth. It was dusk. (Sharks feed at dawn and dusk.) The woman was unhurt, and this is the only known attack off Honaunau. But sharks get a bad rap. Like cetaceans—whales and dolphins—most shark species are endangered. Sharks are territorial. There is only one tiger shark here, and fishermen know it. More comfortable with the shark they know on sight, they live and let live. That is Aloha—the Hawai’ian way.

Home on the Range—no deer, no antelope

South Point, Hawai’i is further south than Cuba. As Highway 11 begins its long arc east and north, a gale blows over the black lava and you must pedal your load, even downhill, to keep from going backward. A breeze rises with the sun and by ten o’clock it is a gale and it is like that every day. If you are on a bicycle it breaks your spirit. Black bulls flank the road to South Point, and it looks like Kansas might look to someone who has never seen Kansas. The bulls are a ton and a half of testosterone and muscle, and they drool and snort. The road goes on in this Kansas way, until you come to the high-tech Mitsubishi wind turbines rusting where the salty gale from the sea got inside them, and like a disease, killed them. Some of the huge propellers fell off into the green grass, others turn slowly in the blue sky, humming like spirits, but most of them just stand motionless like people who don’t know how to behave, looking out of place and stupid.

Further south near Kaulana boat ramp the Green Sands Beach is made from crystals of lava shattered by the surf, and I saw whales spouting here. The fishing is unprecedented. And when the storm blew in Hilo and the blizzard was on the volcanoes it was sunny here. The sun is intense, but always there is that awful gale, and that is why people get awful sunburns here. Now the gale is whipping up the sea, and if you stand on the rocks on the southernmost tip of the United States the ocean will take you. It is the kind of ocean that will never give you back.

The next night I camped on MJ Ranch land with big, round hay bales, under a big sky. Doves cooing and cattle bellowing woke me in the night and trucks hauling horses came before I was up. There was a corral under the African acacia trees and a leathery Hawai’ian cowboy named Bill was polishing silver spurs and strapping them to his boots. He said that within ten minutes, three generations of family would be saddling up to drive the cattle off the hill, and then the trucks and trailers hauling horses pulled in, and I met Wally and his wife Mary Jane (MJ), owners of hundreds—and maybe 1000s—of acres.

Route 11 bottoms out to sea level, near Punalu’u—the black sand beach popular with sea turtles—and then it climbs into long vistas of lava sparsely colonized by plants, or completely black and barren. That is the Kau Desert and it is long and steep, and so begins the Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. When I rode into the park I saw a woman driving an old, blue 4-WD Chevy Blazer with a University of Hawai’i emblem stamped on the doors. I almost chased the truck and I would have begged to accompany her into the field, because I did not yet have a story. When Dr. Suzy Renn saw the man on a loaded bicycle, she told me later, she was envious, because she toured Indonesia by bike and wanted more. She looked twice at me and drove off. At a kipuka at 5000 feet she had rigged up transects with little traps to catch Drosophila species.

Highway 11 peaks out at about 4000 feet and that is where fern and sub-alpine forest overtake the lava, and then it becomes tropical bamboo forest, the kind no machete can get through, and it rains, and it is like this downhill for some 20 miles, to Hilo. I arrive to find that it has rained 22 inches in 32 hours.

Splitting Flies Brains (and the like)

I called the University of Hawai’i looking for Dr. Donald Price, the man who grew the conservation biology programs at Hilo. Dr. Suzy Renn answered his lab phone. She keeps her captive Drosophila flies in vials in a chilled closet there, and when she makes a favorable discovery a wide smile sweeps across her face. This happened the day I showed up, and when she suggested I write about Hawai’ian flies I screwed up my face behind her back. That’s unlikely, I thought.

There are over 500 species of Drosophila on the big island. Many are endemic and some have been proposed for an Endangered Species Act listing. Drosophila Heteroneura, for example, they call the hammerhead, because its head in microcosm looks like that shark, and that is how it fights for its females. So what if one of these species of flies goes extinct? “Why should we care if the Mona Lisa goes up in flames,” answers UH-Hilo biologist Dr. Jackie Brown.

Drosophila flies gestate in ten days, and their short life cycle wins the affection of scientists. Put a few flies in a vial, see if they mate, segregate the offspring, split their brains, map their genes. They analyze Drosophila proteins—like period and timeless and double-time and vrille and shaggy—all involved in a light-responsive molecular clock. Through Drosophila, scientists aim to extrapolate to other species, and then maybe help out Chinook salmon in New Zealand and grizzlies in Montana and gorillas in Zaire and all other species and habitats for which political will and public concern is lacking.

How do genes travel through generations? What is the population viability of a species? What are the effects of inbreeding and outbreeding? How does the loss of one species alter the ecosystem? Should we eliminate some species to nurture others? Why are species absent here and present there? Why do people ignore the implications of global climate change? Which are the right questions?

“I am curious to know why some people are morning people and others are night owl types,” says Dr. Suzy. This is where she introduced the mammalian clock—the superchiasmatic nucleus. Her research might provide insight on jet lag. “By studying how different species of flies who live close to each other are active at different times of the day, my long term goal is to try to find the genes that are controlling differences in their behaviors. This will help direct us to what types of genes to look for in humans.”

Wondering about the karmic repercussions of trapping and bottling flies, I crossed the island to the Pololu Valley. Skipping down the trail and into the valley you find a place where fresh water marsh meets the ocean, and stubborn, jagged cliffs give way to hillsides of gnarled heather, and footpaths meander through ironwoods, and horses feed with mynah birds on their backs. The ridges and valleys keep coming, and they are all like that. Joy translates to wisdom in such places. Imagine the spontaneous awakening of humanity.

Nightswimming Revisited

I have told you about that shark. The night was black, the sea blacker. The tidal pools on the rocks were alive with creatures absent by day—unidentified crustaceous beings whose circadian clocks ticked them spontaneously awake and sent them out like sentries under the cover of night. Indeed, light hitting the retina of mammals entrains the superchiasmatic nucleus—it sets the circadian clock to a 24-hour cycle—and it turns on critical genes and affects sleep patterns, alertness and body temperature. The creatures on the rocks were activated by darkness.

Fear in the water, for me, translates into the vulnerability of dangling appendages. I slipped into the water with the dive light on and I might have drowned, if not for the rubber tube in my mouth and the buoyant fins, because I held my arms and legs close to my body. Dr. Suzy lingered on the shore, and I realized that maybe she was afraid too. When I looked down I saw assorted inquisitive fish drawn to the light, and they hovered there like deer caught in your headlights.

Dr. Suzy entered the water as quietly as I had. Keeping the safety cord around my wrist I put the light in her hand, and we were attached. We floated around like astronauts on a safety line drifting into the abyss. I was on the ocean side and I was afraid I would be first to be hit, but I was having fun and I forgot about the shark and the experience was so unfamiliar that I began to giggle.

Then Dr. Suzy shut off the light.

The corals and the fish reflected the dim moonlight. When Dr. Suzy swam she stirred up currents of phosphorescence and they flashed like fireflies. And then we separated, and I sucked in a breath and dove down deep, and I was in another universe, one of giggles and innocence and light, and the green and blue spark showers of an expanding consciousness.

************

(Sidebar)

Hawai’ian Renaissance

“Mauna Kea is a sacred mountain to the people of Hawai’i,” says Ali’i ‘Ai Moku Sir Paul Neves, High Chief of the Royal Order of Kamehameha I. The Chiefs are surveying a Memorandum of Agreement at a meeting with NASA about the space telescopes at the peak of the volcano. NASA scientists have committed to working with tribal leaders to identify and respect their beliefs and interests. It is an example of the global Renaissance of indigenous people’s rights and sovereignty.

Like the native fauna and flora, and the loss of habitat, there is concern about the loss of the indigenous culture and the wisdom of the Hawai’ian people. Much has changed since the U.S.S. Boston arrived in Hawai’i in 1893 and removed the leader of the kingdom of Hawai’i. What is lost when culture is lost?

There is a resurgence of all things Hawai’ian. Interest in language and culture has spawned new programs of study and people have reverted to their traditional names and ways.

“It is about respect and values and equality,” says Ku’ulei Maunupau. Ku’ulei and her sister Kalei take me to visit their Aunt Momi, who has for years lived in South Point on Hawai’ian native land designated by the state solely for Hawai’ian use. Their children go to camp here, and they show me the sacred sites on the land. Momi and her family are caretakers for the popular Green Sands Beach, which draws thousands of tourists. They are working to educate the public about all things Hawai’ian.