Blue Planet Journey

  Caroline at Victoria Falls, on the Zambezi River, Zimbabwe. Waterfalls! Large waterfalls command our attention, with sound and spray. They can thunder to the extent that you can't have a conversation with a person standing next to you. You actually can feel the force of the water cascading over the edge. And small waterfalls are the provenance of poets and lovers. Water trickling down a rock face and dripping into a pool is mesmerizing, inspiring, and calming. No matter where you are, the same physical principles are involved. Water flows downhill. When that downhill is abrupt, you have a waterfall.  . Little Logan River, Logan, Utah. Gocta Falls, Peru, one of the tallest waterfalls in the world. The sound was deafening. Blue Mountains National Park, New South Wales, Australia. . Hanakapiai Falls is a 300-foot waterfall on the Na Pali Coast of Kauai, Hawaii. Nugget Falls, Mendenhall Glacier, Juneau, Alaska. Dunn's River Falls, Jamaica. Dominica. Great Falls Park (Maryland si...

  Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii. Hanauma Bay consistently is rated one of the top tourist destinations on Oahu. In 1999, the family began a 13 month sojourn in Honolulu. I had started my first sabbatical at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, as a visiting faculty member in the Botany Department. My host was David Duffy, then the director of the Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit. The mission of the PCRU is to "...protect and restore Hawaii's native species, ecosystems, and cultural resources." As a family, we were visiting Hanauma Bay about every other week. The Bay is a city park, but a state Marine Protected Area. In 1999, admission was free, but you had to pass a gauntlet of signs reminding visitors to avoid standing on the reef, don't feed the fish, and be safe. On the beach, there was a blue tarp stretched between four coconut trees, with tables and volunteers. I still remember volunteers Larry and Bob, staffing these tables and leading schedu...