Spinner Dolphins! Location: Moloki Island Day 11 by Wayne & Karen Brown

Molokai is the fifth-largest of the Hawaiian Islands. This slender island was made by three volcanoes. Few people live on Molokai. Molokai is where people in the Hawaiian Islands were sent if they had leprosy (now called, "Hansen's disease"). Leprosy is a very contagious disease that causes paralysis and deformity. People were sent here to keep them away from healthy people. Today leprosy is treatable so it is not the problem it used to be. Now people can visit and live in Molokai without worrying about catching this disease.

Most of Molokai is still in its natural state and undeveloped. There is only one main road on the island. We will be exploring an area where there are no road at all. We will be going to the northeast coast of Molokai. We will be visiting Moa'ula (MOE-AH OO-LA) Falls in a place called Hidden Valley. The only way to can get to these falls is by boat and then hiking back into Hidden Valley.

On our way to Hidden Valley Odyssey passes by some beautiful, tall cliffs that rise high up (about 3,000 feet!) out of the sea. These sea cliffs are the tallest sea cliffs in the world! Odyssey anchors by the sea cliffs, in front of a beautiful green valley filled with tropical plants. Mist hangs like a veil in the valley.

The sea here looks somewhat choppy. We put a Zodiac in the water to use as a scout boat to inspect the conditions for landing on the beach. As we approach the beach we see large waves breaking on the beach. We also notice that large rocks cover the beach. Unfortunately the conditions are too dangerous to make a landing on this beach. Because this is the only beach between the cliffs we won't be able to go ashore at Hidden Valley.

This is such a beautiful place we decide to take passengers exploring the cliffs on the Zodiacs. We will be able to get close to shore and find out if we can see Moa'ula Falls from the sea. We load 8 passengers in to our Zodiac and head toward the shore. The sea is a little choppy, but we cruise slowly so we don't bounce anyone out of our boat. Occasionally someone gets splashed as little waves whack the side of our Zodiac. As we slowly cruise off the beach we look up the valley with our binoculars. We can't see the falls. The falls must be way back where the valley curves inland.

We continue our exploration of the coast. We cruise along the base of the high sea cliffs. The cliffs drop straight into the sea and there is no place to go ashore here. After cruising up and down the rugged coastline it is time to return to Odyssey.

On the way back to the ship we see some splashing in the water up ahead. With our binoculars we see that it is a large pod of dolphins! We turn our boat and head toward the dolphins. We can see that there must be over 20 dolphins in this pod! The dolphins sense our arrival and they start swimming all around our boat! Some are surfing in our bow wake. Some swim right next to our Zodiac and are so close we could almost reach out and touch them! We see that in this pod there are adults and juveniles. As we watch them some of the dolphins leap out of the water and spin around before they splash back into the water. A few dolphins even do complete head-over-tail somersaults. And some of these dolphins even do spinning head-over-tail somersaults! This is like dolphin Olympics! These dolphins are spinner dolphins.

Spinner dolphins get their name from their high, spinning leaps out of the water. These are the only dolphins that spin when they leap out of the water. Some spinner dolphins have been seen making as many as 16 spins before they fall back into the water! These dolphins can grow to over 7 feet (2.2 meters) long and weigh as much as 165 pounds (75 kilograms). When spinner dolphins are born they are about 2 1/2 feet long (75 centimeters).

We would love to get in the water with the dolphins, but we don't have our swimsuits. Even if we did get in the water with them they would probably swim away. After watching the dolphins for about a half an hour they swim away. We return to Odyssey. We are sorry we couldn't go ashore and hike to the waterfalls, but if we had we probably would not have seen the dolphins.

Odyssey is now continuing our voyage southeast across the chain of Hawaiian Islands. Tomorrow we will return to "The Big Island" -- Hawaii. This time we will not be exploring the Kona coast. This time we will be exploring Hawaii's most active volcano -- Kilauea (KILL-AH-WAY-AH) volcano. If we are lucky we may even get to see it erupting!

Best Fishes,
Wayne & Karen Brown

Wayne (standing up) driving a Zodiac with passengers. (You can see another Zodiac in water on the right.)

The Molokai sea cliffs are about 3,000 feet tall -- the highest sea cliffs in the world!

In the water, near the center, you can see the dorsal fins of four dolphins.