Why Snorkeling Sucks (and why it doesn't have to)

Many months ago, I was introducing myself to a coworker and I mentioned that one of my hobbies was snorkeling. The response I got back:

"Tell me - why do haole people like snorkeling?"

At the time, I wasn't sure what to say. I've been snorkeling for a very long time, I first snorkeled in Hawaii when I was still a kid and came here on vacation, and I've snorkeled in the Florida Keys and on Kauai, Maui, and the Big Island as well. In fact, it was snorkeling on Kauai a couple years back that reignited my passion for the water. I've always thought of it as a really fun thing to do, so the idea that it would require explanation never entered my mind.

After about a year of messing around and mostly going to the same places, I think I understand. Snorkeling kinda sucks. Here is why I say this:

1. It's unadventurous. Snorkeling tends to be done in the same sort of places, typically shallower areas like the inside of Hanauma Bay, and safety and ease tend to go first. It's exciting if you've never done it, in fact for many people it's too much, but generally snorkelers don't aim for big adventure. They want to see pretty tropical fish, which brings me to the second point
2. It's uninformed. I would hazard a guess that more tourists snorkel than locals here in Hawaii, at least in terms of sheer numbers. The average tourist is here for a very short time, maybe a week or two, and most of them are from places like Japan or the mainland (US). They snorkel on vacation, and the limit of their knowledge is usually what they can find on a "fish ID" chart after the fact (often a rather confusing plastic chart with drawings rather than photos). 
3. The gear sucks. Most snorkel gear is rented, most snorkelers don't use it except on vacation, and so most of it is not ideal for the snorkeler. On a snorkel boat, you will probably get the most simple and low-maintenance gear. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it means that usually one piece or other of the equipment is less than ideal. "Less than ideal" might be fine for vacation, but it hardly encourages you to enjoy snorkeling. A fogging mask, ill fitting fins, or a leaky snorkel will put you off even if you LOVE the fish and coral.
4. There is no room for advancement. Snorkeling is a non-sport. It's usually viewed as an "activity", or if you go by YouTube's tag, it's an "industry". You do it as part of hanging out at the beach. You don't have to learn the fish, you don't have to swim well, and at most you will take some so-so pictures with a cheap camera. The expectations are low, but once you start going out every week, you start thinking, "where am I going with this?"
5. It gets no respect. Mostly due to the above factors, few locals want to say they are a "snorkeler". Heck, even scuba divers who snorkel as much as they dive will still call themselves "divers". Freedivers and spearfishers (two overlapping but not entirely identical groups) will never refer to themselves are snorkelers, even when that's what they are actually doing most of the time in the water - swimming on the surface, looking for fish. Magazines for snorkeling aren't on the racks at 7-11 here, but Hawaii Skin Diver, Hawaii Fishing News and Scuba Diving Magazine are all fairly easy to find.

The thing about all these complaints is that none of them have to be true about snorkeling. My own path in snorkeling has been a move from simple "leisure" snorkeling to increasingly more adventurous and informed snorkeling. One of the first things I did was get better gear. In any case, to make snorkeling better and more fun, pretty much all of the above has to flip:

1. Snorkeling is an adventure. Part of the reason I made this blog was to challenge myself. I want to see more of the island, and I want to explore new places. Snorkeling is a great way to take a peek at an exciting world very different from the one on land. Snorkeling outside of the break, snorkeling farther from shore, these things are exciting.
2. Snorkeling is a perfect way to learn about the reef. Getting past the "fish ID" charts, there are resources like Keoki Stender's excellent site to start from. There are also excellent guides which group the fish by family, which is one of the best ways to learn about them. I have taught myself the fish from the most common ones on out. By snorkeling, I've seen there is a different world inside and outside the break - for example, the Humuhumunukunukuapua'a is a shallow water fish that loves the inside but is less common the deeper you get. I've only started to learn about the fish, but snorkeling so far has shown me quite a bit.
3. Good gear is not hard to find, and worth every penny. The single best purchase I have ever made for snorkeling was buying a Cressi Pano 4 mask at McCully Bikes. It was about $35 but it fits my face perfectly and does not leak or fog (though I did clean it very thoroughly with toothpaste when I bought it). Different people have different faces, so you should always try on a mask before you buy it. Sometimes it helps to look a bit outside of the "gear made for snorkeling" box - my favorite fins are a pair of Churchill Makapu'u, which are usually thought of as bodyboarding fins.
4. Snorkeling (especially combined with freediving) has the potential to be as broad and deep a sport as scuba. Snorkeling has the advantage in shallow water, but there is no reason to limit snorkeling to the shallows. People are willing to freedive even at Lanai Lookout, and scuba divers will drift dive from there into Hanauma Bay. Heck, swim clubs here on Oahu sometimes go around Na Mokulua, and the Waikiki Roughwater Swim each year covers the breadth of Waikiki from Sans Souci to the Hilton. While obviously knowledge must be appropriate to the place, care must be taken, and the danger increases as the level increases, why should snorkelers leave many places to people carrying a spear or wearing tanks? 
5. Snorkeling deserves respect. It shouldn't just be a tourist thing, or haole thing, or something divers do but consider as an aside to diving. 

I hope I can show a different side to snorkeling with my videos, and help expand snorkeling from its current state. Adventure awaits!

Hawaiian fish names, common names, and scientific names

Before I really start blogging, I want to start with one thing - I will probably be using a lot of Hawaiian fish names. In my first video, I also used the so-called "common" names of the fish as well, but I will be trying to use the Hawaiian names where I can. Why?

For me, as a transplant here in Hawaii, I have a sort of foreign perspective - I didn't grow up here, so I don't know all these places the way a local would. But I fell in love with it and I have lived here for a while (more than 5 years now, though on and off). The reef ecosystem in particular is something that has captured me. I love the fish, the urchins, I get excited even seeing healthy coral, I love the adventure of finding new places. One part of that was to actually learn what I was seeing.

I am still very much in the middle of that process, but right at the beginning I decided to learn the Hawaiian names of things. My original motivation was to be able to understand the spearfisherman and locals, who use Hawaiian names. I was going to spearfish myself... Before I got a bit sidetracked. However, using the Hawaiian names has come to mean more than that to me. I am here on Oahu and I am looking at the life in Oahu. It's a bit absurd that I would use English names for fish here, isn't it? English itself is a language from a temperate island in the North Atlantic. I'm in the tropics in the middle of the Pacific ocean! 

The names of things matter. For scientific purposes, using scientific names is essential. A scientific name is (ideally) a pointer to a specific living thing, and designates the relationship of that living thing to other living things. A "common" name in English puts a certain claim on the things named - that they somehow belong to a world where English is the "correct" way to name things. Yet these things already had names, just as the place has a name, and just as trees like koa and 'ohi'a have names. For ocean life, it's complicated by the fact that each of these fish gets a different name in every place, so a fish with a worldwide distribution like kahala (greater amberjack) will have dozens of names in dozens of languages. Still, it makes sense to use the Hawaiian names here. Doubly so for endemic species which are only found here, like kumu.

I won't say this as an absolute - I will use the common name HERE. When I talk about menpachi I will call them menpachi because that's what they are commonly called here, though their "proper" Hawaiian name is 'u'u. When I talk about moray eels, I am going to use a "common" name or scientific name because Hawaiian calls them all "puhi" without differentiating between different species much, and the same with butterfly fish which only have a few names. I'm also going to be lax and write without proper 'okina (I'll use an apostrophe) and omitting the kahako (at least until I figure out how to put them in). But I am going to use the Hawaiian names just the same. 

One great site exists about the sea life of Hawaii, a site that I can't say enough good things about: Marinelife Photography by Keoki Stender. Scientific, "common" English names, Hawaiian names, and sometimes Japanese names are included. All of the names of the fish I learned from this excellent site.