sand – A Darker View

Typical Hawaiʻi Shoreline

Picture postcard beaches of white sand with turquoise blue water are what so many tourists imagine when Hawaiʻi is mentioned. Add a few coconut palm trees and you have the ideal beach of song and legend.

Mauna Kea Beach — The ideal Hawaiian beach represented by Mauna Kea beach on the Kohala Coast.

What surprises many tourists is that this postcard ideal is not the reality of our island. Black rock shorelines are the norm. Once under water you will find the sandy areas are interspersed with coral reef, the rocky shorelines usually supporting extensive coral reef rather than sand.

It is the coral that is the source of the white sand beaches here in Hawaiʻi, ground coral chewed and digested by the many coral eating fish. The pretty triggerfish and parrotfish chew the coral constantly, crushing the coral into a fine grained sand. Our pretty sandy beaches are literally fish shit.

Old Airport beach — Typical shoreline along the Kona coast, if there is sand, it usually becomes rock and coral at the waterline

While not exactly rare, there are quite a few, beaches where the sand continues into the water are not the rule along the Kona coastline. Most of the coastline feature black lava shorelines where the water crashes against bare rock. This rocky shoreline accounts for something like 90% or more of the coastline of the Island of Hawaii.

This stands as a stark contrast to other tropical shorelines around the world, where miles upon miles of beach are not uncommon, sand as far as the eye can see. Here on the Big Island the few truly good beaches are treasured and well used parks.

Coconuts are not the usual shoreline tree either, that role belongs to either the kiawe tree or what is locally called ironwood. Both names are not what you would find in the botanical texts. Kiawe is the island name for what the rest of the world calls mesquite or Prosopis pallida, a drought tolerant tree that covers much of the dry leeward shorelines. Likewise the local ironwood is actually the beach she-oak or Casuarina equisetifolia. The rather confusing name ‘ironwood’ is used for over thirty different species around the world.

Another surprise to many is that this island has black sand beaches. In place of ground coral these beaches are ground up lava, often created by the interaction of hot lava and cold water shattering the rock into a deep black sand. There is even a green sand beach, where the sand is in large part made up of the semi-precious gemstone olivine.

Hawaiʻi is the youngest island in the chain, the forces of erosion, coral growth, and hungry fish, have not had enough time to create the long sandy beaches. These beaches become more common as you jump northward from island to island. Oahu or Kauai have extensive beaches along a much large percentage of shoreline. The islands in the northwest Hawaiʻian islands, places like Kure and Midway are pretty much nothing but sandy beach.

We do have beaches, and they are pretty good.

Another Undescribed Species

There are quite a few well known, but undescribed species found island reefs. I have noted a few of them previously here on DarkerView.

Undescribed means simply that… The species has never been properly described in a scientific publication such that a species name is assigned. These do exist, and are more common than many people realize. Some marine biologist with expertise with related species needs to spend some time to capture a few, and do a proper description, an exercise that takes more effort than you might think.

I ran into another one recently. This anemone was quite common on the sandy slopes below the reef at Garden Eel Cove. There was a individual every three or four feet amoung the garden eels at 80ft depth. They are apparently an undescribed species of the genus Mesacmaea. More information can be found on Hoover’s update pages. This one should really be added to the next edition.

They were quite challenging to photograph. Quite small, less than an inch across, and quick to disappear into the sand when approached too closely.

Mesacmaea sp? — An undescribed member of the genus Mesacmaea, 80ft depth at Garden Eel Cove.

Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park

Many travel the wilds of Northern Arizona and Southern Utah marveling at the cliffs of red sandstone. Towers, needles and arches of red Navajo Sandstone are the hallmark of the region. These are features carved by millennia of erosion by wind and water. But where does all the sandstone that has been eroded away go? Not all of it has been carried away by the Colorado River to the sea. In southern Utah there is a place where the wind has piled the sand into dunes hundreds of feet high. This place is called Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park.

Death in the Sand — A small vertebra becomes a symbol if life and death in the sand

About twenty road miles outside of Kanab, Utah there is a broad valley filled with a field of dunes. A place large enough one can find solitude with the wind and the sand. Where you could get lost among the dunes. Walking is difficult in the piles of loose sand, shifting and sliding beneath your feet. It seems to take an enormous effort to climb the larger dunes. But the view is impressive, the effort worthwhile.

At first the dunes seem devoid of animal life, with few plants struggling to keep hold in the shifting sand. But a closer look revealed traces of more than is first apparent. Tracks criss-cross the dune slopes. Traces of lizards, beetles and snakes that scavenge a life out of the sand. Here or there is a larger reminder, maybe the tracks of a rabbit or coyote showing where the game of life was played for another round. And there in the sand a trace of death as well, in a small vertebra, a reminder that life is easily ended in this sea of sand.