When my husband and I weren’t watching whales, we were tooling around the island. At one point, we found some green sea turtles.
Green sea turtles
According to the locals, they’d hauled themselves out on the beach to warm up.
One had encountered a shark, the only predator of adult sea turtles besides humans.
The pale nub on it’s flipper is the stub of bone exposed when a shark bit off the tip.
One of the things that surprised me the most about Hawai’i was the variety of volcanic rocks. I expected lots of basalt flows, created by lave running from the volcano to the sea.
Rope lava from a relatively recent eruption.
But the basalt was layered with ash.
Ash layers can be identified between the basalt flows because they have eroded into the cliff a bit.Shifting Sands Trail on Haleakela
In fact, the summit of Haleakela, the most recent volcano on Maui, is made up mostly of ash.
Breccia — fused ash — litters the summit of Haleakela.
I can see why NASA tested Mars rovers on Haleakela.
Lower down, though, the volcanic rocks made hundreds of small pools that are one of the reasons so many people fall in love with Maui.
Amy Law is a science geek. She feels about science the way some people feel about music, or art, or sports – a total and complete emotional connection. She thinks in science.
For Amy, there’s nothing better than helping people see the beauty of science as she does. She loves to untangle a complicated subject into its parts, explaining it so that anybody can understand what’s happening. Let her show you her world...
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One thought on “Maui: Part Two”
Thanks ever so for sharing pics of Hawaii. After yesterday’s rain/snow storm, I needed some beach scenes. 🙂
Thanks ever so for sharing pics of Hawaii. After yesterday’s rain/snow storm, I needed some beach scenes. 🙂
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