Coral Reef Walk...

Today Noah and I got our feet wet and soaked up a little sun on a coral reef walk sponsored by the Ewa Beach Homeschoolers.  The two hour guided walk is one of the Living Art Marine Center's educational programs and we had a blast!  As we waded out into the ocean in the company of two marine biologists, we were able to find, see, touch, and hear about all kinds of small marine animals.





These were some of the little critters we spotted:

            

(Clockwise, from top left:  Teddy Bear Crab, Eel, Sea Urchin, Scorpion Fish)


Noah was the youngest child there and the other kids did a wonderful job of ensuring that he felt completely included and didn't miss out on all of their "finds." More than once, one of the older girls and boys came by to drop a little hermit crab or sea cucumber in Noah's bucket; at one point, he was even called over to help "rescue" a few sea cucumbers that were nestled underneath the rocks above the tide and were "dying."  From the other side of some rocks, I hear:

Noah!  Bring more water...quickly!  These sea cucumbers will die if we don't put them in the ocean!

And then I hear a smaller voice reply:

Mom! We have to save the sea coocumber!  I'm going to help them and bring some water!

It was really cute.

Vincent, our guide, was fantastic with all the children (I didn't catch the other guide's name) and he did a great job of walking amongst them, overturning rocks here and there to make sure they all got a chance to see (and possibly scoop up) a marine animal for themselves.  Every time he would stop and bend over, Noah would get rather bug-eyed and want to race over to see what "Mr. Vincent" found under the latest rock. Of course, Noah wasn't as surefooted as he would have liked and he got a little frustrated as he scrambled, slipped, and stumbled over the reef (he finally stopped clinging to me), so he eventually abandoned that mission and followed me along the shoreline...where we caught sight of the eel. :)  He was thrilled!  No one else was able to see, much less catch another eel this morning, so that was pretty exciting for him.

All in all, it was a great experience that we hope to do again with Chris when he's not working.  Hopefully, the skies will cooperate like they did today and we'll take our reef shoes, buckets, and nets and explore the ocean again at low tide.