From time to time I sing songs to people, and it sounds crazy but I have sung to fish and turtles in the sea.
More than once, I’ve sung to whales and they jumped out of the ocean, but that might be a fluke. Or maybe I’m a Hawaiian-style St. Francis talking to the animals.
Once, I was sitting with my guitar on the bank of a river far away. The river was muddy without much oxygen for fish so they had to swim around and lift their snouts out of the water like they were sucking up air to help them breathe.
I looked out and saw schools of fish in little groups up and down the river, treading water vertically with their heads sticking up out of the water.
I sat with my guitar and started to sing a song and a school of mullet swam over and stayed in front of me in the water. I sang my song and the fish stayed there by the bank listening, 40 little smiling fish looking up at me.
I stopped singing and the fish moved away out into the river. I started singing again and what do you know, they rushed back over and, I guess you’d say, perched in front of me. I sang a few songs in a row and they stayed right there listening.
Yes, folks, I gave a concert to a school of fish. Like in Hilo, I had sung for a school.
Back in Hawaii one morning I was standing on the shore of Kamoamoa Campground, a beautiful park in Lower Puna with green lawns that has since been covered by lava.
I was standing by the sea with my guitar as the morning sun came up in bright pink rays over the glassy water. I started singing a song of mine, “Come away, come away and take hold of my hand, ‘cause the world’s more full of woe than you can understand” and to my surprise, two honu swam up right below me and stayed there as I sang. Maybe they were just cruising by, but I like to think they were fans.
Later, I went after big game, humpback whales.
I was a singer at the Kona Stroll and sometimes I went to the ocean by OTEC and rehearsed my songs by the shore. When I started singing, whales suddenly started jumping out of the ocean. This had happened once before in Puna. Whales down there don’t get out much and go for any kind of entertainment.
And why not, whales can actually hear their own songs a thousand miles away. Hearing a song onshore would be easy. Whether they were jumping for joy or trying to shut me up is the question.
There was one chicken skin moment with a honu in the sea.
Dan, a friend of mine, passed away and we had a memorial for him at Pahoehoe Beach Park, the nice spot with a green lawn on Alii Drive. We toasted to him and then threw a lei in the water. We watched it slowly drift out, and I swear to you, a honu came up under it and put the lei around its neck and swam out to sea. True story.
We shivered all over.
Dennis Gregory writes a bimonthly column for West Hawaii Today and welcomes your comments at makewavess@yahoo.com