The Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary created in 1992 constitutes one of the world’s most important humpback habitats, and the only place in U.S. coastal waters where humpbacks reproduce. Numbers are increasing each year. More than 3,500 humpbacks visit Maui’s waters to breed and bear their young through March or April before returning to North Pacific waters—reason enough for a month-long cetacean celebration in honor of Maui’s returning humpback whales.

Maui Weekly

We are still seeing the effects of the small and very wide tsunamis generated from the Chile aftershocks. Here is a photo of Oluwalu on February 28th around 9:45am. I have never seen the reef out of the water at Oluwalu before in my 20 years of living on Maui. This happened when the tide level was almost at bottom so when the very wide wave passed by and the sea level sank down, it exposed the reef. 10 minutes later the reef was submerged again. It was quite an eerie feeling.