Barracudas in Honolua Bay

The last fatal shark attack in Hawaii was last year in Maui's Honolua Bay, my morning's snorkeling destination. The previous fatality was in 2019, off Kaanapali Shores Resort, also in Maui and just six miles away. Nevertheless I still thought it was unlikely I'd encounter any deadly marine animals when I set off on my underwater adventure. So imagine my surprise when within minutes of entering the bay, I indeed discovered a threat: a barracuda, lurking close to the rocky shore of the popular and crowded tourist site.

In my many snorkeling outings off the coasts of the Hawaiian Islands, I had never before seen a shark or a barracuda. In fact, at the beginning of my last year's trip to Maui, Honolua Bay was closed to anyone entering the water; a tiger shark had taken up temporary residence after a fishing boat had inadvertently discarded some excess bait. Nevertheless, I was still eventually able to snorkel the wide, clear waters of the bay unscathed before my week-long October vacation came to end.

Honolua is in the extreme northwest of Maui, one of the last stops in a string of tourist sites that begins with Lahaina eleven miles away. Lahaina is a colorful, lively town that retains many of the buildings and architectural styles from its booming whaling days in the nineteenth century. To the north is the sprawling beachside resort development of Kaanapali, followed by the snorkeling hotspots of Black Rock and Kahekili Beach. Up the coast is the affordable hotel district of Kahana and then the stunningly picturesque bays of Napili and Kapalua.

In a way, Honolua is at the end of the road, at a point where it looks like real estate development is finally on pause. The mostly forested volcanic slopes reach uninterrupted to the rugged coastline with spectacular views of Molokai eight miles across the channel. There are no picnic areas, restaurants, lifeguards, parking lots, or resorts at Honolua: just room along the road's shoulder for your car, two port-a-potties, and a long, tree-canopied path to the bay.

Instead of a sugary sand beach greeting you at the end of the five-minute trek, there's a wide, rocky shoreline you must carefully navigate to enter the placid water. But it's well worth the tricky balancing act needed to safely don your snorkel gear while wading in.

I expected nothing less this year than the spectacular variety of fish and coral that I've always witnessed in Honolua Bay. But before I'd even swum out of the shallow water close to shore, I came up against that barracuda: no blue corals or yellow tangs in my sights, only a gray terror in early morning, shadowy water.

I almost didn't even see the barracuda as it blended in with its surroundings, its silvery scales as dull as the sea bottom's foggy stones. But its length, maybe four feet, and its girth, easily as fat as nine inches diameter, told me it was not a blue trevally or type of chub, usually the largest fish I see on the reef. And it was swimming slowly, not toward me fortunately, and I was able to get some initial sideway shots where I later discerned its distinctive jutting jaw. Very soon the fish disappeared into the shallows.

Great barracudas, as the species is called, are as common in Hawaii as sharks and are a close second to sharks as the most dangerous predators to humans in the Islands' waters. But just how lethal are they? While I listed the fatalities from shark attacks on Maui - two in two years - there are no similar statistics related to barracudas. In fact the attacks are so rare that I could only find data for the entire state from the 1960's, when only two attacks were listed. And there have never been any deaths.

Meanwhile, over a span of ten years before Maui's last two shark-caused fatalities, there were only four incidents of sharks causing human deaths. However there were over a hundred attacks in the same period.

Sharks and barracudas are dangerous predators that could be a threat to humans, but it is highly unlikely you'll ever be a victim. There's a far better chance your neighbor's dog will kill you than one of these marine hunters. So I mostly had nothing to fear on last month's visit to Maui and Honolua Bay.

Very shortly after I saw the barracuda, as I swam further into the bay, I encountered my first bait ball of the morning. I'd later learn that these tight schools of small fish, often scads, are exactly what attract barracudas and sharks to Honolua Bay. A couple of minutes later I encountered yet another barracuda, this one closer to me but swimming away, into deeper, sun-filled water. From behind it looked like a torpedo, a muscled cylinder powered by not a propeller but a robust tail fin. I kept pace with it for a few seconds, but soon it was far beyond the range of me and my underwater camera.

I wondered if these encounters were with two different barracudas. Spaced just ten minutes apart, they were possibly brushes with the same individual as we both made our way deeper into the coral and marine-life wonderland called Honolua Bay.

Continuing my exploration, I discovered a green sea turtle surfacing for air. An array of surgeonfish, filefish, triggerfish, butterflyfish parrotfish, and puffers - all the kaleidoscopic species I originally entered the water to see - soon distracted me from my thoughts of the run-ins with the barracudas.

However, when I got far from the rocky beach, almost to one of the craggy points that defines the outer limits of the bay, I discovered one more bait ball, infinitely bigger than the first I'd seen. Each individual fish was nondescript, just a few inches long, probably a scad, gray and quite plain. But there had to be thousands, tens of thousands, or maybe hundreds of thousands of them.

As I swam deeper into their school, they swarmed and undulated in a single mass, storm cloud-like, eventually separating like a curtain, drawing open on a view of enchanting corals. I felt like I could reach out a hand and grab any fish I wanted. What was a dreamlike scene for me was probably an easy meal for a barracuda. Why pursue me, a cantankerous prey, when the hunter had all these easy pickings?

Back at my resort on Honokeana Bay, just two days before, there was an actual human death the afternoon I checked in for my three-night stay. A snorkeler was found floating in the calm waters renowned for their abundance of green sea turtles. The visitor was tragically unresponsive after being pulled ashore despite the valiant resuscitation efforts of guests and almost twenty EMT workers.

It was almost certainly a drowning, probably caused by heart failure. On average, one visitor dies per week in Hawaii while engaged in strenuous exercise like snorkeling (half the cases), swimming, or hiking. We don't have to fear sharks and barracudas as much as our own hubris while vacationing in paradise.