Honu of Makena-Resting Between Tides
By Patricia Mezzina
Wildlife & Travel Photographer
I had slipped into the water just beyond the lava rock shelf at Five Caves Beach, fins cutting quietly through the Pacific. Beneath the surface, the world turned cathedral-blue — light bending through salt and current, reef fish flashing like quicksilver.
When I climbed back onto the rocky edge of the cove to warm in the sun, I saw them.
Two honu — Hawaiian green sea turtles — resting motionless on the black volcanic stones, as if the shoreline itself had shaped them from lava and time. In Makena, encounters like this feel less like sightings and more like quiet permissions. You don’t approach. You don’t interrupt. You simply witness.
The tide rolled in gently, white foam tracing the curve of the cove before slipping back into the deep. Overhead, broad green leaves filtered the tropical light, framing the stillness below. The turtles remained calm, eyes half closed, bodies rising and falling almost imperceptibly with breath and heat.
Photographing them meant lowering my presence — keeping distance, honoring space. In Hawaii, honu are symbols of longevity and navigation, ancient mariners who have crossed oceans long before we ever mapped them. Seeing them at rest felt like watching time pause.
This image holds that moment between movement and stillness — the hush after snorkeling, salt drying on skin, and the quiet privilege of sharing shoreline with creatures who belong entirely to sea and sun.
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