Snorkeling in Honokohau Bay with James Arness

Elizabeth Weintraub on Sea Smoke, a 60-foot catamaran custom built for James Arness.

OK, technically, when you get right down to it, James Arness was not actually on the boat in person where I went snorkeling in Honokahau Bay, but the 60-foot catamaran I was on, Sea Smoke, was custom built for James Arness, and his spirit was there, which means I went to Honokohau Bay with James Arness. I had a huge crush on Matt Dillon as a kid, and I always wished he would just marry Miss Kitty and get it over with, but that was never gonna happen, according to my mom. She claimed Miss Kitty ran a whorehouse, and I could have slapped for saying that.

As I sat at the front, just behind the window, probably blocking everybody’s view, I tried to imagine where James Arness would have sex on this catamaran. There wasn’t really any good spots. The floor was too hard, the seats were not padded, and what’s the point of having a boat like this as a celebrity if there is no place for extracurricular activity?

James Arness, as my mother would have told you, was born in 1923 in Minneapolis, the sister city to my birthplace. He began his broadcasting career at a radio station in Minneapolis in 1945. But his big break came from his starring role in 1951 in The Thing From Another World, an iconic science fiction movie that became one of my favorite movies as a kid. I felt a strong connection to James Arness, but I just could not picture him on this boat. Probably because there was no place to have sex.

The guys from Ocean Sports gave us a quick presentation, complete with color photographs of fish and background stories. I found that very helpful when I slid down the stairs in my fins to snorkel. It’s nice to be able to identify fish. I spotted the red coral that Hawaiians used to use a few generations back as lipstick. The black spiny thing that sticks into your skin with backward arrows that you can’t get out unless you urinate on that spot. Or use white vinegar. We had no vinegar on the boat.

Of particular interest to me was a parrotfish I first saw a few years back in Rangiroa. I had forgotten the story until reminded. Parrotfish are mostly female, very few males are born, and the ones that are born male are sterile. They reproduce because a female will turn into a male and then fertilize a bunch of the other females. She changes through a series of colors (polychromatism) to become a male, as they are brightly colored, almost like a rainbow, with strong hues of aqua.

It makes you wonder what the world would be like if women could have babies without men. Would we see world peace? Would hunger cease? Would Donald Trump be forced to work in the mail room?

While I did not go on a hunt to find Nemo like in Vanuatu, I did spot a juvenile version of the yellowtail coris, a very small orange fish with white stripes. Another highlight was the Hawaiian fish with the longest name, and it’s NOT the humuhumunukunukuapuaa , it is instead the Lauwiliwilinukunuku’oi’oi. This fish is mostly yellow, sort of boxy shaped, with a long snout, a masked face and white stripes.

I am heading home today, after 3 weeks on Big Island, back to rainy Sacramento. Now I find I will have to buy the autobiography of James Arness in hard copy, which is not in iBooks, and probably a chart of Hawaiian fish so I can begin a book to document all the fish. This is what snorkeling does to you in Honokokau Bay with James Arness.

Honokohau Bay as viewed from Sea Smoke, a catamaran built for James Arness.