A Quiet Pull: Snorkelling and Fishing on Lahaina’s Shore
I didn’t come to Maui with a checklist—just a quiet hope for something I couldn’t quite name. That, it turns out, was exactly the right way to receive the island.
With my wife and our daughters, our days found their own rhythm. Slow mornings in a three bedroom penthouse overlooking the pacific. The ocean breeze and early morning light slowly waking us, calling us to the day. Later: the girls scanning the horizon with binoculars, calling out when a whale surfaced. From the balcony, the ocean unfolded in quiet layers, with movement, light, and presence.
On our second morning, while our teenagers slept in, my wife and I snorkeled just after sunrise. We weren’t strangers to water, but this ocean was nothing like the lake our rustic hunting cabin sat on in Northern Canada. Here the water had no glassy stillness, no soft edges. The tide had muscle and mood. I noticed my wife abandon the snorkelling, so I stood and removed my mask to ask what was wrong.
“It’s a little too strong for me,” she said. We exclaimed in laughter then, as a sea turtle poked its head up in the mere 10 feet between us. “I’m going to sit on the beach a meditate.”
I watched as my bride made her way to the sand, wrapping a large beach towel around her waist, the early morning light and volcanic vog still washing the world in a shade of light grey, watered violet. When she smiled and blew me a kiss, comfortably stationed with her feet in the sand, I resumed my witness to the ocean below me. I didn’t blame her abandoning the activity. She was right to – the current was no joke and those who fought it were likely to cut themselves on the coral below. At first, I tried to resist the current, too, to hold myself steady, control the trajectory, fight the flow. But then, I gave in. I relaxed my body, allowed the ocean to hold me, take me exactly where I needed to go. Suspended above the reef, I watched fish flicker like sparks and turtles drift by like passing thoughts. It didn’t feel like swimming. It felt like listening. A practice of surrender in a world which usually demanded conquest.
The next day, after the morning’s float, I met a local man fishing with his nephew at Turtle Rock. We got to talking: two men and the sea. I told him about lake fishing and he about the ocean. We discussed bait, technique, the kind of fish you could catch if you knew what you were doing. He showed me pictures and the vibrant blues, greens, and yellows of Ono, Ahi, and Mahi-mahi flashed before my eyes. These incredible catches earned in the middle of random weekdays, whenever it was most convenient for him to dip his hook in the water. I envied the simple lifestyle. While I was always eager to return to my own lakeside cabin, work often kept me in the city, far from the opportunity, and even when the escape did occur, it often came with more work: maintaining the fishing boat, repairing cabin amenities, filling gerry cans with gasoline for the trip.
Later, driving the shoreline at dusk, I started to notice the others enjoying the ocean as my new friend had—anglers spaced along the coast, rods braced in the sand, headlights clipped to their caps. Their silhouettes stood quiet against the falling light. It wasn’t just about the catch. It was something slower, deeper. A practice. A way of being with the water instead of against it.
The act of surrender.
It’s not a thing those of us in positions of leadership can make a regular habit, but it’s a useful tool in the back pocket. At the office, in the city, at the lake, maybe those are times when a little fight is still necessary. But in Maui? There, there is peace. Beaches to walk, trails to hike. Slow mornings. Coffee with a view. Water on its own terms. My wife, on the shore, meditating. Myself, in the ocean, doing the same.
