My Sweet Little Island Girl

This is our sweet little island girl. We moved to Guam when she was three weeks old.

This is our sweet girl when she was 6.

She loves the island culture. She has always been a comedian.

When she was young, she loved to come out with me when I captained the dive boats.

We had a lot of fun together. I see my favorite little floppy ear!

She would beg to come out on a sunset bbq dive, then, as soon as it got dark she would say, "daddy, I want to go home to my mommy."

She never wanted to miss an adventure with the boys!

We would buy her Lemonhead candy to try to keep her happy. Usually she would fall asleep at my feet, wrapped in a blanket as I piloted the boat back to the harbor.

This is Brookie resting on an outrigger with me while snorkeling in Bali, Indonesia.

This is Brooke checking out a Sea Turtle at the Mariculture Center in Palau.

Brooke having fun with cousin Diane on a day trip on the Sea Odyssea.

Dad is at the wheel in the background.

Brooke is my partner as I chip the coral growth off of WWII shell casings that I found while diving. Brooke is singing and clapping and entertaining me as I work.

Brooke at the wheel on the Sea Otter Express In Sitka Sound.

With her nautical background, she made great tips in Sitka, Alaska playing shanties on the concertina for the tourists.

Brooke loved to come out on the boats with Dad.

I always loved her company!

Sitka, Alaska

I love you and am so proud of you and Steve.

Always remember how much I love you!

Some funny stories about Brooke:

When our family took a vacation to the Temple in the Philippines, Brooke blew us away when she ate a fish head in the Temple cafeteria.

When we moved to Alaska, she impressed us by eating raw Limpets at a super saturday activity. She was 7. Limpets are sea creatures that attach themselves to rocks in the surf zone. She would scoop them out of the shell with her thumb and chomp them down.

She also got in the habit of eating kim-chee sandwiches in Guam.

I wonder if Brookie Blue is asleep at my feet?

Palauan Legend of the Egg Laying Cycle of the Turtle

While on a dive trip down to Palau in 1993 with our friends the Walshes, I bought a Palauan Story board from the Koror Jail. I had been told the the inmates at the Koror Jail carved the story boards in the spare time and that you could get a good deal. The guy that carved the turtle board that I purchased couldn't even come to the front of the jail to deal with me directly because of his status but we had to deal through a messenger. They showed me a bunch of boards but this one was my favorite as I have always liked the legend about the egg laying cycle of the Sea Turtle.

Right Click for easier reading.

This is what was written on the back side of the story board.

Someone told me that the Palauan Storyboard was a fairly recent thing. After WW II a Japanese fellow living on Palau thought it would be something that tourists would buy and thus a way for them to make money. Also a way to preserve the traditions and oral history of Palau. Now most divers going to Palau bring home a storyboard.

Notice the different levels of depth of the carving to make it look two dimensional.

Here is a funny story about outside the Koror Jail. I saw a pretty, young Palauan girl walking down the street and then . . . . . . . she turned with a bright red toothy smile and spit out a big wad of spit and beetle nut juice. I wondered where the big red splotches on the ground had come from. Now I know!!!

Little Palauan girl admiring Brooke's blonde bali braids.

Trevor and Brooke snorkeling near WWII Japanese ruins somewhere in the Rock Islands. This is close to where the movie, "Hell in the Pacific", with Lee Marvin was filmed.

Palau is a magical place and a place that I would like to visit again.

There are many of His natural wonders of the deep there.

Fin Whales off of Kodiak Island

This diagram is from the American Cetacean Society web site.

In August of 2007 I helped deliver a vessel that our company built for the Forest Service from Sitka to King Salmon. On that trip we saw four different species of whales. The video clip is some footage that I took of a pod of Fin Whales the day we left Kodiak Island and headed up the Aleutian Chain. Fin Whales are the second largest whale on the planet. The following info is from www.whales.org (Right click the article for easier reading.)

The first time I encountered Fin Whales was when we came upon two Fin Whales a couple of miles out from Wildwood, New Jersey when I was delivering a vessel that the company I worked for built for New York Waterway in 2002. The next encounter was when a single Fin visited Sitka Sound in 2006. This is a photo that I took of that whale.

Right click these articles for easier reading.

This diagram is from Australian Fauna.com

I never tire of watching whales. My first encounter was when I was about 6 years old. In the first picture you can see me standing with my Mom on the Whale Watching vessel out of San Francisco. We were watching Gray Whales. In the third photo you can see a blow. My parents gave me my love of the sea because of all the many experiences I had in my youth.

I believe that the Creator loves whales because of the way that He highlights them in Genesis, The Book of Moses, and The Book of Abraham.

Fin Whales are found in all of the oceans of the world.

Fin Whales are a part of HIS wonders of the deep . . .