Seventy percent of the Earth's surface is covered with it. Ninety-six percent is ocean water. It's called H₂O because two oxygen atoms are attached to one atom of hydrogen. It's called the universal solvent because it dissolves more substances than any other liquid. It goes where it wants, either through the ground or through us, and it takes with it or brings with it, however you want to look at it, valuable chemicals, minerals, and nutrients. It is found in all three states - liquid, solid (ice), and gas (steam). Water is constantly changing, interacting, and always, or tries to be, moving.

That's the science. There's also it's mystery.

Eddie Aikau was a very well-known Hawaiian lifeguard and surfer. He was responsible for saving many, many lives as well as surfing the big waves, long before Extreme Sports, long before it was cool. It is said on Hawaii's North Shore that Eddie would go into waves puling people out that no one else would dare swim into. Only Eddie dared to defy the ocean.

At the age of 31, Eddie joined the crew of of the Polynesian Voyaging Society for a 30-day, 2500 mile journey following the ancient route of the Polynesian migration between the Hawaiian and Tahitian island chains. The double-hulled canoe developed a leak in one of the hulls and later capsized about 12 miles south of the island of Molokai in gale force conditions. Gale force winds are defined by the National Weather Service as wind moving at a sustained 39 to 54 miles an hour.

Not one to sit by, Eddie attempted to get help by paddling his surfboard toward Lanai. The crew was rescued by the U. S. Coast Guard. Eddie was never seen again. The search for Eddie was the largest air-sea search in Hawaii history.

To this day, if you have the opportunity to drive along Hawaii's roads, you might see a weathered bumper sticker. It simply states: Eddie Would Go.

In Eddie's honor, the surfwear company Quiksilver sponsors "The Eddie," the Big Wave Invitational in his memory. The tournament has only been held seven times due to the precondition that the open-ocean swells must reach a minimum of 20 feet, or a wave face height of 30 feet. The most recent tournament was December 2004 when the waves reached the bay at 30 to 50 feet.

There is the power of the ocean.

The link above, if you've taken the time to watch, proves the power of moving water without my having to relate a single fact.  We've all heard the stories.  There are shows on the Science and Discovery Channels that speak to the science of rogue waves that can be over 90 feet tall.

My own story, or rather the story belongs to my father-in-law who was a submariner from WWII until his retirement 24 years later on the decks of the Constitution in Boston.  The story he told me, and his hands bore evidence of its truth took place a few months after he'd become chief of the boat, the senior enlisted man on board.  The sub had surfaced to check things out, and to make a few minor repairs to the conning tower, but storm waves were building fast.  He got the men to wrap things up and get back down as the boat was being pushed and rolled.  He slammed the hatch before a huge wave hit the boat leaving himself attached to the rails.  Wave after wave slammed into the boat.  He told me he crouched there, clipped to the rails, waiting for the skipper of the boat to submerge, thereby saving the men inside from the battering.  But the boat stayed on the surface  with the obvious hope from all that he was still alive.  One wave, he told me, was a wall that took out the sky.  Eighty, ninety feet.  Had to be against the size of the conning tower.  He said he saw lights inside it, twinkling.  There was debris, and there was ice.  Chunks of ice.  My father-in-law's eyes grew distant in the telling.  This was not a story he ever told his grandchildren.  The wall of water, he said, hit the boat and they rolled.  He said he was hanging on to the boat, chained also, but it was his hands and not his waist that took the brunt of the pain.  They rolled like a child's ball through this wave and his body was battered.  When it finally rolled on past, he was exhausted.  Night was falling and more waves were coming.  There was a brief lull and he could hear someone banging Morse code from the inside, just under the closed hatch.  He managed to clang the chains keeping him attached to the boat, and as anyone knows who's tried talking under water in the swimming pool water carries sound.  They heard him.  Through Morse code, he conveyed when there was a break in the waves to open the hatch for him to get inside.  Down the hatch, then take her down.  The sub dived to the safety of the ocean far below the tumultuous surface.  And he never forgot it.  He relived it in his dreams.  That wall of water with the twinkling lights of some organism that had been brought up from the depths.

Then there is the beauty of water, the reminder from the play of sunlight and the wind's ability to move across the ocean's surface that water is magical.  Walking along the ocean's edge, being coaxed by my husband to follow him into the cold North Atlantic water to swim, watching it day after day at all times of the day, in all weather, and in all seasons, seeing the raw power of even a calm day.

The feel of eternity when looking out across open water, when there's nothing between you and Europe but the fetch the waves and current cross relentlessly.

And to see the melancholy of it's vastness, the knowledge of it's power, and the awareness of it's mysteries reflected in my husband's eyes. Whenever I see the ocean, walk the beach, climb the rocks that may surround it, I will always see his eyes looking at it with longing. The smell of the salt air and the sound of gulls will put me in his embrace as he protected me from the buffeting winds that could come across our cove.

Oceanographer Sylvia Earle once wrote that we could lose all the plants, trees, and vegetation across the lands of earth and, though a great many of us would die, somehow, someway, man would find a way to survive.  But if we lost the life in the ocean, then man would surely die because the oceans sustain us in ways we still cannot comprehend.

I had never lived by the ocean until my husband brought me to it.  It was the best time of my life. Living there with him, everyday going to the shores around Cape Ann, finding shells and sand dollars, watching the waves mangle lobster pots and throw the back on the rocks, lay quiet and serene then build it's fury and lash at the rocky coast, was the most romantic, wonderful time of my life.  Being with him there gave it even more magic.

I hope someday, all of us find a way to stay by the ocean, live beside it, even if it's only for a little while.