Mano (Hawaiian for "shark")

I think my husband's aumakua is the mano. Why do I think this?

My husband, my brother, my father, and I went fishing yesterday for some bonding time. We were heading out of the harbor by six thirty am, and the sunrise over the mountain was just beautiful!



Unfortunately, it was pretty choppy out there, and I don't consider myself a landlubber, but I wasn't feeling too hot. We had caught a lot of live bait at about 11 in the morning, and had them out in the water, so we were going incredibly slow and the rocking had lulled my husband and me to sleep.



All of the sudden, my father woke me up with a yell,"Chucker!" I shot up and yelled back to confirm, "Chucker?" with is another term for a spearfish. He shook his head, and said, "No, Shark!"

Now, any fisherman knows, sharks are bad news. Sharks don't die. Remember, they are surivivers from the Dinosour Age. It takes a lot to kill them. We had a shark once that we shot six times in the head, and had out of the water for 3 hours (they are fish, not mammels), and it still snapped at someone as we strung it up to weigh it.

And before you shoot it 10 times in the head, you have to pull it inot the boat, which is akin to being in a small room with a tiger. Thy flip all around (they are 200 lbs of muscle) with their mouths open full of razor sharp teeth, destroying everything and hurting everyone who doesn't have the luxury of hidding up in the tower while the deckhand and captain deal with the dangerous animal.

I wasn't happy with "shark" but before we could real in the bait, it was hooked!

Hubby sat in the anglers chair and began to real. My only consolation was that the sharp teeth would pass over the line and probably cut itself loose withint the next 30 seconds.



5 minutes of the fight went by, 10 minutes, and soon, we saw the large brown animal about 10 yrds from the boat. It was still on the line!



Despite myself, I was getting excited, and I began snapping photos. Hubby had fought the shark (we could see it was a whitetip) all the way to the transom, ane we could now see he was hooked in the corner of his mouth, so his teeth counldn't cut the line short!




When we brought him too the side of the boat (Brett the deckhand was the unlucky one who had to get closest to it and hold it for pictures) the whitetip freaked out and began thrashing. His teeth cut the line, and he was gone in two seconds! Besides an 15 lbs Otado (skipjack) the day was quiet, but the shark was worth it!





So why do I think a mano is his aumakua? What mano would allow himself to get thank close to the boat for any other reason? It is the only logical explaination in my book.