Personal Narrative: Bethany Hamilton

In 2003, a young thirteen year old named Bethany Hamilton was attacked by a shark at Tunnels Beach in Kauai, Hawaii. In 2010, my family and I ended up actually going to the beach that Bethany was attacked. We drove down from the hotel we were staying at through all the beautiful scenery that was so different from that of Idaho. The car we rented was a red Jeep and we had the top off all the way to the beach. It was perfect, the sunshine above, the warm salty air licking our faces as we sped through the streets lined by looming palms swaying in the breeze. As we arrived at the beach, I thought to myself that it looked incredibly calm and had a very difficult time imaging Bethany Hamilton and her friends and family rushing her to the hospital. Seeing that beach gave a whole new meaning to me about the courage Bethany had to get back in the water because I was even a little apprehensive about getting into waters where a shark attacked. While in Hawaii, we decided to also give snorkeling a shot. Tunnel Beach was said to be a great place for seeing all the extraordinary plant life Hawaii’s reefs had to offer and the beach was known to be a resting place of many sea turtles. Sure enough, my family and I were snorkeling not too far off shore and a few sea turtles are swimming in the deep blue below us! We were amazed at the great size of the

The turtle almost kissing my sister was definitely a highlight of the snorkeling experience, but as we were getting ready to leave, I looked back at the sand in water only about four feet deep and saw something slithering behind a piece of floating seaweed. As I looked closer, a very small piece of something floated near the seaweed clump and an eel about a foot long lunged out at it! I was close enough to be able to tell that I had just seen a snowflake eel as the snorkeling book had