Across The Universe: Blowholes & Shorelines

Much of the shoreline here, as in most volcanic - coral islands, is rock encrusted with eons of coral. The coral is very hard and sharp, it will cut you all up if you let it. But it leads to a couple very scenic and fantastic phenomena. The blowhole is one of them.

Somehow when all this was forming, the rocks and the coral left a very jagged, twisty shore. In places it is very like the teeth of a saw blade, with pointy tips sticking out, and gaps in between which narrow almost to nothing. The effect is to concentrate the water from wave pressure, so when the waves roll in and hit the rocks, they amplify and the result is large sprays of water when they hit. Here's a video of an example:

Inside the rocks are hidden passages and channels which alternately fill with water, then empty, then fill again as the waves come in. There are stories of people, from shipwrecks or other accidents, falling into the sea then getting pushed into these channels; I was told that one guy (of course, not the guy who tells the story, but always someone his friend knew) was stuck inside these passages for 3 days before he was able to swim out at a low tide. Anyway, as the waves push in they compress the air with tremendous force. Where there is no opening to relieve it, the air eventually shoots the water back out the way it came in, showing much froth & foam. But sometimes there developed a pathway to the surface, and the air shoots out that way. Often it makes a tremendous noise, and has quite a bit of force to it. Particularly strong waves can lead to small geysers shooting water up from these blowholes.

Outside my home is a small area of about 5 blowholes, all connected. The range from about 10 feet to about 50 feet from the shore, so they go back inland quite a ways. Here's a video of some action, taken recently at a high tide:

It's hard to capture the reality of this stuff with still photos, so I'll add anther video of the blowhole action

About a mile away there's another section where the road goes right along the shore; it's called Sliding Rocks. Here's a video of the wave action (no blowholes here):

Here's also a couple photos of the shore. There are two small grave area right at the top of the cliff, both of which were heavily damaged last year by the tsunami. What's here is repaired, but I'm told several grave sites were lost to the sea never to be recovered. There is one area for Samoans, but another separate area only for Korean fishermen, as the sign indicates (enlarge to read):