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passageways on the bottom. There he’d found that the deity had no visible physical form, yet glowed ruby red like an underwater sun—an ethereal presence instead of a corporal entity.
    Somehow, he’d discerned that it was female—and a name had surfaced in his awareness, along with her identity: Moanna, the Goddess of the Sea.
    Gradually, he’d found that he could communicate with her underwater, as they transmitted thoughts back and forth while he was in the ocean, and most effectively when he was near her. One day as she pulsed red, brightening and dimming, she told him it was a molecular connection that they had with one another through the waters of the sea. Sometimes they talked across the linkage for long periods of time, and she provided him with important information and advice, mentoring him, guiding him as she did other sea creatures.
    Kimo grew to become a small child, and one morning a fisherman caught him in a net and pulled him out of the water. Looking at the naked boy closely, the man was surprised to discover almost indiscernible gills behind his ears, and for a while, the baby gasped for air. Concerned, he put the child back in the water, keeping him in the net so that he could not get away. Gradually, the breathing became regular again. Then, as the fisherman repeated the procedure, in and out of the water, he saw that the boy adapted quickly, so that he could be in the water or out of it, in either case without noticeable discomfort.
    The fisherman, a native Hawaiian named Tiny Pohaku, took the boy home with him, and he and his wife named him Kimo, keeping the secret of his origin and his special ability. They raised him as their own, along with an older step-sister, Neha, who was part of their pact of secrecy. She eventually married an architect and moved away to the mainland, while swearing that she would never even tell her husband about her adoptive brother’s unusual background….
    Now on the moonlit beach, Kimo sensed the presence of the Sea Goddess again, even though he was not in the water. In recent weeks, he had gone down to the depths to visit her several times, to see if she had figured out what was troubling the fish and other sea animals, and to ask if there was anything she could do.
    Initially, despite her broad powers and great wisdom, Moanna had said she’d been unable to determine why the ocean’s inhabitants were behaving so strangely in the vicinity of the Hawaiian islands, or what could be done about it. But the last time he’d visited her, she’d said in her murmuring voice, “You have described fish and whales acting sluggish, agitated, and disorientated, and you’ve noticed changes in their reproductive habits.”
    “Yes, that’s right,” he’d said.
    “There is the possibility of a virus, but with so many species affected, it may instead have something to do with pollution caused by humans. Maybe someone dumped barrels of highly toxic chemicals in the water near Loa’kai island, and they’re leaking, damaging zooplankton, phytoplankton, and the entire food chain around there. Depending upon what the cause is, and the severity of the damage, there could even be genetic damage to certain species.”
    “But zooplankton and phytoplankton are less abundant in tropical waters than in colder ones.”
    “Even so, they’re dispersed worldwide, and they are in the Hawaiian islands. Maybe the toxins have affected crustaceans or shellfish, or the worms on the seabed, or krill, or some other portion of the food chain, and the fish and whales are impacted when they eat these things.”
    “Food poisoning, then?”
    “Hard to say, but it’s a good bet that human carelessness is involved in some way. It could be oil spills, or climate change, worsened by greenhouse gas emissions, or the reckless testing of explosives by the Navy in tropical waters, and their low-frequency, sub-hunting sonar that has been implicated in the deaths of whales, dolphins, and porpoises from