The Legend of Nanaue the Shark Man

Long ago on the Big Island of Hawaii, there lived a gorgeous

young woman by the name of Kalei. Kalei lived in Waipio Valley.
Each night Kalei would walk to the waters at the mouth of the
valley to bathe in the sea.

One night, Kamohoalii, the king of all sharks in the region was
swimming just below the surface of the waters where Kalei
bathed. Under the shimmering moonlight, she disrobed and
slipped into the warm waters as she did every night.

Kamohoalii saw Kalei and was entranced by her unique beauty.
As shape-shifter he resolved that the next night he would take on
his human form as a chief and search the land for the beautiful
and mysterious woman.

He did as he planned. For the next few days he walked the land
as a chief and ate and communed with the people of Waipio
Valley in search of Kalei. In time, he found her. They fell in love
and married.



Over time, Kalei became pregnant with Kamohoalii's child. Before
the child was to be born, the shark king knew that his time had
come to return to the sea. He never revealed his true identity to
Kalei. Instead, he instructed Kalei to give birth alone and to
watch over his child, who was to be a son, and to never allow the
baby to eat the flesh of any animal. Reluctantly he left Kalei,
whom he had come to love dearly and returned to the ocean. The
lovers never saw each other again.

On a dark night, as the island winds whipped furiously through
the valley, beautiful Kalei gave birth to the shark king's son. She
was afraid and saddened when she saw that the baby was born
with a deformity on his back a large open hole that resembled a
gaping fish mouth.

She wrapped the baby in a thin blanket of tapa cloth to hide the
deformity from the others. That night she cried as she rocked her
newborn son, for he was as beautiful as she, besides his
disturbing deformity. She named him Nanaue.

As the child grew older, she kept him away from meat as the
shark king had instructed her, but she could not protect him for
long. Back in ancient times, men and women were not allowed to
eat together.

When the child came of age, his grandfather took him to eat with
the men. He was fed meat for the first time and developed a
voracious and insatiable appetite. The gaping mouth on his back
grew rows of sharp teeth.

After that day when Kalei took her son to bathe in the stream she
watched in horror and fascination as he took the form of a young
shark he would swim and play in the water in fish form, chasing
and eating the smaller creatures in the stream.

As the child grew into a man, Nanaue also grew as a shark. After
he would swim in the ocean, people would go missing. A great
shark would come out of the water and tear his fellow swimmers
limb to limb.

The people of Waipio Valley became suspicious why was
Nanaue never harmed in the ocean? They began to suspect that
he had special powers, but they did not know that it was he who
was actually killing his friends while in shark form.

One day, the villagers discovered the great mouth on Nanaue's
back. It all came together that he was the one that had been
causing all of the deaths in their otherwise peaceful waters. The
villagers were very angry and decided to capture and kill him.
Nanaue then changed into shark form and escaped into the sea.

From Waipio Valley, Nanaue swam to the Hana side of the island
of Maui. There he took the form of a man. He married a chiefess
while on Maui and tried to hold back his desire for human flesh,
but did not succeed. One night his hunger took a hold of him and
he kidnapped a young girl, ran to the ocean, shape-shifted and
devoured her in plain sight of all. The people of Maui were
outraged. They tried to spear Nanaue from canoes, but he swam
quickly toward Molokai.

Once again, after he had reached the island of Molokai, Nanaue
tried to keep his true nature a secret, but as he grew older his
hunger only got stronger. By this time, tales of a dangerous
shark man were circulating through the islands.

The Molokai people kept a look out for this strange man shark.
Finally, they saw Nanaue shape-shifting in the sea when he
thought that no one was watching. They snared him while in
shark form and beat him with clubs until the ocean was red with
his blood. The people chanted continuously until Nanaue became
weak.

His shark body was drug to shore where he was chopped to
pieces and incinerated in a large oven. Thus died Nanaue, son of
Kamohoalii King of Sharks.