Growing up on an island, his life was punctuated by daily visits to the ocean: “Living on a little island surrounded by the ocean, there was no real way of getting away from it.” As a child with his friends, he would spend every spare minute revelling in Hawaii’s deep blue playground, riding every splash of surf he could find, or in the summer months when Hawaii experiences poor swells, diving and snorkelling with rainbows of colourful reef fish, manta rays and turtles. “I think I probably spent as much time in the water as I did above it in those summer months.” His relationship with the ocean nurtured him throughout his childhood and teenage years, and has been sustained since.