Elders say that the first Sea Sage created the language of Wayo Wayo by imitating the sounds of seabirds. They say he could describe over a thousand kinds of waves, from finely pleated ripples to intermittent swells, from breakers smooth as blubber to surf like sparkling foam, from windblown rollers to impromptu undercurrents that flow when schools of fish swim past, and from wavelets born of the shallows to benthic volcanic tsunamis. Since the waves come in as many shapes and sizes as there are kinds of fish, and since seabird calls are beyond the ear of the common man, the difficulty of the
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