Sailfin Tang Juvenile at the Waikoloa

  This last week my son and his family have  been visiting.  Suffice it to say, with children of 1  and 7 years thrown into the mix,  our snorkeling schedule has been altered somewhat.    This isn't to say that we haven't

High tides have flooded the Hilton Waikoloa lagoon.

 been getting in the water, just that we have been confined to more beginner level venues.  As you should know, however, interesting things can pop up in the strangest places.

   Yesterday we went to the Hilton Waikoloa.  This involved looking at parrots and incarcerated dolphins (I wonder why I feel more sorry for the dolphins than the macaws.)  and playing in the pools.  Eventually the agenda led us to the best bird feeder for reef fish on this side of the island.  Which is to say the man made lagoon in which tourists frolic on paddle boats when they are not lounging under palapas sipping expensive beverages.

    "Bird feeder?", you ask.  Well I have to justify my feelings toward this lagoon somehow.  At the far end, it is possible for fish to breech the low dike and gain entrance to the salt water lagoon, which has never been

Highfin Coralfish

 stocked with reef fish.  (The management swears that this is so.)  Hence, in the same way that a Lawrence's Goldfinch on a feeder in Oregon would be placed on the list of the fussiest birdwatcher, I believe we can count what we observe in the Waikoloa Hilton Lagoon as wild, countable fish.  Perhaps with an asterisk.

     Before entering the lagoon, Charles, Sofia and I were forced to climb down the bank and wade around the lounges that were six inches deep in water.  Tides have been higher lately and one is forced to wonder if the rising sea level, a result of global warming, is affecting the low lying areas of Hawaii just as it is flooding Venice and Miami. 

    Finally gaining access to the lagoon we paddled around and saw some pretty good fish, including immature Lagoon and Rectangular Triggerfish and a couple juvenile Night Sergeants that retained yellow

Saifin Tang imm.

 markings on their dorsal fin.  The juvenile night sergeant is a common fish of the tide pools and looks dramatically different from the adult.  So much so that one is hard pressed to put a name on those small fish.  I rarely see the teenage version with residual markings from the juvenile pattern. 

   On our last swoop near the bridge, Charles suddenly became excited, pointing at a small yellow fish.  It was about 4 cm in length, yellow with light vertical stripes, and occasionally raised its dorsal fin.  We could tell that it had a dark caudal peduncle and a couple dark stripes near the face.  We chased this fast moving little fellow around through the cool turbid water and got a couple pictures.

    A couple hours later, back at the ranch, I told Sandra we had seen a juvenile Sailfin Tang.  While we were getting the family settled for dinner, she took a quick look at the fish book and announced that the juvenile sailfin looks identical to adult.  This got me quite excited.  Certainly lots of immature fish look identical.  Including the closely related Yellow Tang.  Instead of looking at

Sailfin Tang juvenile, Zebrasoma veliferum Waikoloa Hilton

 Hoover's book myself, I grabbed a couple field guides dealing with the Southwest Pacific.  After all, if it isn't a sailfin tang, why can't it be a coraalfish ?  After all, it had the vertical stripes and the beak.

    So while we chowed down on hamburgers and diet cokes, we looked at coralfish, that interesting group of butterflyfish that live at the epicenter of fish development.  With out looking at our pictures, we decided that the High fin Coralfish, Coradion altivelis, was a possible match.  Bound to be a state record!

    Following dinner I had a chance to look at the Ultimate Guide and see that the immature Sailfin Tang is a lot different from the adult.  In fact, in its earliest form it looks a lot like a Longfin Batfish...really long dorsal and ventral fins.  What we saw was a more advanced version, intermediate version.  John Hoover tells us that this is a very rare sighting, that when these juveniles are seen they are often in calm turbid water, like Kane'ohe Bay.  Or the Lagoon at the Waikoloa Hilton.  He does not specifically mention the Japanese tourist on the water bicycle.

jeff

    

The Mystery Fish, A Well Dressed Hermit and Not an Anemone, Or My First Swim After the Hurricane

    For those of you who don't live here and don't pay much attention to the news, about a week ago the Island of Hawaii took a direct hit from a hurricane coming from the east.  There is some discussion about whether there was a similar event around 1870, but essentially Hurricane Iselle was the first such cyclonic

Surfing Iselle at the Kailua Kona Pier

wind storm originating near Mexico to hit the Big Island in recorded history.   Kona was spared completely as the wind could not surmount Mauna Loa and Hualalai.  Having prepared as best we could, we waited all night for the hurricane to hit. We rose in the morning with a profound sense of reprieve.  Kona was the least effected spot in the entire state. What a blessing.

      Sandra and I spent the morning poking along the beach.  Iselle had sent waves straight into the bay and (another first) there were surfers and boogie boarders riding the waves right next to the pier.

      The people between Hilo and the volcano were not so lucky.  Many of them still do not have water or electricity.  Two days after Iselle struck, the state voted for our next governor and senator.  Because of the

Will Mr. Ige be a better friend to the fish than Abercrombie?

 extreme damage in the Puna area, two polling precincts were closed.  The race between Colleen Hanabusa (Daniel Inouye's chosen successor) and Brian Schatz (who Governor Abercrombie appointed to fill out the term upon Inouye's passing) is still undecided.  Schatz is ahead by 1,600 votes, those two precincts are going to vote tomorrow and Collen Hanabusa is appealing to the courts to throw out the election.  What a mess.  Abercrombie lost in a landslide, so us friends of the fishes will soon find out where David Ige stands on protecting our reefs and the fish. 

   Although there was no storm damage, it took me the better part of the week to restore our house to its per-hurricane clutter and it wasn't until yesterday that I resumed snorkeling, down the hill at K Bay.  The water at Kahaluu was warm and cloudy.  And full of tourists from the cruise ship.  Once I got clear of the mob, I swam to the left and upon a single

 lump of coral saw two pretty interesting things.  My eye was immediately attracted to a hermit crab.  Wearing a brightly colored hat with numerous ridges the hermit was sitting very near the top of the coral and permitted me two attempts at a photograph before dropping into the center of the coral. 

    When I looked at the picture at home, it appeared that the Hazlett's Hermit Crab was wearing a very small pink mushroom coral.  This didn't make any sense, so I submitted the picture to John Hoover who sent it along to Cory Pittman, who at this point is a bit of an enigma.  He is definitely a biologist specializing in marine invertebrates.  If you Google him, you will find that he is an expert on Hawaiian nudibranchs.  At any rate, its really nice to have his opinion on our finds. Cory's diagnosis is that the hermit is in a triton shell that his heavily encrusted with coraline algae. I ask you to look at those magenta rugae and tell me what you think.  If nothing else, it is the most flamboyant home for a hermit crab that I have ever seen.  Dr. Hazlett would be proud.

    On the same coral head, about two feet below the surface, I found what appeared initially to be the waving tentacles of an anemone.   As you can see from the picture, these tentacles were almost white, occurred in two clumps each about 2 cm across and were waving back and forth in the surge.  Unlike the hermit crab, this organism wasn't going anywhere.  So, dealing with the surge, I got the best picture I could. 

     When I first looked at the picture, I thought for sure it was an anemone.  But on closer examination, those tentacles looked more like infinitesimally small branching hydra.  John Hoover and Cory Pittman weighed in on this, as well.  It is their conclusion that this is the octocoral, Sarcothelia edmondsoni.  We usually think of coral as being stationary, sort of rock-like.  But of course it is a living animal and the polyp in this case is permanently extended.  Cory sent John a picture of the same species, which is in better focus than mine.  I'm passing on a cropped version of his picture so you can appreciate the feathery polyps. 

    Apparently this species of coral is not extremely unusual.  However, I had not seen it before  Perhaps you will be lucky enough to see it as well, armed with the knowledge that what looks like an anemone is actually an interesting species of octocoral.

    Finally, the title of this blog promises you some closure on the mystery fish that our friends saw (and we could not find) at City last week.  As I was working on the pictures yesterday afternoon, I discovered I had an email waiting for me from Terry Tauzer.  Here is her report:

  The mystery fish was a juvenile threadfin jack (Alectis ciliaris). Contacted Hoover and he was excited to come to 2 Step to photograph. We event back after hurricane and found three of them. Just arrived home and are downloading pictures. Will let you know if we get a good one. No guarantees...they were very quick! Terry&Rich

    Several years ago Sandra and I saw this species in the lagoon at the Waikoloa Hilton.  Six months ago we reported on some snorkelers attempting to photgraph it at the Kailua pier.  I still haven't seen it at the pier, but I continue to look.  Its a really neat little fish and I'm glad Terry and Rich were finally able to identify it.  And Terry, if you are out there please contact me directly at jhill257@gmail.com.  We would like to invite you to a Spam-be-cue, featuring our supplies left over  from Hurricane Iselle!



jeff

Summer in the City 2014

    The big news on the Big Island today has little to do with the identification of fish and lots to do with

Hurricane Iselle Bears Down on the Sandwich Islands

meteorology.  Which is to say, we are all holding our collective breath while hurricane Iselle bears down on us.  Nothing like a cyclone with 140 mph winds to get your attention.  Woof!

     However, one can't cower in the corner wringing their hands, so yesterday Sandra and I made our first summer trip to City of Refuge.  This idea was not unique to us.  We arrived about 9 AM to find City as busy as it has ever been.  While I was parking the car over by the eponymous national park, Sandra was busy making friends.  When I returned, she introduced me to an extremely nice couple, Rich and Terri Lewis, from northern California.  Rich is a high school teacher and

Humphead Bannerfish, Bali 2009

both he and his bride have a keen interest in the reef fish of Kona.  Not only that, but they had been regaling Sandra with tales of the morning sighting of four Heniochus butterflyfish.

     Seeing a Pennat Butterflyfish from a shore dive would be interesting enough, but they claimed to have seen something other than the Pennant.  Sadly their description didn't match up precisely with the two other Heniochus with which I am acquainted... and which are rather easy in the Western Pacific, but virtually unknown here in Hawaii.  I was thinking that one waif would be quite a find, but four would represent a breeding population.  The Lewis's had a copy of John Hoover's Ultimate Guide with them and thought it might be a bevy of the Australian Double Pennant Butterfly pictured in the guide.

    They also had a couple cameras.  Rich had a brand new Go Pro Hero.  Having left his computer back in California, he would not have any evidence from that source until he

Pyramid Butterflyfish, City of Refuge, August 2014

returned to Humboldt County.  They also had an Olympus Stylus, recently purchased from Costco.  He showed me the picture that Terri had taken of the Heniochus.  Handling that particular  camera for the first time, I asked him if he knew how to enlarge the image, which appeared as a small white smear in the lower left hand corner of a blue frame.  He said the camera came with minimal printed instructions and a disc, which he wouldn't be able to access until he returned to ....  I played with the buttons, finding a nice movie that Terri had taken including an eel and a Pyramid Butterfly.

    My efforts culminated with my inadvertently erasing the blue frame with the white smudge.  I said, "If I continue, I'm afraid I might erase your picture.  To which Richard replied,  "I think you just did."  Whoops.

"I think I saw something."

   The tale of a new butterflyfish was enough to get the Redoubtable SKG and yours truly into the water well before our usual 10 AM start.  Dodging the horde of fellow swimmers, we made our way through the extraordinarily warm water.  I guess if one is looking for fish that belong in Indonesia, it is only right that the water is as warm as the equatorial Indian Ocean.  No one was going to die of hypothermia on this day.

    Out on the north cusp, we saw lots of Thompson's Butterflyfish... many more than I had seen previously  in this spot.  Richard had reported seeing the mystery fishes a bit further out and "at the drop off."  We worked the edge of the drop first and then headed back over shallower reef.  In about 15 feet we saw a smaller Pyramid Butterfly that was associating with a coral head as intimately as an angelfish might.  In fact, we saw a colony of Potter's Angelfish, as well.  But we did not find the mystery Heniochus. 

A Small Reticulated Butterflyfish,, City of Refuge 2014

  
     As we searched vainly for the mystery fish and I puzzled over Rich's description, I was reminded of  the classic character, George Willis Jr. as portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman in Scent of a Woman.  "I saw something." George says, when questioned by the sycophantic headmaster. Whatever it was, we didn't see it.  And Charlie Simms, who had a better look (not to mention non-negotiable integrity) wasn't there to help us out. What I really needed was a cradle full of sea-going snitches.  They would certainly have ratted out the furtive Heniochi.  Hoo ahh.  

     On the way in we saw a very small Reticulated Butterfly, also keeping to its coral refuge.  And we saw a variety of Thompson's Surgeonfish, including a small individual that was attempting to imitate an immature Oval Chromis.  I had made that error

Juvenile Thompson's Surgeonfish.  The spot tells the tale.

a couple years ago and clearly recognized this handsome little fellow from my photograph.  That little black spot tells the tale.  And the Canon D10 strikes again.

    Back at the picnic table, we found the Lewis's preparing for another swim.  They were disappointed that we had not seen their fish and promised that if they were able to find them and get a usable photo, they would send it along.  Hey Richard and Terri, if you're out there, I'm dying to see your pictures!

jeff



If you have never seen Scent of a Woman, I highly recommend it.  If you don't have time, here is a clip from the speech referenced in the blog.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuYhfCkRxyE