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