Two Days at City of Refuge From the Sublime to the Surreal

   This week we spent consecutive afternoons at the City of Refuge.  The weather was clear with a nice breeze.  The water was clear and warm.  And we got to go swimming with John Hoover.

Reticulated Butterflyfish  Kailua Kona  October 2012

On Wednesday we left for City right after lunch.  We arrived around 1 PM and nabbed a parking spot facing the beach in the shade of the tree.  No need to wait, so we headed right into the water.

    I slipped off the Two Step ledge and looked down to see a Reticulated Butterflyfish less than ten feet away in the crystal clear water.  I love retics, partly because they are an uncommon fish in Kona.  Not only that, but I think that their hounds tooth flanks are really handsome.  While fumbling to get the camera out my pocket, I lost sight of the fish.  Sandra had entered right behind me.  About five yards away she got my attention and asked, "Are you looking for the Reticulated?"   Unfortunately, while she was talking to me the little devil disappeared for the last time.  so I didn't get a picture, but at least we both got a great look at one of favorite fish.
    Following that we had a pleasant swim to the north cusp of the bay.  A school of bright rainbow runners shot by us, and the Thompson's and Pyramid Butterflies were out in force, but the frogfish was nowhere to be found.

Is it a Regal Parrotfish

     We swam back to Two Step and Sandra went in.  I turned to swim out to the island, immediately encountering a stretch of cloudy water.   About thirty yards from shore, I saw a large parrot that didn't look quite right.  It was large, too large to be a palenose or a bullethead.  The body appeared a uniform gray green and I noticed that his dorsal fin was rimmed blue with pink stripes below.  As I watched him, he took notice of me and decided to split, ending up twentyfive feet deep on the wall near the A in the cinder block aloha.  I got a picture just as he was swimming away.  Just to be sure it was not a bullethead, I made sure that the tail had streamers.  They weren't long, but they were there.  I made several diving  attempts to photograph the large parrot as he munched away on the deeper reef.  I suppose if I had been a better diver, hejust would have swam further away.  As it was, I got a picture that shows a terminal band on the short streamer tail. 

Can you see the short streamers and the terminal band?

    There was nothing special around the island and I soon found myself back on the beach with Sandra.  She had left her stuff on a rock.  Being really fussy about my equipment, I balanced my fins on an aged root in the shade behind our beach chairs.  Then I stacked my mask and wet swim shirt on top. After changing, we both added our wet suits to the pile.

      As I was settling in, I heard our neighbors, a group of thirty somethings going on about office problems.  Out on the beach  meanwhile, a self appointed sheriff was yelling at people.  He wanted them to use the two step entry as opposed to some rocks on the far side of a tidepool. And he didn't want them walking around in their fins.  One had to assume that his goal was to spoil schmoopie's fun.  (Sandra loves to take pictures of people attempting to walk in their fins.  The more ridiculous they look, the better she likes it.)  The Sheriff wasn't wrong on either account, but it is unusual to see such a take charge guy on a Hawaiian beach!

    Meanwhile, Sandra and I were enjoying a snack and discussing the parrotfish.  Eventually the snack was gone and it was time to go home to peruse the field guides for parrotfish.  As we turned form our chairs, we

Forcipiger longirostris pair, Honaunau, Sept 2014

were astonished to find that our equipment was gone!  We had heard the young businessmen talking about matching up equipment from a large plastic box.  We saw their box and our swimsuits, which had been thrown in the mud.  Sandra said, "I saw one of the girls with a pair of fins that looked just like yours."

    After ten minutes of storming about, we retrieved my fins mask and snorkel, which had been distributed among the group.  Luckily, none of them chose to swim for more than a few minutes.  They tried to make this seem like an innocent mistake.  In fact, at least three of the five said that to me.  And I would reply,  "But you had to throw away our wet suits to get at my gear."  Or words to that effect.

John Hoover with camera searches for the Warty Frogfish

    Sandra got me in the car before I got myself thrown in jail.  Back at the ranch it was easy to decide that the parrot was a Regal Parrotfish.  This is the first adult regal that we have seen in many years.   John Hoover labels it as rare in the main islands, but common in the Northwest chain.

    Speaking of John Hoover, that evening we received an email invitation to join him and an associate at City of Refuge the following afternoon in an attempt to follow up on the Warty Frogfish sighting.

    John wanted to hit the water at two in the afternoon, but its so pleasant there on the beach that Sandra and I arrived an hour early and sat in the shade, a cool breeze blowing off the water, reading our books.  Aren't we lucky to be so close to such an idyllic spot?  (I guess one of the tricks in life is concentrating on the positive.  And I am indeed very fortunate,)

While Crissy is ready to collect Froggy.  Ribbit, Ribbit!

    John arrived a bit after two, accompanied by his colleague Crissy, a young, attractive (and yet quite businesslike) marine biologist from Santa Cruz with a special interest in octopus.  She and John had spent two days at Ho'okena studying that most delightful cephalopod in vivo. As quick as they donned their suits (dare I call them frogmen?) we were in the water.  I don't swim with divers very often, so I was surprised that I was able, even in my aged condition, to swim across the bay much faster than my two companions.  Of course, John was encumbered by his behemoth of a  camera and Crissy was dealing with a net, in the event that she and John decided to collect the frogfish. 
   
   Soon enough we were in the location where I had photographed the Warty Frogfish three weeks earlier.  Froggy wasn't sitting out in the open.  This wasn't much of a surprise to me, as Sandra and I had returned twice to look for him without success.   John and Crissy descended to the bottom and proceeded to go over a ten yard radius with a fine tooth

Banded Sea Urchin,  Echinothrix calamaris  Spawning

comb.  They devoted about twenty minutes to the search. 

    This gave me some time to enjoy a single spot out on the City of Refuge reef.  The day before I had noted a larger number of black Very Longnose Butterflyfish, Forcipiger longirostris, than I had ever seen before.  Several of these black Very Longnose Butterflyfish appeared to be paired up with the yellow morph, which is usually the overwhelmingly predominant type.  One has to wonder if these black induviduals are a breeding (super) male.

    In The Ultimate Guide to Hawaiian Reef Fishes, John Hoover says this is apparently not the case.  One suspects that this conclusion was reached by an ichthyologist who took a fistful back to the lab and definitively determined their sex. Although we are told it isn't so,  in this case the black and yellow fish were apparently paired up.  I am proposing the super male designation to the black, as it is almost always much less common.  And super males of other fish are usually vastly outnumbered by their female counterparts.  But apparently I'm incorrect.  Oh well.  I've been there before.

     In addition to photographing John Hoover and his young companion, I took a few pictures of the black and yellow butterflyfish association.
  
   Towards the end of the dive, John surfaced and said, "The sea urchins are spawning."  Indeed, several  black banded sea urchins, Echinothrix calamaris, had climbed to the top of the coral.  This species is the

The Sea Urchin gametes are swept way in a cloud of fertility

most common sea urchin out on our Big island reef.  It is usually a dark purplish black. Only the younger individuals have the handsome banded spines, so its no surprise that these breeding urchins were black. As we watched, they expelled a white, threadlike stream of gametes that was gradually swept away in a cloud of fertility.  One was reminded of tiny volcanoes.  Or maybe fireworks on the Fourth of July.   In lieu of the missing frogfish, the spawning urchins made a spectacular end to our dive and our two days at City of Refuge.

jeff