In the Year of Our Lord 2015 or Box Jellies and Whale Sharks and Bears. Oh my!

      The snorkeling season for the kids form Ono road got underway this week.  Sandra got the all clear from

 her optometrist on Monday and on Tuesday we took our first dip of 2015 in good ol' K Bay.  Kahalu'u was cool and clear, chock a block full of swimmers.  I was pleased to get  pretty good pictures of both of our indigenous needlefish; we were less pleased to have a run in with a whacko who had forgotten to take his haldol with his morning coffee.

     The following day we hooked up with Bob Hillis and his lovely young wife, Kim.  As the surf was coming up from the north, we played it safe and decided to swim on Paul Allen's Reef.  As we strolled down the malecon, dodging the mid morning diners heading for the Fish Hopper, Bob told us that our new friend Doug had seen a whale shark swimming with the dolphins at City of Refuge. 

      Regardless of all the swarming tourists from the cruise ship, I was plunged into a spasm of jealousy.  

That's Doug in the front car making out with the Whale Shark 

That I would give my eye teeth to see a whale shark was only part of it.

    I had met Doug a few weeks before.  Like Bob, he works as a dive guide.  Unlike Bob, he is from Kentucky.  Before he moved to Kona a few months ago, the majority of his diving experience was in abandoned rock quarries.  As the three of us snorkeled, it became apparent that he couldn't tell a barracuda from a blenny. Well, that's an overstatement, but you get the idea. Doug is a really nice guy who is undoubtedly an excellent diver.  And he was lucky enough to take his family, visiting from Louisville, down to Two Step for a swim and just happened to run into the fish of the decade.  While I was sitting in the optometry suite out at KP.org.  Where is the justice in this?

Just in case you don't know what a Whale Shark looks like.

    All of that green eyed monster stuff aside, congratulations to Doug and his family.  Seeing a whale shark from a shore entry is strong work.   And unbelievable good luck.

    Here is a link to a Youtube video of the whale shark taken by a divemaster this last week.   https://www.youtube.co/watch?v=c7_wxASPyPU

    On the beach in front of the King Kamehameha Hotel it was time to put our jealousy aside and get wet.  Or was it get cold.  Kim made us all jealous with a 2mm wet suit.  The rest of us were brave and soon we were all freezing out on the PAR.  It was a beautiful day with clear water and many of the usual suspects.  About ten yards away, Sandra got my attention yelling, "Box jellyfish!"

    Indeed, she had encountered the first box jellyfish that I had seen here in Kona or anywhere else.  we gathered nearby and watched the jelly contract, its four tentacles beating rhythm along with the bell.  As you

Just in case you forgot what a Box Jellyfish looks like.

probably know, this is among the more toxic animals one is likely to encounter in Hawaii.  Guy Hagi, the weatherman at HNL, keeps us appraised of  box jellyfish in surfing locations on Oahu.  Curiously, they are a rare visitor to the beaches on the Kona Coast.

   On shore, Sandra would reflate that she tried to keep her distance while taking her eye off the box jelly to call us over. It seemed to her that every time she looked back in the water, the jellyfish was swimming after her.  That's what she gets for being so sweet.  At any rate, I attempted to keep a safe distance while taking a few futile stabs at a photograph.  Being translucent, jellyfish have proved to be a difficult animal for me to capture on film.  Or an SD card, as the case may be.  This single box jelly was a life invertebrate for Sandra, Kim and myself.  Bob, of course, has seen pretty much everything.

     On the way in, I saw my second octopus of the young year (having already seen one at Kahaluu, of all places.)

    The following day, while sweetie was getting a hair cut, I took a dip on the Ironman side and saw the

Day Octopus, Kahalu'u, January 2015

most subtle color pattern of the Regal Parrotfish ...a pale beige with slightly darker vertical stripes and a pale yellow crescent on the tail.  Leave it to John Hoover to show this color pattern in The Ultimate Guide.

     On the way home, Sandra told me how proud her French coiffeur, François, was of the French police who put a terminal end to the Algerian terrorists.  One might have thought that a sensitive fellow like François would be a bit less blood thirsty.

   Clearly 2015 is going to be full of surprises.

jeff     

   

2014 ... The Year in Review

    In 2014 I turned over a new page.  Like beginning a new checkbook register, I started a new list for Hawaiian fish.  Only we didn't carry the total forward from the previous year...this year would stand on its

The Milletseed is MFK !

own.  I actually hadn't done this in a couple years.  Beginning a new list allowed me to see more clearly what fishes simply aren't easy for a snorkeler around Kailua Kona and it provided an impetus to get out and identify as many fish as possible.  No resting on laurels this year.  By reaching out in a variety of directions I was lucky to make new friends in the fish world,  And I was able to hone my skills and see some new fish and invertebrates.

    First about the list.  I saw 161 species of reef fish snorkeling in 2014.  The obvious highlight was the warty frogfish.  I saw two new crustaceans, the jeweled anemone crab and the seven eleven crab.  Best invertebrate goes to the killer mollusc, the nudibranch platydoris formosa that Sandra and I saw at the pier. 

The Banded Sea Urchin, E. calamaris, spawning.

   For those of you keeping score at home, the best mammal award goes to Chrissie Huffard.  Despite coming all the way from Monterey to Honaunau, she was unable to catch the warty frogfish.  Or was it the wary frogfish?  Her net was empty, her wet suit less so. 

   My outing with Chrissie and the the redoubtable John Hoover resulted in us witnessing the best natural history event of 2014...the spawning of  the banded sea urchin, E. calamaris.  The urchins climbed to the top of the reef and spewed forth their gametes into the sea turned golden by the setting sun.  Like a tribe of miniature underwater volcanoes, they was!  Talk about being in the right place at the right time. 

Of course, some animals were significantly absent.  Milletseed Butterfly was the most glaring.  This fish is not entirely MFK  (Missing From Kona...Not to be confused with the initials of our nations preeminent civil

Chrissie Huffard, "Here froggy, froggy.  Come to mama."

 rights leader, now emblazoned on street signs Seattle to Savannah.)  However,the milletseed butterfly  has become a deep water fish.  Our new resource, Bob Hillis, who in addition to being a fine snorkeling companion works a few days a week as a dive guide, reports that milletseeds can be seen at several dive sites below 30 feet.   Our focus has always been to see what is available from shore dives.  For some reason, milletseeds are no longer found at those sites easily accessed by the public at depths easily achieved by those of us without weight belts, tanks and regulators. 

    Up to now, I have had the conceit that I was seeing just about everything that divers saw.  This year revealed that species formerly common in the shallows have descended below snorkeling depths. Several species we took for granted are now seen primarily by divers.  Bummer.

    Coris flaviotta, the yellow or black striped wrasse depending on how you look at this particular beauty. was also absent from our list, along with Hawaiian Hogfish and Eight Stripe Wrasse.  Devil Scorpionfish and

 the Bigfin Squid,  rounded out the list of what I expected to see this last year.  And not for a lack of trying;  we knew very well that we were missing these species and our eyes were peeled, as my mother used to say. 

    Knowing what was missing, I took a swim on the PAR on December 31 to try and fill in the gaps.  The weather in Kona has been cooler and drier the last few weeks, truly delightful for out of water activities like gardening.  The cool air has had some effect on surface temperature, though, and I am told that this has fallen to 73 degrees.  Diving down doesn't gain you much warmth, either.  Never the less, with sunny skies and a cool breeze, these were great days at the beach.  The inner harbour at King Kam yielded a lot of usual suspects, along with the throng of Christmas Break revelers, but, alas , no scorpionfish.

    Out on the reef, being watchful for boat traffic, I swam over the deeper part, where the coral gives way to sand, at about 30 feet.  In the water column out there I saw Thompson's Butterfly, oval and three spot

Reticulated Butterflyfish, Paul Allen's Reef, New Year's Eve, 2014

chromis.  Ghosting around in the depths was a Gray Snapper, Aprion virescens.  This rather plain looking fish was the last to be added to the 2014 list.  I searched vigilantly, but there were no milletseeds lurking in 30 feet on the PAR.

   On the reef itself, in a modest amount of slosh, I got a killer look at Reticulated Butterfly and my best picture ever of this,  my favorite butterflyfish.  Just so you don't think I'm all doom and gloom, 2014 has been a very good year for retics.  And for Teardrop Butterflies and Coral Blennies, which 20 years ago were not all that common.  

    Back on shore, there was a gentleman holding court beside his truck, which boasted a paddle board.  He claimed to have seen a whale shark swimming with a pod of dolphins about two miles out.  Now that gives us something to aim for in 2015!