We've Got Crabs

    Having a variety of errands and chores lined up for the afternoon, this morning Sandra and I headed for Kahalu'u.  We arrived to find a gentleman painting the tables inside the

We're Painting the Tables Green

  shelter.  Only the ones inside, mind you, so the ones on the fringe of the shelter were available for our belongings.  Not to mention the poster boards and books of the Reef Teachers.

     Sandra is still languishing with my cold, so off I went, alone again.  Close in, I had not yet cleared the turbid water, I encountered an adolescent yellow margin hunting actively.  This was my first moray eel since our return from the Rose City, so I took some pictures heedless of the water clarity.  As you might expect, the results spoke for themselves.

    When one is just returned from the mainland, not yet jaded, he or she is likely to take pictures of the same old fish.  Today I nabbed a nice one of a Palenose Parrotfish.  I have always thought that this beautiful animal should have a better name and under my breath I mutter, "Princess Parrotfish."    That this common name was given to a fish found in

The Princess Parrotfish Holds Court at K Bay

 Florida, I attribute to blatant favoritism on the part of the judges.  This in no way reduces my enjoyment of this fish.  And its a pretty good picture.

     After completing the loop, I took my usual swim into the middle.  There I found this odd sac like structure floating by.  Its clearly not a jellyfish, and I do not think that it is of human origin (eg a plastic bag).  For the moment I have it filed under curiouser and curiouser.

     Finally it was time to come in.  Just before I made my turn into the entry, among the large rocks, I spotted a magnificent crab tooling along right out in the open.  At the moment I spotted him,  he was quite close and headed my way.  One thing you can say for K Bay, if you see something there its certainly shallow and you therefore have a chance of

Convex Crab, Kahalu'u, August 2015

 a close approach without making a fifteen foot dive.  A careful approach brought me within a few feet, close enough to get some pictures with very little water between my lens and the subject.  After cooperating for a dozen quick  pictures, he scuttled under a rock three feet below the surface leaving no trace of his presence. 

    The crab immediately reminded of a seven eleven crab.  He was a handsome brute with a mottled geometric pattern.  I had to work through Hoover's Sea Creatures more than once to satisfy myself that I had found my first convex crab.  For one thing, Hoover gives the maximum carapace as 3 inches and this individual was surely bigger than that.  (I had initially thought five inches.)  The typical individual bears a monotonous coppery carapace.  The diagnostic marking, though,  is the two distinct dots you see in the middle of the carapace.  Convex Crab, Carpillius convexus, Forsska 1775.  

     Up on the beach, we were in for another treat.  While I was showering off the salt, and discussing Pacific Northwest forest fires with a  family from Coos Bay, my attention was drawn to a pair of girls who were

giving snorkeling information to a Japanese family.  Finished with the Japanese, they came over and gave me a pleasant talking to, as well.  Don't step on the coral, tiny creatures, home for baby fishes...they hit all the talking points and were about twenty times as cute as the average reef teacher.   In turn, I hauled them over to the Reef Teacher display and forced them to look at the Phoenix Island Damselfish.  Remember, girls, no good deed goes unpunished.

    I found Sandra at our table outside the shelter.  She had enjoyed a lesson from a trio of  chicas, and managed to get a snapshot in the process.  One can only hope that such efforts help this well worn bay.  After telling me about the reef, Sandra told of watching the table painter.  Apparently the county had given

him only one wet paint sign and just enough danger tape to fence off the shelter on three out of four sides.  Before the young reef teachers arrived, she had found much amusement watching the painter chase tourists from his tables.  He spent more time defecting tourists than he did actually painting.


    As we strolled to the car, we imagined the beleaguered table painter wearing a card, a three of clubs, say, and we sang a rousing chorus of painting the tables green.  Curiouser and curiouser.


We're Painting the Tables Green.
It  won't Upset the Queen.
But if it should, they're made of wood.
And we can wipe them clean.

If the Queen should want them Red,
We both might lose our heads!

Convex Crab, Carpillius convexus, Kahlu'u August 2015

 The Odd Sac..

Hurricane Kilo

    Summer is the season when the the meteorologists in Hawaii cover hurricanes.  Because of the potential harm that they represent, the television audience, aka the potential victims, are spell bound by the colorful
maps and the ever changing explanations and forecasts.

Jennifer Robbins at KHNL

    This week Kauai is supposed to get hammered by Hurricane Kilo.   We have seen countless maps showing how Kilo will pick up power in the warm ocean south of the island chain and then buttonhook up to smash the Garden Island.  Wham!  The rest of us were supposed to get moderate winds and buckets of rain. When I checked the weather on this very computer yesterday morning, the pundits said that it was supposed to rain all day.  By noon, the sky was clear and it was hot, damn hot.  Hurricane or no hurricane, I knew it was time to go to the beach to cool off and maybe see some fish.

    It was logical, Kilo beginning with K, that I would chose K Bay for yesterdays outing.  As on any sunny Satrurday, Kahalu'u Beach Park was the site of a family gathering; the

Baby Dascyllus at K Bay

Tobias family had partitioned off the shelter with colorful ribbons and balloons.  One of those signs that you order up from Walmart heralded  the "Tobias Baby Shower".  Lucky for me, the Reef Teachers left just as I arrived, permitting me to nab a choice shaded parking spot and a portion of a table in the shade, albeit just outside the shelter.  My sense of inconvenience being as low as it possibly could be when displaced by such a gathering, I was able to say, "God bless the Tobiases and their progeny!"

     The tide was high but the bay was pretty flat   The water at the entrance was really warm, perhaps 90 degrees, and really murky.  However, as I swam into the bay, the temperature cooled to mid 80s and the water cleared.  By the time I made it over to the area near the Menehune Breakwater, I was really happy.   Cool, clear water and my camera retrieved from the newly opened safe.  God bless the Tobiases, God bless the people at First Alert. And God bless voluptuous lady meteorologists in tight skirts.

     My spirit of Thanksgiving was rewarded with a couple fine immatures.   Yes, Matilda,

Big Bad Blue Goatfish

summer is the season for baby fish as well as baby Tobiases.  First to make an appearance was a fine little dascyllus with a bright blue forehead.  For the first time in three months I was standing on my head in five feet of moving water trying to photograph a tiny fish.  What bliss!  The resulting picture is a little blurry, which I attribute to my lack of recent experience.  Its much easier to take pictures of willing subjects at a wedding than tiny, skittish dascylli.

    As I called it quits with the dascyllus,  a large blue goatfish, in the company of a small ulua,   came along searching for invertebrates.  And a pair of Raccoon Butterflies made an irresistible subject in the clear water. One is tempted to make reference to a well worn sexual metaphor...in this case it really was wet and bordered, to some mild extent, on the surrealistic. 

     Out further on the reef, in the vicinity of Surfer's Rock, I ran across a bluestripe baby of the Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse.  The fish was smaller and the water even more kinetic, so 

Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse imm., Kahalu'u August 2015

I had a barrel of fun attempting a photo of this fellow.  I hope you will agree that I was progressing up the learning curve.  This guy was no less evasive than the dascyllus and every bit as small.

   On the way toward the smaller shelter I ran into a pretty big example of the baby Rockmover.   This Dragon Wrasse was of the greenish persuasion and would have made a wonderful subject.  But, being a spoilsport, the moment he realized I had an interest in his portrait, he dodged under a rock and refused to come out.

    As I swam away from the green dragon wrasse with out a picture, I didn't regard it as much of a tragedy.    In preparing the blog, however, I have discovered (or not!) that I do not have a picture of a green dragon wrasse.  Certainly this is not the first green one I have seen, but judging by my collection of photographs, the brown morph must be far more common.  Or less elusive.  Or more photogenic.

     Anyway, I swam away in ignorant bliss, dwelling on Kevin Kline's advice to Michael Palin as he devoured the fish in Ken's aquarium in "A Fish Called Wanda...."Don't eat the green ones.  They're not ripe yet."   And people wonder why I enjoy snorkeling!

Don't eat the  green ones.  They're not ripe yet.

     But the best was yet to come.  As I was a crawling out on the sand like some geriatric sea monster, a lad of about seven or eight, already wearing a mask, was putting on his fins.  It took him a little while, but he got on each fin with out sitting down.  I gave him a thumbs up and asked him if he kept track of his fish.  He grinned and said, "Sometimes."  In that instant, I knew that the future was in good hands and bid him to look for the Dragon Wrasse.   "It looks like a ragged piece of kelp."  I added.  Yeah, that's the ticket.  Ragged kelp.

    If one had given me a choice, I would have said Kilo was a measure of weight, not a name to be applied to a tropical cyclone.  Over dinner and a glass of merlot, I made a few disparaging remarks about the

Raggedy Kelp.  That's the ticket!

impotence of this poorly named zephyr.  And all was well until the witching hour, when Donner and Blitzen suddenly put in an appearance.  For the next two hours, we experienced a remarkable electrical storm.  We were exposed to thunder strong enough to shake the house at least 25 times in that period.  Isn't it interesting that all that energy sucked from the warm ocean can be spent this way, in addition to the strong winds that we fear most with a hurricane?

    As some of you know, Sandra and I recently returned from Portland where our daughter Leslie was married.  Our extended stay afforded the opportunity to spend some quality time with our first grandchild, who is now a three year old Golden / Irish Setter Designer Dog named Riley.  One afternoon when we were puppy sitting, there came a single burst of lightening and a distant peal of thunder.  Riley was so agitated by this meteorological display that he damn near knocked Sandra onto her delicate derriere.  After about fifteen minutes of

Riley gets a little comfort from his mother.  Mind the bump.

comforting, he was able to get up and walkabout the mansion with a sheepish look on his face.   As sweetie and I cowered in bed at 1 AM after an especially vicious blast of thunder,  I whispered, "Boy am I glad Riley isn't here."

    But Kilo is passing and our roof is still where it belongs and Sandra and I really do wish that all of you were here, if only so you could share in our next bout of extreme weather.  Or maybe you could send over Jennifer Robbins.

jeff

Back in Good Ol' Kailua

     Sandra and I arrived back from Portland a couple days ago.   The first couple days were taken up with gardening (We felled and delivered to the yard debris a twenty foot papaya, not to mention a trunk full of

Delicious Menpachi, City of Refuge 2012

overgrown lilikoi.)  Our second night back it rained torrentially; there were flash floods all over the state, but here in Kona the water just percolated through the lava.

    So yesterday it was time to go snorkeling.  With that in mind, I repaired to the ohana where we had stashed our sundry equipment in deference to our house exchangers.  I brought up our masks, fins, swimshirts and caps.  Then I went to the safe to retrieve the cameras.  I had never put the cameras in the safe before, but they are sort of expensive, and there was plenty of room, so I thought, "Why not?"

    The answer to that rhetorical question became apparent over the next few minutes.  The safe wouldn't open.  This afforded me the opportunity to talk to several First Alert technicians back in Illinois.  It turns out

that those little lights, and  more importantly the locking mechanism, relies on electricity supplied by a battery that one is obligated to replace at an appropriate interval.  Apparently when we purchased the safe a move or two ago, we were supplied with an override key, which is long gone. And how was I supposed to know about replacing the battery?  

     This is a round about way of telling you that there will be no original underwater photography until the override key arrives from Chicago. At least the cameras were safe from the nefarious DeLukes, our house exchangers, who are more honest that Milburn Drysdale.  To paraphrase Jed Clampett's banker, "If you
can't trust Gail and Martin DeLuke, who can you trust?"  As the blog progresses, you will hear more about our new best friends the DeLukes.   

If you can't trust the DeLukes...

    At this point I invite you to join me at the Kailua pier.  It was hot, humid and relatively deserted.  As I entered the water, a plump family of tourists were attempting to do the same.  Our eyes were collectively drawn to a dead Epaulet Soldierfish, swishing back and forth in the shallows.  The alpha male was proffering an identification, which I politely corrected (I'm always polite.)  I went on to say that the Japanese fisherman call them menpachi and they are reputed to be delicious.  But I wouldn't eat that one.

     The water was really warm and moderately cloudy, so unless we saw something really unusual, there would have been no reason to take pictures.   It being so warm, I swam for about an hour, enjoying being back in the ocean, but not seeing anything of note.  Towards the end of my swim, I ventured under the swim rope.  The Body Glove was getting ready to depart, but I felt safe as there was a trio of youths taking turns in a shopping cart. 

Let's Go Surfing!

    One of the young gentlemen would get in the cart and the other two would roll him off the pier into the water; as long as I kept the shoppers between me and the boat, I reasoned, I would be safe.

     Near the pier I saw a pair of Blacktail Snappers.  This handsome (albeit introduced) species seems to be increasing in numbers.  And over the small reef I saw a fairly large number of menpachi.  Last but not least, there was a curious wormfish that seemed to be displaying to a wiggly white lure hooked on the coral.  If you are as warped as me, you might consider this the fishy equivalent of an inflatable sex doll.  Talk about curious!

    At the showers there were a couple well tatooed gentlemen enjoying a cool ablution.  One was telling the other that his tongue had gotten ripped up the other night when his tongue piercing technician experienced an epileptic seizure right in mid-pierce.  And I thought that it was bad to be locked out of my safe!

jeff

The beautiful Blacktail Sanpper is becoming more common in Kona