Fishwatching and the Ironman 2015

   In Kailua Kona, the second week of October is taken over by the Ironman World Championship.  Sandra and I volunteered in registration, where we had the chance the meet the contestants, who come

Can you see the swimmer in the middle? Photo SKG

mostly from North America, Western Europe and Australia.  On Saturday we watched the race.  

    Our best Ironman moment came in the morning.  We were down at the pier just as time expired for the swim.  The swimmers are given two hours and 20 minutes to complete the 2.4 mile open ocean swim.  We watched as the last swimmer to finish came struggling in.   When the top competitors finish the swim, they are moving right along, but not this lady.  She splashed for five minutes, as she made her way down the length of the pier, the multitude on Alii Drive shouting encouragement.  Simultaneously,  all the guides and marshals had no one else to monitor, so this last swimmer was surrounded by Ironman personnel on their paddleboards.  As she emerged, with just over a minute to spare, she received a huge ovation.  Our champions are like deities on Olympus.  Our age group competitors are like brave hobbits, fighting against all the dark forces of the Ironman: the wind, heat and waves.  God bless ya, Frodo.
     We timed it just right and we were at the finish line for both the men's and women's champions.  This is a very happy moment, the crowd lines the pathway to the finish and the leader is led to the finish line by two Polynesian warriors bearing tiki torches.  One

The Winner is Led Down Alii Drive by a Torch Bearer  Photo SKG

 is alerted to the finish, as a helicopter appears out of nowhere, presumably to document the event.. The only other time we see a helicopter in Kailua is at Christmas when Paul Allen is ferried back and forth from his yacht to his estate.   As usual, the top finishers looked like they could run another race. That degree of fitness is unfathomable.

    In spite of the runners and bikers training on our roads, we still managed to get in a few snorkels.  It has been noted that the Ironmen and their families are so involved with their sport, that they do not partake in the water related activities.  I went to Kahalu'u the day before the race and the park was virtually deserted.  Luckily the water was cool, flat and clear.  While there was not a plethora of fish or invertebrates, I did manage to find a nice and cooperative example of the Dragon Wrasse.  Just before  spotting the dragon, I had a glimpse of an immature shortnose, which made three consecutive visits to Kahalu'u where I had seen that species.  In this way, the immature shortnose wrasse progressed from fish of the year to dirt fish in a week.  Having said that, I'll probably never see another one.

    On that day, I also spotted a small Elegant Hermit Crab.  As the coral has been bleaching and degenerating following our hot summer, I have had lots of opportunity to think about the ramifications.  Half

Will the last hermit crab to Leave K Bay turn out the lights.

 the time I am snorkeling these days, I am wondering which species will be able to survive in the absence of coral.  My guess is that we will have fewer reef fish and more species will be driven into the depths, where there is less damage to the coral.  My guess is that crustaceans like the hermit crabs will be even harder hit than the fish.  They require the crevices and the branches of the coral to protect them from the wrasses and their friends.  The coral also provides a substrate upon which they find their daily bread.  Setting aside this sad prophecy, we can enjoy this picture of the elegant crab with the bright blue eyes.

     A couple days after the race, Sandra and I went on a night snorkel on Paul Allen's Reef with Bob Hillis.  Aside from the usual cardinalfish and squirrelfish, we were lucky to see a brotula.  He was resting on a ledge right by the entrance to Paul's private lagoon

Bearded Cusk Eel / Photo c/o Wikipedia

 and, when illuminated, dodged into a crevice.  By diving down about six feet and holding onto the reef, we were able to illuminate him and get a peek at his whiskered visage.  This species, the only brotula likely to be seen by a snorkeler in Hawaii, is the Bearded Cusk Eel.  It is not an eel, although it has a single dorsal and ventral fin that meet to form the tail, much like an eel.  It lives in crevices and comes out rarely at night.  Hence, unless you are a diver who is poking deep in crevices by day, you will only see one at night.  This was a very lucky encounter with an extremely strange fish.

Not only that, but it reminds me of the song sung by the Cowardly Lion, while Dorothy and her companions were waiting to see the wizard:

What Makes a Cusk Eel Guard His Cusk?

"What makes a muskrat guard his musk?
What makes a cusk eel guard his cusk?
Whadda they got that I ain't got?
The Ultimate Guide to Hawaiian Reef Fishes!
You can say that again."

    And who knew that Bert Lahr was such an enthusiastic fishwatcher?  Go figure.

    Yesterday, five days after the running of the Ironman, Bob and I went up to Mahukona.  He had been there twice, same as me, but we had never been together.  (The respective better halves held down the fort at the Daylight Coffee Company.)   Similar to my experience a few weeks ago, there was no wind in Kawaihae, but at Mahukona there was a significant breeze with whitecaps offshore.

   Unlike our recent trip, yesterday there were lots of swimmers.  It wasn't like Cruise Ship Day at K Bay or any mid-morning down at City of Refuge, but here the entry is limited to the ladder, one swimmer at a time.

It was a busy day at MHK.

 This is Hawaii, so everyone was polite as he or she waited to climb up out of or flop into the water.  

    Another difference was the clarity.   The water was much more cloudy everywhere in the bay, extending even into the depths offshore.   Luckily this didn't effect the fishwatching too much.  Of course, the photography is intimately associated with water clarity.  but a good carpenter does not blame his tools and neither does a good fishwather blame the ocean.

   Early on we happened upon a Milletseed Butterflyfish.  As recently as seven years ago John Hoover called the millletseed butterflyfish, "Hawaii's most abundant butterflyfish."   Boy Howdy (that's Walt Longmire-speak) have the times changed.  The milletseed is

found, apparently, below snorkeling depths on a regular basis.  However, I had not seen one in almost two years.  I had wondered if I would ever see one of these yellow beauties again.   I fondly remember the schools of milletseeds at K bay and this particular fish made me very happy.

  I chased that milletseed around for a few minutes trying for a good photo.  As it turns out, I saw a second milletseed on the way in.  It might have been the same fish, but the colors seemed brighter, especially in the picture.  Could there be two?  O frabjous day, caloo callay.

     At the entrance to the bay, abut ten feet down there is a pipe of questionable utility.  Upon it I found several handsome colonies of sponges.  Big healthy sponge colonies aren't so common down in Kona and a

reticulated butterflyfish was swimming around to add more beauty to the display.  Although I got an excellent look (and I imagine you are enjoying the picture) I am not sufficiently skilled to put a name on this sponge.  Looking at John Hoover's pictures in Sea Creatures, I wonder if it might be fire sponge, so until you know better, please approach these handsome animals with caution.

    In the depths of the rock wall of the north cusp we saw an octopus.  This was my first octopus in six months.  He was a handsome fellow, swimming back and forth, changing his color from a dark chocolate to a mottled gray, matching the coral rubble.  He was about thirty feet deep and the water clarity, or lack thereof, prevented good pictures.  (Although I took a dozen, none are worth showing you.)  Every time I dove down to get a little less cloudy water between meplayful mollusc, he retreated into the coral.  I had a great time with the octopus, but sadly,

Blacklip Butterflyfish   Mhaukona  October 2015

this is another animal that needs hiding places in the coral to flourish.

     On the way back in, I dove down to get a look at that second milletseed butterflyfish and came face to face with a yellowtail filefish.  the camera wasn't turned on and by the time it came up he was hiding.  I did get that picture of the bright milletseed butterfly that you saw earlier.

    In the coral opposite the end of the pier, I saw a blacklip butterfly dodging in and out among the coral.  While I was chasing him around for a picture, a Racoon Butterfly swam nearby.  I knew the Blacklip, also known as Klein's, was small, but the raccoon seemed huge by comparison.  In fact, it is a little less than twice as big.  Persistence paid off and we finally got a couple pretty good pictures of that small butterlyfish, especially when you consider the cloudy water closer to shore.

    Well, I said I wasn't going to blame the ocean and I did anyway.  We saw other good stuff including and orange tailed immature of the pinktail triggerfish and a school of oval chromis.  Too many fish to describe in detail.  Mahukona is a really good place to look for fish and I hope to see you there.

jeff

Fish of the Year: The Immature Shortnose Wrasse

    Ever so rarely a fish comes along that is so unexpected and delightful that it conjures the presence of a benevolent deity.  When Bob and I arranged to meet for a snorkel yesterday afternoon, I said something

Shortnose Wrasse,Macropharyngodon geoffroy , Kaahalu'u October 2015

like, "I hope we see something good."   He replied, "We are going to see something spectacular."

    We met at Kahalu'u.  Sandra dropped me off and then headed up to the KTA store for necessary comestibles.  One does not live by fishwatching alone.

There was only a modest crush of tourists at the entry and the water was only a little cloudy.  The temperature was pleasant, in the mid 80s.  As we swam towards the Menehune Breakwater I despaired once again looking at all the bleached and dying coral.  I shudder to think what Kahalu'u is going to look like in a year.  It seems inevitable that there will be a lot less coral, fewer places for fish to rest and take cover.  What has taken centuries to build has been scourged by a

Even this baby can change his color pattern.

 single month of excessive water temperature.  We may be looking at a substantial shift in the reef fish populations, not just in this bay but all up and down the coast, perhaps the entire State of Hawaii.

    It was with these thoughts that I made my turn at the breakwater, swimming over the shallows out to Surfer's Rock.  We tooled around for a few minutes and then I noticed Bob attempting a photograph.  Venturing over, it took only a moment for me to pick out the object of his interest.  It was an immature wrasse, vaguely similar to the immature rockmover that is also known as the dragon wrasse.  I'm sure you remember that fish and the incumbent admonition...don't eat the green ones, they're not ripe yet.

    This fish was the size of a small dragon wrasse, about an inch and a half long.  He was a jumble of colorful spots and sported a variety of spines from both dorsal ad ventral fins.  As you can tell from the pictures, most of the time he swam with both his dorsal and ventral fins fully extended, thus offering a strange silhouette.

    Your humble correspondent, Olympus T4 in hand, got right on it.  The two of us chased this little sprite over the reef for about ten minutes.  He moved continuously.  Not just changing his location, but throwing in bobs and weaves, jinking up and down. this behavior is unlike that of the dragon wrasse.  The dragon wrasse moves sinuously, dancing to a slow tune that only he can hear.   When chased by an eager photographer, he glides with a final swoop into cover under a stone or in the coral. 

Which end is which?

 
    This fish did   not seek cover, but relied on his quick jerky movements for protection.  He was dancing like Elaine Benes on meth.

    Do you remember the Karate Kid and his sensai, Kesuke Miyagi?   This fish posed a serious challenge for the photographer, channel Mister Miyagi and hope for beginner luck.  Would catching the perfect picture of this little fish be more difficult that plucking a fly out of the air with chopsticks?  Wax on, wax off!

    After about ten minutes of chasing around (ten minutes is actually a pretty long time to chase one small fish in a small area) we surfaced.  I asked Bob if he knew what it was and he replied that he thought it was an immature Shortnose Wrasse.  Had he seen one before?  Probably not.

     I was struck immediately by the coincidence; just that morning I had finished writing about the shortnose wrasse, Macropharyngodon geoffroy, that Sandra had found for us at Mahukona.  In the process of

Nose to nose with a baby saddle wrasse

writing about that handsome little fish,  I had looked at John Hoover's excellent pictures in the Ultimate Guide.to Hawaiian Reef Fishes.  The pictures aren't attributed to anyone else, so I assume that John Hoover took the pictures himself.  Suffice it to say, that in addition to being an excellent writer and biologist, he is a fantastic fish finder and photographer. Hoover includes pictures of two immatures, the youngest is gray with a variety of white spots and strannge fins..The older immature pictured in the book is almost like a small adult.  The fish we were chasing was not an absolute match for either of the two pictures in John's book, but similar enough to make me quite confident that this was indeed an immature shortnose. 

     We chased the fish for another five minutes,  You will note that this little guy was really dedicated to his spot on the reef...most fish would, if they didn't seek cover, just swim away.  Eventually we lost him.  In our chase I had taken just shy of 30 pictures. 

For this little fish, need beginner luck.

What you see here are the best five out of that batch.  We have checked it out with the experts and what you see is definitely an immature  shortnose wrasse  transitional between the very young fish and the older immature pictured in Hoover's book. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

jeff

    

MHK

   The other night, Sandra and I were sitting on the couch watching Bridget Jones Diary.  This is one of our favorite movies.  I mean, Colin Firth, Renée dressed up as a chubby playboy bunny and Hugh Grant as an intolerable jerk who

I will not fall for alcoholics, workaholics, or fishaholics.

 gets what's comin' to him... What's not to love? 

    Anyway, we had just gotten to the part where Hugh Grant throws Renée over for the skinny bitch from the New York office, when Sandra said, "I have a great idea for tomorrow.  After my doctor's appointment, why don't we go to Beach 69."  This was a brilliant idea. Kaiser Permanente is on the north side of town and it would be easy to slip on up to the north shore for a dip.

    I took a moment to consider this clever plan and then I suggested, "Silly Bridget. Why don't we go to Mahukona?"'

    Mahukona is a location on the Kohala coast, not so different from Ho'okena.  Both had been small communities served by boat. Now connected to the rest of our island community by road, the infrastructure associated with serving an outpost by water is

Klein's Butterflyfish, Mahukona April 2015

falling into disrepair and the human element is drifting away.  In Ho'okena there are a few more residual people and in Mahukona the landing facilities are substantially more intact, but the similarity is definitely there.  And they are both excellent places to go snorkeling.

   We had been introduced to Mahukona (some people simply call it  MHK in honor of the adjacent international airport) by Peter and Marcie.  Peter writes a blog, had noticed mine, and eventually we all connected at their favorite snorkeling spot, MHK.  For over a year Peter had been regaling me with promises of Regal Parrotfish, Fantailed and Yellowtailed Filefish.  Just recently he had thrown in Blacklip Butterfly, which I persist in calling Klein's Butterfly.  This is because not only do I like the old names but the name reminds me of one of my professors back at the Oregon School for Bewildered Anesthesiologists.  I suppose that Dr.Klein meant well, but

The Ladder Entry at Mahukona

 he could be a bit of a beast.  Now that he is a butterflyfish, the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak.

    We connected at MHK in April.  Ten miles north of Kawaihae, it might be out of the Waika-blowah wind pattern.  The fact is, it is probably windier at MHK than at Waikaloa Village.  On that day there was a steady 20 knots of wind gusting to 35.  I suspect that the wind blowing between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa converges at this point with the wind accelerating around Kohala Mountain.  Marcie had a word for those 35 knot gusts, blasters.  One got the impression that the blasters were not an unusual feature at Mahukona as, despite the fact that the wind was having a significant

effect on the sea, our hosts were all, "let's get going."

    The entry at MHK is, to my knowledge, unique on this island.  Here there still exists a cement pier with a rusting crane.  And there is a stainless steel ladder which presumably at one time served the crews of small boats.

   There is, at this time, no facility for docking a boat, big or small, and one is pretty much obligated to enter and exit the water using this ladder.   Marcie noted that some people choose to jump in to the water off the pier.  We actually saw a couple people do this. I

Sandra and her pet Gecko, Gus.  Roaches need not apply.

 would not recommend this technique to the uninitiated, as there are rocks next to the pier and it might be hard to climb up the ladder with a broken leg or a a compressed T2.  Capisce?

    Despite the fact that the wind driven swell was surging to and fro at the foot of the ladder, the water level altering about 18 inches with each watery cycle, we all made it in.  Soon, Marcie had found both the filefish.  We swam out over the north cusp of the small bay where Peter showed us an immature Regal Parrotfish and a pair of Klein's Butterflies in twenty feet of clear water.  On the way back in, we fought a moderate wind driven current, but we were rewarded with a fine Devil Scorpionfish and a pair of Klein's Butterflies in the shallows.   All in all, Sandra and I were quite impressed with the large number of interesting fish in the small bay at Mahukona.

Regal Parrotfish, Mahukona October 2015

     As a perfect end to a wonderful snorkel, we joined Peter and Marcie at a fish restaurant in Kawaihae.   They are both ecologists with a tie-in to the University of California at Berkeley.  As Peter fed a bit of his Longboard Lager to the gecko that resided at our table, Marcie told us that it was quite possible to train a cockroach to come for tidbits, as well.  Recently, Sandra has trained a gecko to take strawberry jelly from her fingertip.  Now, every time we leave the house, Gus (the gecko) is out there throwing us a forlorn look from his perch on the railing.  We agree that we are drawing the line at cockroaches.

    All of which brings us to yesterday morning.  I got up bright and early to do the watering and play fantasy baseball.  I'm the General Manager of Sandra's team, the Kona Shave Ice (Go Penguins!), who may just

Our mascot, Pablo says, "Go Penguins!"

 bring home the bacon if the boys can hold it together for two more days.  There is a lot of pressure from upstairs not to screw the pooch at the last minute, so playing fantasy baseball took a little more time than usual.  We were all set to leave for Kaiser when I discovered that I had cleverly hidden both pairs of my dark glasses.  This was not a particularly good omen.  Hence, we called upon the augur who conveniently lives in our ohana.  He killed a gecko and examined its entrails which proved inconclusive.  With some trepidation, we proceeded with the days program regardless of the fates and without my dark glasses.

   The doctor visit went fine except Sandra was told she had to eat less chocolate while watching television at night (like that's going to happen) and we soon found our way making the left and the right to get through metropolitan Kawaihae.  One would like to think of Kawaihae as being a dusty little crossroads associated with the only deep water port on this side of the island.  That would be wrong.  A modest artsy fartsy and restaurant community has grown up here, catering to the wealthy patrons and residents of the northern resorts and the fancy Kohala neighborhoods

Hawaiian Hogfish  Mahukona 2015

 just to the north that have sprang up over the last ten years. So when one is is making that right, they have to be careful not to swing at high speed into the Blue Dragon and Coastal Cuisine.  

     Even in Kawaihae there was not a puff of wind. By the time we got to MKH, however, there was a cooling 10 to 15 knots blowing from the southeast.  Soon we were changed and flopping off the ladder into the bay.  The first thing we noticed was the water temperature:  about 80 degrees, it was easily the coolest water we had experienced since returning from the Rose City.  Almost immediately, we found dramatically less coral bleaching and death than we have seen elsewhere along the coast in the last two weeks.  As we swam along, I wondered if the steady wind that this location produces a venturi

Yellowtail Filefish  Mahukona September 2015

effect over the water, with increased evaporation.  The resultant and ongoing latent heat of evaporation then cools the water.  It makes sense to me and there is clearly healthier coral here than in Kailua and at City of Refuge.

   As we swam out, we examined the coral heads where Marcia found the two filefish six months ago.  We didn't see any filefish, but we did see a couple blustripe butterflyfish, a fairly uncommon species that seems to be a regular occurence here.  While I was looking for filefish, Sandra found a nice pair of reticulated butterflies swimming nearby.ervagor aspricaudus

    We swam into deeper water and I found a male Regal Parrotfish.  My picture does not do this handsome beast justice.  He was thirty feet away when I spotted him and as we approached he swam deeper.  Large male parrotfish in general are wary animals, so a

Pervagor aspricaudus  Mahukona October 2015

photographer has to do the best he can.  In the picture you can see the diagnostic streamer tail with the blue crescent.  We were able to appreciate the pink stripe at the base of the dorsal fin and the the pink scalloping on the flanks.  He was gorgeous!

    There were no Klein's Butterflyfish, or blacklip butterflyfish either, so we headed back in.  Passing over a ridge, I saw a yellow fish with a big black spot.  In a trice I identified her as a female Hawaiian Hogfish.  A species that must be more common below snorkeling depth, we see one of these adults about once every two or three years.  They are always deep and elusive. I took three deep dives and the hogfish let me approach within fifteen feet.  You see the best of my efforts below.

    We swam further in, again examining the coral heads for lurking filefish without results.  Just opposite the outer corner of the pier, I saw a yellowtail filefish.  This cute little aspricaudus proved to be the most

Shortnosed Wrasse, Mahukona October 2015

cooperative fish of the day from the photographic standpoint.  Its hard to take a picture of a dark fish and capture facial features, but I thnk these pictures turned out pretty well.

   After we scared the filefish back into his crevasse, I decided to take one more look on the far side of the small bay for the Klein's Butterfly.  I'd gone ten yards when shmoopie somoned me back urgently.  "Red fish!"  she yelled.  Once I returned, it took only a moment to locate the small red fish.  In fact, it was, at about five and a half inches,  the largest Shortnose Wrasse I have ever seen,  He, too, was rather cooperative and we had several opportunities to dive him and take pictures.  Unlike parrotfish, this species has proved remarkably approachable in my experience.  On two previous instances one on the PAR and the other on the Ironman side of the pier, I have encountered

At some angles the Shortnose Wrasse looked quite red.

 individuals that let me get within a foot and take some very nice pictures.  in the case of this big brute, I got withn about six feet.  Still, the results aren't too shabby.

    We took one more swoop over to the far a side, not finding the blacklip.  As hard as we worked the bay, I really don't think he was there.  Fan tailed filefish are way more stealthy, however, and I woder if Marcia had been there if we would have she would have found him.  Or perhaps she would have found an amiable cockroach with which to share our lunch.

jeff


In the event that you would like to view Peter's blog, here is a link:
  https://onebreathkohala.wordpress.com/

You will find lots of fine photographs and interesting observations. 

The Blustripe Butterflyfish is a Regular at MHK.