Putting the Sand in Sandy

     Before charging into this weeks tale, I'd like to bring you up to date on the progress of our divine snorkeling student.  Last Friday we moved Pastor Sunny over to the Ironman side of the pier.  She had

Blue Stripe Surgeon, juvenile  Acanthurus nigoris   Kailua Kona 2016

added a new pair of fancy orange fins to her equipment, and along with her full face mask she was ready to go fishwatching.  The sea was flat and the morning was sunny, so our foursome was full of confidence.  A bit of fiddling with the mask (apparently the cumbersome headgear isn't foolproof) and we were off to the races.   As before,  Sandra was guiding Sunny by the noodle, to which she was attached with both hands, like Linus with his security blanket.  In this fashion we made it out to the third swim buoy, seeing a nice variety of usual suspects in the cool clear water.  The big news is that halfway back to the beach Sunny released the noodle and swam free for about two minutes.  One can over do the freedom thing, however, and Sunny was soon clamped back on to her yellow noodle.

   When my son James was three he had a yellow blanket.  To separate him from the blanky was to court disaster.  At times, though, leaving it at home was the sensible thing to do.  In order to discuss the impending subterfuge, my wife and I code named the yellow blanket yerba buena.  Why we used that name, aside from the words beginning with Y and B is a mystery.  Yerba buena refers to the vegetable matter one might find in Mexican potpourri and the blanky was neither Mexican nor especially fragrant.  All that aside, one wonders if that yellow noodle is heading for a code name. 

   You can submit your suggestions for a code name in the form provided below or email them to Yellow Noodle Saimin, shadowfax302@gmail.com.  The winner will receive a lifetime supply of yellow noodles.  No need to ask the origin.

Holy Underwear!  The Christmas Season is Upon Us!

   To prepare for the Friday swim, I had snorkeled the pier the day before.  It was all usual suspects in moderately clear water, except for the cute little fish you see here.  As you see, he was out in the coral rubble twenty yards mauka of the the third swim buoy, chilling with a small school of juvenile convict tangs.  This cutie propelled me to the books.  I've decided it is almost surely a blue lined surgeon, Acanthurus nigoris.   The adult of this species comes in two flavors.  One is dark with the scale lines separated just enough by light bands to give it a finely striped appearance.  The less common fish is a light gray with a white band at the caudal peduncle.  Voila.  In any event, this is an unusual keiki and I hope you enjoy speculating as to what he might grow up to be.  

Albert the Alligator:  My mother said I was goin' to grow up to live in da White House.
Pogo;  I think she said you was gonna grow up to live in the Jail House.

   A day or two after we supervised Sunny as she swam ever so bravely with her noodle, Sandra and I went to Kahalu'u.  It was super high tide, so we were hoping for something good.  We didn't see another octopus, but I was lucky to find this large cone shell hermit crab chilling in the coral.  He let me hold the camera within a few feet and Mr. Olympus did the rest.  Sandra and I call the cone shell hermit crab Stripey and he is one of our favorites.  And, to the best of my recollection, K Bay is the only place we have ever seen this species.

Saint Peter's Little Blue Church.  Pure Kona.

    As we swam across the bay on this calm day with blue sky and fleecy clouds I nabbed this picture of St. Peter's Church.  You have my permission to use it on your Christmas cards, assuming that manner of greeting is part of your repertoire.

    As we were swimming, Sandra noticed that people were getting out over by the smaller kiosk, where the surfers enter.  This is the spot we call Rescue Beach, as we escaped a strong out going current on a blustery

Cone Shell Hermit Crab,  Kahalu'u 2016

day long ago by crawling ashore on that beach.  That was not my finest moment, but nobody died. Usually the shoreline at this beach is rocky, but as the tide was so high, we decided to try  landing there for old times sake.  As we came ashore there were more waves than expected and Sandy got that coarse black sand everywhere.

    She was still muttering about the sandy situation as, après la douche, we passed by the small kiosk.  To our surprise, the entire structure was fenced off.  Back at the main structure we asked our friend Mark the Reef Teacher what that was all about.  He said that the floor of the kiosk was deemed unsafe.  To repair the shelter and the rock wall that protects it, the county would have to get a report from a marine architect approving the plans and this would cost $100,000.  While this figure seems to me to be a little high,  I have no problem with the essence of his remark.  He  further reported that people have come to the county to say they would do the work for free, but that the county was unwilling to spend the money for the report.

      I can tell you from personal experience that, with its front row view of our favorite bay, that little shelter is (was) a fine place for a picnic.  I guess we need to wait for the election of President Trump and he will cut through the obstructionistic regulations.   And peace and goodwill will return to the Kona Coast.

jeff

"OSHA, Smosha." says President Trump.

      

Kahalu'u Happenings

   I must feel like my knee is heading towards a full recovery because yesterday I took it to Kahalu'u for a swim.  Ten years ago, this would have been unremarkable, hardly different from going for a swim at the pier on a calm day.  But from the standpoint of the old and infirm, K Bay has changed.  The level of sand has

The Neanderthals Gather

dropped dramatically leaving a significant barrier of stones to surmount, no matter how you approach the bay.


    The word among the Reef teachers is that this is due to the last tsunami.  However, we have experienced a series of high tides in the last six weeks that have sucked 10 inches of sand off the beach n front of the King Kam Hotel and have further eroded the entry here at dear old Kahalu'u.  Directly in front of the shelter there is now a moat in front of the rocks.  On the makai side there are rocks that one must step on which are frequently wave washed.  That used to be the side for duffers, with a sandy carpet all the way form the beach through what we used to call the sand channel.  The watchword now is tread carefully.

    As I arrived there was a small group of demolition experts removing the lifeguard tower.  My friend Mark, one of the Reef Teachers, said that this had been the last wooden lifeguard tower in the state in daily use.  It

has now been replaced by a plastic and aluminum structure identical to the one at Magic Sands.  This structure has four times the footprint of the old tower and occupies the sand between the shelter and the showers, thus displacing a couple dozen sun bathers and elderly kibitzers.  Mark and I bemoaned the loss of the tower, of wooden roller coasters and what passes for progress in general.

The Old Wooden Lifeguard Tower

The End of an Era

O tear that tattered tower down,
Long has it stood on high.
And many a crab has clacked his claws,
As a lifeguard paddled by.

Where once at Kahalu'u,
Like the Pharos it did rise.
Now a hut of ugly plastic
Heralds its Demise.

   Well, no one told me they were going to tear down the tower and my poem (with thanks to Oliver Wendell Holmes) arrives a day late.  No group of children will contribute their pennies to save the tower, as they did with the USS Constitution.  And so another piece of our Hawaiian heritage is headed for the recycling station.

    I arrived about quarter to nine.  As I donned my snorkeling costume the Neanderthals were noisily removing the signs from the side of the tower.  Strong Currents!  Slippery Rocks!  Vote For Trump!   Late last night it occurred to me that I should have asked for one of those signs.   As I was putting on my sandals apres swim, the workmen cleared the area and pulled the tower on its side.  But I'm getting ahead of the

Day Octopus, Kahalu'u, October 2016

story.

   By no accident, I picked a morning when the tide was not high and the sea was calm.  Hence those rocks were uncovered and dry and I negotiated them successfully...knee intact.  The water was cool, as it had been at the pier earlier in the week.  I believe we can declare victory for the corals, which seem to have made it through the summer without any further bleaching and death.

    As I paddled out, the water was clear.  Thus when I arrived at the coral where the leaf scorpionfish hung out for a couple months, I had a perfect, if extremely brief look at a fish that I thoughtmight be new to me.  The fish had a sharp snout and yellow fiins, which I thught included the tail.  My first impression was that it was the shape of a blacktail snapper, but that it was red with a yellow tail.

   The fish dodged back into the coral as I approached.  I waited a minute or two and he came out for few seconds and like a groundhog on February 2nd, he scurried back inside the coral.  As an extensive review of the field guides reveals, there is no such fish and this was most likely just a black tail snapper. That I was so easily confused about the colors I might try to pass off as a result of the emotional trauma associated with the dismantling of the lifeguard tower.  Perhaps old age is having its way.  In my defense, it was two very brief looks. Not only that, but who among us has not attempted to turn a rock dove into a noddy as they sped by some dusky bird on the shoulder of the interstate.

     But like any good lister, I wanted it to be something else.  I dove down and attempted to look inside the coral.  I was rewarded with a look at a bigeye cruising by the small window, further confusing my identification.

    As all good birdwatchers know,  there is no substitute for studying the  guide books before heading into

Molluscan Yoga...The Octopus Forms and Arch 

the field.. If you can't identify the bird with some degree of specificity before repairing to the books, you are behind the eight ball.  And I confess, I probably do not go back through the books as frequently as I should. 

   Hopefully befuddled I pushed on through the clear cool water, out to near the breakwater and curving pack along the ridge towards the middle.  As I reached the corner across from the shelter, I was rewarded with a yellowtail filefish,  Pervagor aspricaudus.  In all my years of snorkeling at Kahalu'u, this is the first one.  In Bali, where this fish is more commonly seen, they swim free in just such shallow bays.  When I have seen them in Hawaii, they are usually in open water among deeper rocks.  It is probably just luck, but this is the second aspricaudus I have added to a location this year.  The first was adjacent to Paul Allen's canal.  Perhaps they are becoming more common.  I tracked this guy around for a couple minutes trying for a picture, but the water was shallow and he was elusive.  I did get a picture suitable for identification, but little else.

    Before heading out to Surfer's Rock I made a turn towards the beach and was rewarded with my best Hawaiian Day Octopus sighting.  Here was a beautiful big octopus, not especially wary in four feet of clear

The Brave Octopus Stands Tall

water.  He allowed me to approach within five feet and take multiple photographs.  We have discussed previously how the day octopus seems to have a coating on it skin that defeats photography.  I believe you will agree that this guy had his shields down and that this is an octopus, as opposed to a mass of slimy mush.  At times the octopus stood quite tall and at others he was a bit lower with his body and legs forming an arch over the coral.

    I sang the doxology and was preparing to go when a lady swam nearby.  Wanting to share my find,  I gestured for her to look.  Little did I realize that I was addressing Pestilence, the vanguard of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  I turned back to the octopus to be confronted by her companions.  As you might guess there were four of them in all, wearing black dive skins and black water shoes, the better for crushing the coral.  One if them, I'm not sure if it was War or Famine, was standing upon the very coral head where mere moments before the octopus had formed his magnificent arch.  I confess, a moan of dismay echoed through my snorkel.  What is the world coming to?

   Soon enough the horsemen paddled away in search of a new area to despoil.  And who should emerge unscathed, but our fine friend the octopus, once again standing tall upon his coral.  A veritable Frodo Baggins

Oriental Flying Gurnard,  Juvenile

standing bravely against the minions of the Dark Tower.  If you wanted a jumbled allegory, you came to the right place!

    Well, my swim was completed without destroying my recuperating knee.  On the final approach in the sometimes sand channel I saw a tiny gurnard.  The keiki seem to have the best colors and this one had beautiful blue patches in his wings.  The water was only inches deep and swishing back and forth so you will have to be satisfied with a picture of another small gurnard on another beautiful day in Hawaii.

jeff

Nehacky's Angelfissh in Honor of John Hoover,  paper mache by the author

    My confusion over the snapper mimicking a longjaw squirrelfish spilled over into John Hoover's lap.  The pain of addressing this pointless investigation was softened a bit by this picture of one of the great author's most prized sightings.  A year or so ago John saw Nehacky's Angelfish while diving off South Point.  He has a super photograph of that fish on his web site, Fish Not In My Book.  Here you see that event captured for posterity in paper mache.  Mark your calendars.  Our collection of paper mache fish of the Pacific will be on display at the Thelma Parker Library in Waimea through the month of November. 

    In this way Dr. J will challenge the world.

 

A Return to the Sea

   I am pleased to announce that I have all but completed my rehabilitation from the knee injury.  The exact nature of this trauma will apparently remain a mystery, the party line at Kaiser Permanente cleaving to the lines of we don't have anyone competent to look at your knee and if its getting better, who cares?

   Despite the stunning lack of orthopedic healthcare on the Big island, I have gone from wading with the Ironmen to swimming with one fin, swimming carefully with Sandra,  and yesterday, swimming solo in a mild

swell on the Ironman side of the pier with both fins, diving seven feet or so. And I did all this with out any

If  I'm swimming With One Fin Why Aren't I Going In Circles?

apparent problems.  Which is to say, this morning I was able to walk from the bedroom to the dining table, where resides the computer, without any obvious discomfort.  O the joys of getting old.

    As you in the Pacific Northwest are hunkering down in the wind and rain, the climate here is damn near iddyllic.  Low 80s, low humidity and soft breezes.  Yesterday, after dropping Sandra off at the church to work on the upcoming rummage sale, I made it down to the pier where there was a crowd from a cruise ship, the third one in so many days.  I actually enjoy the cruisers, who provide the opportunity for first class people watching and occasionally some good conversation.  The down side is that the boats that ferry them from their floating hotel to our village, dock against the pier directly over the portion of reef that I find most productive.  So it goes.

    After unwrapping my ace bandage and placing my cane atop the cubbies, I went carefully down into the ocean.  The word on the street is that a big swell is on the way, but the splash was still mild and the water pretty clear.  And it was cool.  It seems like the coral here is going to be spared the devastation of last summer, when persistent hot water lead to coral bleaching and so much coral death. 
  
    In the wake of the Ironman, there were very few people in the water.  One can only assume that the cruise directors, for whatever reason, advise their charges not to swim at the pier.  Perhaps they are  concerned that these uninitiated cruisers might get run down by one of the tenders as they ply rapidly

Not My Worst Picture of a Day Octopus, Kailua Kona 2016

between the ship and the pier, thus creating one hell of a conflict of interest for the parent company.

   I swam out to the last swim buoy, seeing a pleasant variety of usual suspects, but nothing special, until a ghostly iridescence caught my eye.  Yes, about eight feet down was an octopus!  I watched him for several minutes as he flashed light blue patterns associated with a variety of postures and textures.  I dove him twice, hoping for a picture, but each time he turned a dark chocolate brown and receded into a cavity in the coral head.  Trustingly, he emerged both times I resumed my position on the surface, his eyes perched like a couple of ping pong balls atop his pyramidal body.  What a good octopus!

   As I prepared to swim away,  I sang him the doxology through my snorkel, dove down and swam slowly over his refuge.  I'm certain that as I passed above him he gave me a wink.   Praise Octopus the Holy Ghost!

    Checking my watch, I noted that it was time to head for the beach, lest my beloved languish overtime among the rummage in that sweltering tent.  On my way in, I encountered a rather small boy, pale as a happy octopus, he was wearing a mask and snorkel but no fins.  I looked at him and he looked back at me and waved.

    We were a fair ways out, near the fourth swim buoy, a distance that these days I would not go without my flippers. I had to think back almost sixty years to the time when my parents turned me loose off Newport Beach, California with a three foot air mattress to surf the waves.  I must assume that at the age of eight  (I was in the third grade) they must have thought I was a pretty good swimmer.  I have no recollection of them standing on the beach poised to swim to my rescue.  In my years of swimming these waters I had not encountered an independent child this far out.  I suppose this is because the local children, who are excellent swimmers, graduate from playing on the beach to hunting fish with spears with no fish watching in between.  I Taking measure of the situation, I looked around and no matter how hard I searched the bay, there was no adult to be seen.  This young trout and I were out by there pretty much by ourselves.

    And so I engaged him in a bit of an inquisition.  My first friendly inquiry, along the lines of are you seeing any good fish, revealed that he spoke English as a second language, possibly a dialect of French.  The obvious conclusion was that he was the son of an Ironman.   A couple more questions revealed that there was a mother who had gone for a longer swim and that she would return at some future moment and they would swim in together.

Kailua Bay Never Disappoints, Just Ask the Ironkid!

   I suggested that he was pretty far out and perhaps he would like to swim with me back towards the beach?  Maybe we would see a good fish on the way in.  He was having none of it, though.  Although he was having the tiniest bit of trouble treading water without fins while conversing in a second language, I decided it was safe to leave him.  It was either that or stay with the Ironkid and leave poor honey languishing in the sweltering tent.  Such are the decisions we face in the land of the Macadamia nut. 

    As I prepared to swim away, I said, "See a good fish."  He smiled and said, "Thank you very much."

   On the way in, I saw  a large peppered moray hunting  and a stout moray poking his head out of a coral near the first buoy.  As I looked back, I'm sure I saw the Ironkid swimming in with an adult.  At least I hope that was what I saw.

   Fifteen minutes later, showered and changed, my knee wrapped and walking along with my bamboo cane, I came across two young ladies under our signature banyan tree.  They were wearing attractive summer dresses and standing near a rack of brochures.  At first I thought they might be advertising cell phones or Direct TV, but no, they were Jehovah's Witnesses.  As I am no longer a practicing anesthesiologist, hence not faced with their deadly proscription against blood transfusion, I have a friendlier view of the Witnesses.

    And these ladies in their nice dresses were friendly in return.  They asked if I'd had a good swim to which I replied, "Marvelous!.  I saw an octopus."  Lo and behold, one of them had grown up at Alii Villas in the eighties.  Her family moved away just a few years before Sandra and assumed residence there.  We had a nice chat and she revealed that as a child she would swim in the fishpond (This is our name for the tiny bay bounded by a lava tube where one enters the ocean at Kona Makai...given the right circumstances it can be terrifying spot.) and there were invariably two octopi living in the lava tube. She would dive down and say hi to them and they would respond in kind. Such as sweet childhood memory.

   It is sad, but with all the spear fishing now practiced off Kona MakaiQue triste!  But thankfully there are still a few octopus out in our ocean for us to befriend and children coming along to keep them company.
, the likelihood that there is a friendly octopus living in the fishpond is way less that zero. 

   Until we meet again may you have warm breezes and gorgeous fish.  And may you walk hand in hand into the sea with a friendly octopus.

jeff

Just in case you thought we were kidding, as it were, about the guy and his goat.

    

   

The Ironman Cometh and He Forgot His Pants!

The Ironman Underwear Race

    Many of you out in the blogosphere may be wondering what has happened to your loyal correspondent.  Did he go on a prolonged vacation somewhere boring, somewhere that there are no tropical fish?  Did he move and leave no forwarding address?  Did he (shudder) croak?

Señor Crab says, "Watch out for the rocks!"

    The sad truth is that I had a squamous cell cancer removed from my left cheek, waited the obligatory two weeks before returning to the water and after a single snorkeling experience at the pier.  On that swim I saw an Elegant Hermit Crab hiding between the stones of the pier a few feet below the surface.  That crab would be my last good sighting for the next week.

   The following day I messed up my right knee.  It is likely that I twisted it while gardening down in our jungle, attempting to prune the starfruit tree, while balancing on a pile of stacked rocks.  Stacked rocks are tragically common here in West Hawaii and , I believe we can say with some surety, should be trod upon with caution.

The Award for Best underwear Costume Goes to this Pooch

    The pain came on hours later, as I was sitting on the couch with my sweetie, listening to the Huskies on the radio.   As my beloved Huskies pulled off a nail biter down in Tucson, my knee became progressively more painful.  By the next morning whatever anesthesia I had administered the night before had worn off and I was barely able to get out of bed.  Not only could I not walk, I was unable to drive safely.  I proved this by
driving, of course, and noting that I really wasn't able to get my foot quickly from the accelerator to the brake.  At that point it seemed like the humane thing would be to take away my TV remote and shoot me in the head.

    This deplorable situation persisted for almost a week until my caring physician at Kaiser Permanente saw her way clear to inject the offending joint with the soup de jour, which lucky enough included solumedrol. 
By the next morning I was well on my way to assisted ambulation.  Even more important in this land of non-existant public transportation, I was driving.  Huzzah!

    Thus on Saturday morning I drove the Redoubtable SKG up the church, where I left her under a stifling tent to price items for the rummage sale for three hours.  I made my way back down Palani and hobbled

The Official BVDs of the Ironman World Champioships

from the parking lot to the pier.

    This wasn't just any Saturday in football season, it was the start of Ironman week, arguably the happiest week in  Kailua Kona.  As my cane and I made our way along the malecon, I was passed by a fit young lady wearing a backpack emblazoned with the logo of the Wisconsin Badgers.  "Your team has a big day today." I blurted out before she could make her escape.  She turned around and gave me a quizzical look.   "The Badgers are playing Michigan on TV."  I explained.  "Its the game of the week."

     "I am from Espain." she replied.  "I ran a race in Wisconsin."  Ahh! My first Ironman.  And she was cute as a bug.  "Bienvenidos a Kona!"

Samurai Shorts

 Following that encounter, me and my cane worked our way to the beach in front of the King Kam.  Mr. Cane stayed behind on the rock wall while I gingerly waded in to the water.  I suspected that I was outside the treatment plan, but to quote my dear friend Mike Van Ronzelen, "You can't stay home all the time."  As far as I am concerned, that applies equally to staying out of the water.  My wading progressed rapidly to a little breast stroking without the kicking.   After one such peregrination,  I met a competitor from Belgium

Even Cannibals Wear Underwear

who that morning  had made the swim in 68 minutes.  I thought that was fast, but he said the fastest person that morning was a lady who swam the 2.4 miles in 48 minutes.  That would have been a record time if she had done it on race day.  

On my way out of the water I met an Ironman and his toddler daughter lounging in the shallows.  They hail from New York, which is almost like another country.

   Things progressed nicely and three days ago on a blisteringly hot afternoon Sandra and I went swimming from the King Kam beach.  For this part of my aquatic rehabilitation, I wore a fin on my good leg and

Jellyfish Wear Underwear?

attempted to let the bad leg trail along uselessly.  The water was quite still and we made it across the inlet, about ten yards past the entrance to Paul Allen's lagoon.  Although there was tons of plankton, we saw only usual suspects.  Never the less, I was so happy to be out snorkeling.

    For the last two days we have done our bit in Ironman registration.  Sandra and I both met several score of wonderful competitors from all over the triathlon running world.  This experience is sort of like Disneyland's  "Its a small , small world!"  with really fit characters and minus the cloying music.  Being the kind soul that I am, I will not provide you with a link to that insipid tune.

Spidey and Mary Jane Watson

    On the second morning, as we arrived for work (if you can call it that) we caught an Ironman tradition, the Underwear race.   This event started five years ago with just a handful of participants.  Now it is an official part of the Ironman program, like the Parade of Nations and the Keiki Dip and Dash.  There is an entrance fee and the proceeds go to charity.  The Underwear Race was lots of fun,with some great costumes.  Perhaps a bit like the Bay to Breakers race in
San Francisco.  In this instance the observer, should he or she be so inclined, gets a pretty good look at some well conditioned derrieres. 

   As we arrived at registration, I admonished one of the organizers to the tune that she wasn't wearing her underwear.  "I am wearing my underwear," she responded, "You just can't see it!"  And that was probably a good thing.

jeff

Sandra's Favorite Swiss Time Piece