Fish Watching and Fish Painting with the Kids and a Mystery Fish

     Perhaps I'm perverse in nature, only to a mild extent, well within the realms of the law,  but I am going to reverse the order suggested in the title and show you the mystery fish first. 

Satchmo Latches on to Simba

    A day or two before Andy and Shawn headed back across the sea to the relative safety of San Rafael, Ca. the three of us went snorkeling out on the PAR.  Conditions were clement and we mostly saw what you would expect.  Shawn nabbed a white mouth moray by the heiau on the way out and we saw the spotted surgeons frolicking in the swell as it crashed against the outer reef.

   But on the way in we were treated to a most unusual sight.  There was a large golden trumpetfish hanging just outside the rip rap at the tip of the small jetty that protects that sacred thatched heaiu and he had something in his mouth.  This is not the first time that I have seen a trumpetfish with a partially swallowed prey.

   As so often is the case, when I reviewed the picture I was astounded.  I thought for sure that the trumpetfish had swallowed a lionfish.  I have never recorded the  Hawaiian red lionfish and I'm quite sure that the rules of birdwatching would permit me to claim this fish as it sat, partially digested,  in the trumpetfish gullet.

Tell that to the Trumpetfish!

    I showed the accompanying picture to John Hoover who was reluctant to say that it was a lionfish.  He thought it might be a shrimp.  The spoil sport.  My other question to the Great Oz was whether or not the spines of a lionfish, notoriously toxic to Homo sapiens would be sufficiently toxic to a trumpetfish to cause severe injury or, at the minimum, give Louis Armstrong pause as he considered the pros and cons of ingesting that tasty leonine morsel.  John left that question unanswered.  In his defense, it is possible that he doesn't know everything.

   To compensate for this lack of input, I reviewed the available literature and while its clear that Homer Simpson would not partake of fugu sushi a second time, its not so clear where he stands on lionfish.

    Like forever it has been my opinion that the Hawaiian red lionfish occurs only below snorkeling depth.  As in so many cases, this is because the guys who write the book are divers.  Sandra and I have a moderate

Lionfish Mort.  Spotfin Lionfish on the beach, Jemeluk, Bali

amount of experience with the cousins of the HRL in Bali.  In the Land of the Barong, these fish occur regularly within a foot or so of the surface.  And that rip rap that shelters the Inner Harbour from the Wide Wavy Windswept Pacific virtually screams, "Lionfish Habitat!"  So if any one of you Jack Tars thinks that this is a lionfish protruding from Satchmo's mouf, I will bless you and tick it off on the 2017 list.

    Take that, John Hoover!






       Today was totally different.  At 9 AM Sandra and I arrived at the Kailua Kona Public Library, our car stuffed with materials for the Hawaii's Fantastic Fish Experience, so named by Jennifer Losalio, the children's librarian at the Kona library.  The plan was for me to given a short lecture on fish identification to a group of children ranging in age from 8 to 12.  The class was limited to eight participants and, as it turned out, six parents.  This limit was reached as it was Jenn's goal that each child would go home with a fish and that only one day would be devoted to the class. 

Josephine Painted a Milletseed Butterflyfish

    Hence, the class size was limited to the number of paper mache fish I was able to make for the children to paint...eight.  As it turned out, I ended up making 16 models, eight of the teardrop butterfly and eight of the  Hawaiian dascyllus keikis.  The idea with the latter was to teach about global warming and the death of our cauliflower coral, where the baby dascyllus find shelter while they grow up big and strong.  While the idea of teaching about global warming was a bit of a reach, the kids will get to keep the teardrops for their Christmas trees and I will capture the dascylli for my propaganda purposes.  Que nefarioso!

     No surprises, this being Hawaii the kids were utterly adorable, albeit between 7 and 9.  They listened patiently as I plunged into my topic.   But  it became clear that they had not the foggiest idea where Portland, Oregon was.  Nor did they  care much about why a warm climate was so important for a coral reef.   I concluded that teaching them how to make fish lists was way above their pay grade and it was best to move along.

    Using my paper mache models and a variety of fish field guides that I borrowed from the library shelves we identified six butterflyfish.  The first fish was a threadfin butterfly.  I had the idea that the kids would take

Lio concentrates under Mom's watchful eye.

turns identifying the fish and read the names from the field guides.  Problem was, as far as I could tell, only one of the group was able to read.  The reader's name was Victor and  boy could he read.  Not stopping at the name, he read the entire piece written by John Hoover on the threadfin butterflyfish.   There were big complicated words in there.  So here we were with one nine year old who could read at a high school level and seven, mostly a year or two younger,  who apparently could not read at all. Obviously, that is unfair; it only seemed like they couldn't read.  Right?  I mean, they had all come to the library voluntarily.  Certainly they must know how to...

    The conundrum was solved by holding up a fish and having them find the picture in the field guide, never mind reading the name.  At least they know that if they ever master reading, they can find a field guide in the library and it will show the picture of the fish and provide a written name.  Jennifer seemed to think that this was a significant accomplishment.

    Immediately after this  invaluable exercise we got to the fish painting.  Truth to tell, this was why 100% of them had come to the Fantastic Fish Experience.  They wanted to paint a darn fish!  I had been encouraged to draw pencil lines on the fish and these were somewhat helpful.  This is to say that in many cases paint was distributed according to those lines.  It was impressive the concentration that the kids applied to this task.  It was also

Alyssa and Gramma painting at the library.

impressive how much paint they could get on a fish.  Luckily, Jennifer's paints washed off easily, as everyone got plenty of black and yellow paint (or a mixture of the two) on their hands.  At the end of the painting, each of them was given a wooden skewer and allowed to animate their fish by putting a twinkle of white on the black eye.  Not only were they ichthyologists but also ophthalmologists.  And all for one low price.

    A few parents allowed their children to stay for the full hour and those four got extra attention.  They learned how to mix paper mache paste (flour to water about 1 to 3 by volume, stir with a fork), how to tear newspaper strips (Yes, Virginia, there is a right way to tear newspaper.) and how to apply the pasty paper to the stiff paper fish.  And each of the four remaining kids got to make a fish eye out of caulk, after I demonstrated the real use of caulk by patching a crack beside the library door.  

   I think everyone had a great time and with a little luck Sandra, Jennifer and I instilled a bit of love for the reef fish in the next generation.

jeff

Haku and Dad.  Photos of the children by Sandra Gray