Pardon My Wake, I'm Lookin' For Snake (Eels)

   Yesterday before breakfast I checked my email.  Lo and behold there was something in my in box from Jack Randall (the dean of reef fish biology at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu.)  Here is what Jack had to say:

I think the snidely guy in the sport coat may be Mark

   Mark:

Helen and I expected you and grad students March 4.  What happened?

Aloha, Jack

   Obviously the Great Oz wasn't writing to me out of the blue.  It was a case of mistaken identity, he'd sent it to the wrong email address.  Possibly Mark's last name is Hills.  I replied to the email anyway, telling him that when he caught up with Mike he should rip him a new one.  And by the way, what did he think of my picture of the Trumpetfish with a mouthful of Hawaiian red lionfish?

    By mid-morning it was time for Sandra to go for her weekly stint at the church and, on her way, I had her drop me off at the pier.   I've always liked the pier, but its importance as a snorkeling venue has gone way

In the words of the Munchkins, "Follow the yellowtail coris."

up.

     In their infinite wisdom, the  authorities have closed Kahalu'u for the month of  March to repair a sewer leak.  We don't know if this leak is contaminating the bay, but there is no doubt that the park is closed.  And how it can take a month to fix a sewer leak is also an interesting question.  We drove by the park a couple days ago and the answer is, if you don't start the work you may never get the sewer fixed.  The gates were locked,  emergency tape was strewn all around,  but there was no evidence of anyone repairing a sewer.  With any luck the coral and the fish are getting a rest.  Also, with any luck, the park will be re-opened sometime this year.

   Down at the pier, as I was slipping into my neoprene vest, I recognized a fellow from church.  John is interested in the fish and is following the blog.  More importantly, he is a diplomat and spends some time

Bluefin Trevally wreak havoc among the scad

each year in Indonesia.  He has promised to give us the inside scoop on snorkeling on Lombok, easily reached by ferry from Bali.  John had just completed a mile swim and was strapping on his helmet , preparing to  head home on his bike.  He said that he hadn't seen anything special on his swim but the conditions were great.

   What John didn't tell me was that while the water was flat and clear it was absolutely frigid.  It had rained two nights in a row and the cold fresh water had percolated into the bay.  But it was clear and we're tough fish watchers, right?

    On my way out I saw a really big yellow tail coris which I followed for a few minutes, hoping that he would turn.  Eventually he headed seaward and I headed out to the fourth swim buoy.  Just past the buoy I ran into the bait ball, the large congregation of big eye scad.  The previous night Sandra and I had watched a documentary, Mexico Pelagico, on Netflix.  This pelicula was in large part a  documentary about shark fishing in the Sea of Cortez and around the Yucatan.  There was lots of footage of eco-minded Mexican

Magnificent Snake Eel,  Myrichthys magnificus, Kailua Kona 2017

divers approaching small sharks as they attacked just such bait balls.  One has to wonder why there are no large predators associated with this bait ball.  Have we killed all the sharks?  Did those small sharks never live in Hawaii?  The documentary had a happy ending, stating that the Mexicans will decrease their shark fishing in hopes that tourists will go with guides in Cabo and Cancun to look at the remaining sharks.

   I got a couple pictures of a trio of blue fin trevallies as they raced through the bait ball, scattering the multitude of silver fishies, ass over tea kettle, and then it was time to move on.  As I swam away I contemplated again just how damn cold the water was.  But suddenly I didn't care a fig for the water temperature.  Below me, slithering across the sand, not twenty feet off the fourth swim buoy,  was a snake eel, snow white with big black spots.  You may guess (correctly) that I have pathetically little experience with snake eels.  After all, in the words of the expert, "As they are nocturnal, they are rarely seen by snorkelers."   This aside, about ten years ago Sandra saw one just like this in the sand nearer the malecon.

    There is one here in Hawaii, the freckled snake eel, that I have seen a few times, but not in any way like

Fire in the hole!  The tail of the magnificent snake eel.

this fine fellow.  The freckled snake eel, when you see him, is entirely buried in the sand with just his head sticking out.  He attracts your attention by continuous jaw action,  sand puffing as water is expelled through the gill openings.  Until you get a close look, he could be a bizarre benthic invertebrate, or possibly a pulsatile underwater spring.

    This snake eel, in the words of Egon Spangler, was a full figure apparition. he had a long skinny body and a head clearly larger, so he looked much more like a viper than any moray eel would presume to do.  Unlike a moray eel, he didn't swim.  He moved very much like a snake in your garden. You know, serpentine.   Having been trained in the school of the Deep Diving Bob Hillis, I gave this guy my best shots.  He was twenty feet down and I descended about sixteen of those, getting close enough for a good look and some photographs.

   After the first dive, I thought I'd lost him. But no!  He was almost where I had left him, wriggling along the sandy bottom.  As I watched, he slithered up to a hole in the sand and entered it head first.  I'm going to guess that the snake eel was two feet long and that all but his terminal six inches of tail entered that hole.  So there was a foot and a half of eel down the hole and just a small reminder of a tail wiggling on the sand for

Screw Venice, I'm staying in bed.

me to photograph.   I had no reason to think that he wasn't  going to disappear down that hole, but  a minute later he backed out and resumed his leisurely cruise across the bottom.  I suppose that he was looking for a shrimp or some other tasty denizen of the sand, as opposed to checking out home sites.  Hence, it was a boy snake eel, not a girl snake eel.

   At this point, I noticed a snorkeler right by the swim buoy and I signaled him over.  I told him about the snake eel on the bottom and dove twice to point it out.  In response, he said, "I guess your eyes are better than mine."

   Suffice it to say, I was nonplussed.  If someone told me that twenty feet down was a snake eel, I would do all I could to get a look and here this guy was la dee da, what the f*ck, I guess I'll swim in and have a cappuccino.  Reminds me of a friend back at the Salem Hospital for the Bewildered.  Jack (we'll change the name as, unlike Donald Trump, I don't like to insult people directly...I prefer the oblique insult that doesn't

Coral Blenny, breeding male Kailua Kona 2017

lead to hard feelings and slander law suits).  Anyway, Jack was a parent chaperone when the high school band went to Vienna.  On the train from the home of the Hapsburgs down to Venice, the band got into some bad clams and many of them, including my friend Jack, were plagued with a querulous tummy.  The band was housed just across the bridge, a one euro bus ride from what I have long regarded as one of the premier tourist attractions in the world.  Were talkin' Venezia, here.  And Jack chose not to get his derriere out of the bed to catch a look at the Piazza San Marco.  I would have had to be dead not to take that bus ride.  Some of you may wish I was dead regardless of the bus ride.

    Talk about the Bridge of Sighs.  When I hear a story like that all I can do is sigh.  And that goes for this

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me..

story, too.  If I ever swim off a snake eel, or fail to take the bus into Venice, would somebody please shoot me.  So I muttered something to myself like, "Have it your way, dude." and we swam our separate ways.    

   On the way in I took advantage of the wonderful clear, cold water, controlling my shivering just long enough to get a picture of a male coral blenny as it swam across the bottom and a family of four handsome blue goatfish.  Just before I swam ashore, I discovered this handsome peppered moray chlling in the shallows.  Check out the white iris with the four black dots.  Woof.

   At home, I immediately repaired to John Hoover's Ultimate Guide, verifying that what I had seen was a magnificent snake eel.  And how else can you describe that slithery fellow, magnificent hits the nail on the head.  And then I checked my email.  Jack Randall had written back and this is what he said:

Or possibly this is Mark!

Jeffrey:

Great photo.  No, I would say the last fish a trumpetfish would consider eating is the Hawaiian Turkeyfish.  My guess is a shrimp, such as Saron marmoratus.

I will forward your e-mail to colleagues who know invertebrates better than I.

Aloha, Jack

    So I guess that puts my quixotic quest for the red lionfish to rest.  And it's probably a good point to end this tail of the snake eel, as well.

Jeff