How To Fix a Mask Leak and Vice Versa

The Lord Krishna, Preserver of Fishwatchers.

    For those of you who are regular readers, you will have noticed a hiatus in the blogs.   This was the direct result of an encounter that your faithful correspondent had with the dermatologists.  That's right, plural, they ganged up on me.  The first assailant, Dr. Sousko, did three biopsies and discovered a lesion on my left lower eyelid that he deemed a possible carcinoma.   As a parting shot, he told me
that I should stay out of the ocean for a week.

   Being the consummate squeaky wheel, I got in to see the dermatologic surgeon a few days later.  The exotic and mysterious Dr. Paniker took care of the basal cell cancers on my left shoulder and right flank, creating open lesions each just smaller than a dime.  Parenthetically, I would note that dimes may seem small until they are favorably compared with gaping holes in your integument.  She

Nothing like a couple Dos Equis to cure a mask leak.

also biopsied the lesion on my eyelid and did it with such skill and precision that I am still enjoying the gift of binocular vision.  Hare Krishna!

   Dr. Paniker called just two days later to tell me that the biopsy on my eyelid was not cancer ... she had given it a 50-50 chance and that second 50 would have involved taking a divot out of that eyelid that would make Arnold Palmer proud.   Dr. P. and I go way back, so after she dispensed the good news,  I gave her a recommendation for Abhirucchi Indian restaurant in Vancouver.  She, in turn, gave me a recommendation.  No swimming for two weeks.

   During periods when, for some reason or another, I am not able to don a snorkel mask, I have been known to dispense with shaving.  And so for the next ten days I did (or didn't) do just that.  Beard growing is enjoying a certain renaissance.  Stephen Colbert and Alex Trebeck, among other luminaries are now sporting whiskers.  While I didn't look like the fellow who shills for Dos Equis or his look alike that ran off with Cher at the end of Mama Mia (Here We Go Again!) the beard was gaining a surprising level of approval.  Sandra liked it.  And last Sunday, the day before the beard was supposed to come off, it received the nod of approval from the guy who was greeting at the Lutheran Church. He has a beautiful young wife, so I don't think he was trying to

I dig your style, dude.  Now let's go snorkeling.

hit on me.  But it was a nice beard.

    If you excel at things associated with the calendar, like how many days before the start of Festivus, you may have noted that Wednesday to Monday does not quite add up to a fortnight.  Never the less, being a scoff law and an iconoclast, I had decreed that Monday was the day I would reenter the deep blue sea.  Now, on Sunday night, with my rendezvous with destiny just around the corner, I was faced with a dilemma:  to shave or not to shave.  What should have been an easy decision was dramatically altered by my son Charles' recent visit.  Chuck sports a beard that would put Jeffrey Lebowski to shame.  AND YET, after purchasing a Cressi mask from comely and bejeweled Ms. Alex at Kona Honu Divers, he was able to snorkel with barely a leak.  He saw two tiger sharks wearing that mask, for crying out loud!

    Suffice it to say, vanity got the best of me and I decided to take the beard snorkeling.  The next

So its  lagoon triggerfish you are wanting to be.

morning found me on the beach in front of the King Kam, bewhiskered but game.  As I was getting in the water I struck up a conversation with a nice young lady in a wide brimmed hat, the type that I used to wear sailing but now believe that it makes me look too much like a geek.  The hat looked pretty good on her, though.  She was watching her two girls, three and five if I'm not mistaken, argue over a boogie board.  After she settled their hash, we had a pleasant chat during which she revealed that she was from Perth.

    On further questioning she stated that her mother-in-law, who lives a safe distance away in Tasmania,  watches birds when she comes to Western Australia to visit.  And there is a worthy wine district, Margaret River, three hours to the south. (of Perth, not Tasmania.)

    Western Australian milfs could delay destiny only so long, and soon I had my mask in place and I was snorkeling across the Inner Harbour.  Quicker that you could say, "Water up your nose." I knew

Lagoon Triggerfish, Kahalu'u May 2013

that this was a bad idea.  Even in the protected lagoon I was surfacing to empty the mask about once  a minute.  Amazingly, for one could hardly be expected to watch fish while getting water boarded, I immediately found something interesting.  There was a tiny fish working around a weed covered rock, pecking at it every now and then.  He was creamy white below and had a variety markings on his dorsum.  For a young child, he was modestly friendly, more engaging than Sheila's daughters, that's for sure.  Once he approached me face to face, as if to measure the level of seawater in my mask.  It soon became apparent that this was an extreme juvenile lagoon triggerfish.  I dove him and attempted a few pictures, only one of which actually captured the fish in focus.

   Several times, but not this summer, I have encountered rectangular triggerfish in the early stage of their career as the designated representative of the Kingdom of Hawaii.  To the best of my recollection, this is my first extreme juvenile lagoon triggerfish.  Out on the reef, the rectangular is more common, but the lagoon is far from rare and I have wondered why I never saw one of these little fellows.  Now

Crenulated Auger, T. crenulatus   King Kam  September 2018

I have.

    Not to be deterred by mask leak, I made my way out past the heiau and into the small bay.  There was  a modest chop on Monday; suffice it to say, that didn't make things better in the leaking mask department.  In explaining this adventure to my beloved, I had referenced my ongoing experiment with the coral croucher.  Brave and water-logged soul that I am, I did make it to the entrance of Paul Allen's lagoon and located the correct coral. As I have previously stated, this is made easier by the relative dearth of live branching corals in this locale.  I am pleased to announce that the coral croucher was still there, sequestered deep in his calciferous abode.

    Fun is fun, but having been emptied a couple dozen times my mask was fogging badly and I headed back into the lagoon.  Before landing, I always look in the sand, mostly hoping for a gurnard.  This time I found the crenulated auger that you you see here.  The snail was still in the shell and I attempted to leave him undisturbed.

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A Beutiful Day at Black Sand Beach 49

    Yesterday I got up early and clipped off the beard and shaved.   We had decided to go someplace interesting, in this case Black Sand Beach 49 at the Mauna Lani, the better to induce my sweetie off the beach and into the sea.  As he left, my son the bearded wonder had kindly offered Sandra the
opportunity to try out his new mask.  This, I thought, would be a superb chance. and we transferred Sandra's signature yellow snorkel from her old mask, which is virtually ancient, to the brand new Cressi with the black cowling.  Snazzy, no?  Like Killer Bees.

    It was a gorgeous morning at the Mauna Lani.  The water at BSB 49 was flat and inviting and soon we had traversed the eponymous black sand slope and were in the warm, clear water.  Over on the left we found more live branching corals than I could have hoped for.  A long time ago, in my previous life as a bird watcher, a young stud birder opined that to find a really rare bird, you have to look at every shorebird in a flock of hundreds.  A task of this magnitude is not one for someone with a short attention span. And so I set about examining all the branching corals within a few feet of the surface.  In the process, I found several yellow spotted guard crabs, a couple of which I was able to show to Sandra, and a few speckled scorpionfish, but no unusual crabs or coral crouchers.

Elegant Hermit Crab in an Encrusted Triton   Black Sand Beach 49  September 2018

    What we did find was an old friend, an elegant hermit crab living in a venerable triton shell well encrusted with crimson coralline algae.  Back in the Alii Villas days, we kept one such fellow in the aquarium.  He was the Mikado and as regal a crab as ever plucked a carcass.

   The two of us swam across the bay, loving the warm ,clear water.  In the middle, on the dark sand bottom, we spotted a flea cone down about thirty feet.  Conditions were so good that we swam all the way to the northeast corner of the bay, not seeing anything new.  At this point (we had been swimming for about 40 minutes) Sandra told me that she had been experiencing a persistent mask leak from the very beginning and that her right eye was burning.  What a trooper to keep such a secret for so long.

    Our compadre, Bob Hillis, once remarked that finding a new mask is sometimes very difficult. 

Adolescent Fourspots out looking for trouble.

Although to my eye the new Cressi mask was a perfect fit for Sandra, this was not true in practice.  Sandra can't wait to renew her acquaintance with her tried and true mask.

    We got my sweetie to shore and then I spent another fifteen minutes looking at the corals in the shallows of the west end of the bay.   I'm happy to report that there really are a lot of healthy cauliflower corals in that location. I still didn't find any new crabs, but I did see a nice whitemouth moray hunting in the vicinity of three baby fourspots.  Suffice it to say, I chose my spots for hanging on to the bottom with care,  doing my very best to avoid another bout with the nice surgeons at Kaiser Permanente.

jeff

The best way to stop a mask leak is to eat the loco moko at Hana Hou in Na'alehu

   
  

Kona Eco Adventures Part Deux...Birding Hawaii's Ocean

    Hopefully you will recall the first installment of the blog detailing our trip with Deron Verbeck and Super Dave on the Manta.  This narrative picks up following the tiger shark sighting.

    Deron and Super Dave were whooping it up, apparently seeing three or four tigers at the surface,

Other guys (not me!) snorkeling with a whale shark.

one of them fourteen feet, is quite extraordinary.   Among their exultations, they remarked that the presence of the tigers may have inhibited other sharks from rising from the depths in response to the crinkled water bottle.  This internet site, https://www.sharksider.com/tiger-shark/,  suggests that tigers do attack other sharks; it is at least possible that our guides were playing off real tiger shark information.

    Feeling that the presence of those tigers precluded further exploration around the fish farm, our guides decided to head out to sea.  A whale shark had been seen three days in a row in a line of algae bloom off shore.  Among all the other possibilities, this is what we were going to look for.

    As we  headed out, we passed a small fishing boat.  I was on the bridge and Super Dave looking for a large brown smudge.  This. Dave said, is what a whale shark would look like just under the surface of the water. As we cruised along, I remarked on the number of birds working the water around the boat.  He noted that there was a large

Wedge tailed shearwater, Lady Elliot Island, thanks to Kathleen Paske

school of bait fish at the surface on which the birds were feeding,  implying that larger predator fish were just below and the object of the fishermen.  He went on to say that Deron had improved his birdwatching skills and had even participated in some bird related projects.

    Watching birds is not widely regarded as the most manly pursuit, especially when compared to swimming with tiger sharks.  However, it is arguably substantially more intellectual, you don't find many stupid bird watchers 

   It seems hard to believe, but this was the first time I had been more than a mile off shore in Hawaii.  The nice lady in the office, when detailing what we might see, had totally left out the birds.  Consequently I had not cracked a book and was unprepared for this avian challenge.  It is widely accepted that a good birder puts in two to three hours of study for every hour in the field.   Unfortunately,  I hadn't cracked a book and the trusty Swarovski binoculars were back at the ranch.  Luckily I had Deron and Super Dave to help me out.

    The first bird Deron identified was a sharp tailed shearwater.  The more common name for this

The Hawaiian Petrel  Photo Bishop Museum

species is the wedge tailed shearwater.   Shearwaters are tube nose seabirds, a group that contains petrels and albatross.  These sea going alchemists are able to turn salt water into fresh employing a specialized gland in (you guessed it) their nose,  thus enabling them to live at sea for prolonged periods.

     In the Pacific Northwest, where I cut my bird watching teeth, we commonly encounter only a single species of sheaarwater, the sooty shearwater.  Further, we only see that bird during migration. An observant birdwatcher will recognize them just beyond the breakers as he walks a sandy beach in September.  Here in Hawaii, two shearwaters nest on the main islands, wedge-tailed and Newell's.  These colonies have been drastically reduced, primarily by predation by feral cats.

    I tawt I taw a  puddy tat. And it ate us all up!   Bummer!  On our beloved Island in the Pacific, the Newell's shearwater nests at high elevation on the slopes of MaunaKea.  On Maui they nest on Haleakala.  

    Anyway, as we motored along at about ten knots, Sandra came up beside me and said, "Did you get a photograph of that bird?"   Following her indication, I saw a medium sized brown shearwater

If only our breeding seabirds had this kind of protection.

sailing right beside us, perhaps fifty feet away.  I wasn't quick enough to get a picture   If I had been quicker with my camera, I could have taken a picture that looks much like the one shown above.  This handsome photograph was taken by Kathleen Paske off Lady Elliot Island, northeast of Brisbane, Australia.  Lady Elliott is a small Island and, with any luck, the Aussies have been able to keep it puddy tat free.  There are a couple islands in the northwest chain where the less common Christmas Island shearwater breeds along with the wedge tails.  Presumably those islands are cat free.  Deron identified the sharptailed shearwater for us and it was the only species of shearwater that we recorded on the trip.

   A bit later he identified the Juan Fernandez Petrel, Pterordroma externa.   Most likely, this was the Hawaiian petrel, Pterordroma sandwichensis, also called the dark-rumped petrel. The Hawaiians call this tubenose the 'ua'u.  (Don't you just love the okina, the 17th letter in the Hawaian alphabet?)  These birds are in the same genus and look very similar.  Of course, they are widely separated geographically.  As you may recall, the Juan Fernandez Islands are off Chile.   Those far flung islands have been, for the better part of three centuries, proposed as the home of Daniel Defoe's shipwrecked hero, Robinson Crusoe.

Mr. Crusoe searching for the Juan Fernandez petrel.

   These petrels were a bit further away, but so distinctive is their plumage that once one had returned to his field guide there could be no mistaking them.   Unless, of course, he had undergone some sort of multiverse travel experience and he was sitting under a palm tree on a deserted beach, side by side with his man Friday.

    About this time it dawned on me that we did not have precise GPS coordinates for the whale shark and we were cruising back and forth in search of whatever Deron and Super Dave, astute scouts of the pelagic, might spot.  Around noon,  Super Dave yelled mahi, turned the boat and slowed.  The two of them pointed right and said the mahi mahi was attacking a school of bait just off our starboard bow.  Within a minute we watched as a luminous green and turquoise line raced sinuously through the water to the spot they had defined and then swooped abruptly and raced away.  It was both beautiful and, in its own way, quite thrilling.

   By 12:30 we were heading for the barn.  Our guides stopped by a round buoy with a single spire atop which was a booby.  It was the rare dark morph of the red footed booby, one that Deron has staked out.  He said that sometimes there are as many as three at this site.  It was quite scruffy, but once one was alerted, there was no mistaking its dark red feet.

    On our final approach to Honokohau the guides spotted a manta, got us in the water as a group and we chased it for a few minutes.  This was a pelagic manta, as opposed to the reef mantas that we see 

A pelagic manta with remoras off Honokohaua, Big Island.  Note the cephalic fins.  Photo Charles Hill, Canon D10

commonly here in Kona.  It was just under ten feet across.  But wait!  The pelagic manta was a life fish, to be sure, but to her dorsum, near what should pass as a manta's head, were two large remoras.  I had previously seen the smaller remora, E.naucrates, attached to a spinner dolphin.  These guys were the larger cousin, Remora remora.  Also a life fish.

    Charles was the faster swimmer and got the best shot with the redoubtable Canon D10.  If you look carefully you will see not only the large remoras, but the cephalic fins directing water flow on the ventral side of the head.  Good shootin', Chuck!

   This was a great trip.  Both Deron and Dave extremely friendly and knowledgeable, eager to share their knowledge.   If I had to do it over, I would study my sea birds beforehand and I would bring my binoculars, for this is a trip for a well rounded naturalist.  If you are lucky, perhaps you will get to spend a day aboard the Manta with these two superb guides.

  
  

  

The Last Day on the PAR

   Charles week in Hawaii was winding down.  We had enjoyed some pretty good adventures out of the water.  Three days prior to departure, we drove up the Old Saddle Road on the slopes of Mauna

The clowns mentioned in the narrative are more like Crusty than poor Bozo

Kea looking for pueos.  At the summit we headed into the Game Management area and climbed

another 2000 feet to the Palila Refuge. On the way up we had a nice conversation with a giant and  uniformed Hawaiian dude, packing a sidearm, no less.  He explained to us that it was inconsiderate bozos like me, driving 2 wheel drive cars, that chewed up the road.  And then he scowled and told us to have nice day.

  The road was plenty chewed up (damn those 2 wheel drives) but we made it to 6,000 feet and discovered that what had been a hunting area was now a Palila Refuge, replete with fancy gate, and shoe cleaner.  And another bozo who insulted my bird identifying abilities.  I guess we were having a little clown convention of sorts.  After I put him in his place, we enjoyed the cool mountain air and

The saddle as seen from the Game Management area.

took a few pictures of the fancy gate and, on the way back down, the spectacular scenery in the saddle.  

   The following day we went snorkeling at City of Refuge, where the reef sharks were decidedly not in residence.  Charles saw a small great barracuda (is that an oxymoron?) while I was about twenty yards away looking for sharks.  At least that's my excuse.  Otherwise, City wasn't all that interesting.  At least the ocean water was cool, which is a pleasure on these hot days.

   Then it was off to South Point.  I had never been to South Point before, which seems like a huge oversight, given its geographical significance and the fact that it is only an hour away from Kailua.  As it turns out its a twelve mile drive down a narrow but straight and paved road that descends

Charles and Sandra snap away while the SYT contemplates a jump.

gradually from about a thousand feet eventually reaching the sea at South Point.  For the last four miles there are lush, green meadows sweeping away on both sides, with a handful of beeves grazing here and there.

   At this point I recalled the Bristle-thighed Curlew, which to the best of my recollection, rendered a dab foggy at this stage of my dotage, is occasionally seen in these very grassy acres near South Point.  Two large shorebirds, the Bristle-thighed Curlew and the Bar tailed Godwit, breed in Alaska and then migrate southwest, over the ocean.  The godwit makes it all the way to Australia non-stop and, at the start of this odyssey, has the greatest fat stores of any migratory bird.  The BTC doesn't go quite so far and some make a stop in Hawaii. As we made our descent through the meadows, I asked Charles and Sandra to scan the grasslands for large brown shorebirds while I split my attention between curlew searching and the macadam dropping away in front of the

The southernmost sweeties in the entire United States.

car.  Or as the bumper sticker says: Extreme Danger!  Birdwatcher at the wheel.

    Well, we didn't see any curlews on our way down to South Point.  Once there, we parked on the shoulder before the road deteriorated.  Just north of the parking area is a cliff with a drop of 40 feet into the sea.  This spot is relatively famous for cliff diving.  In practice there is little diving, but a lot of young adults smoking, talking, in general just milling around.  While we were there we saw two young adults take a short run and enter the water feet first.  Once in the ocean, the "cliff divers" are obligated to ascend a rope ladder.

    In essentially the same area there were a few men fishing.  They had short, stout rods and their lines were far down and out to sea.  Scattered between the cliff divers and the actual point were numerous carcasses of Giant Trevally with the flanks removed.  A vulture or two would not have gone amiss.

   Finally the three of us made our trek to the actual point.  There, for a minute or so, Sandra and I were the southern most sweeties in these United States.

Green Sea Turtle on Paul Allen's Reef

   I handed the keys over to Charles and he drove us back up through the meadows.  Scanning the grass without driving duties was clearly safer for all concerned, but I still didn't come up with a curlew.  Perhaps if we had had that helpful fellow from the Palila Refuge in the car he would have spotted one.  We'll never know.  

    Which brings me to Charles penultimate day.  Concluding that in the last few days we had done enough driving, we decided to make Paul Allen's Reef here in Kona the last snorkel for Charles' vacation.  He thought the water in the Inner harbour was chilly.  I thought it was a refreshing 80°.  We swam out and across the little bay.  I was able to locate the same Pocillipora coral head from a week before.  This was made possible by the paucity of living cauliflower coral in the vicinity of the PAR.  This was the only one near the mouth of Paul's lagoon. Diving down, I spotted two coral crouchers on opposite sides of a leaf deep in the coral.  I also spotted two guard crabs.

Devil Scorpionfish with blue oral projections.

    Using a glove, Charles duplicated my diving and holding, was able to see the crabs, but could not find the coral crouchers.   This diving and holding eight feet down is sort of intermediate stuff, so I was proud of him.That's a my boy.

    Its mildly interesting that the coral crouchers were in the very same coral for over a week.. One has to wonder how much tiny scorpionfish move around.  The croucher and the speckled scorpionfish are virtually glued in place during the day, but I assume they move around at night.  In discussing this, Sandra and I named some other fish that pretty much stay in the same location for long periods.  Our personal record goes to the Phoenix Island Damsel waif that lived in the same spot on the shallow reef in front of Alii Villas for over a year and a half.  As it was the only such fish, this made the identification of the specific individual in that particular location certain.  

   We swam around the corner and caught up with two Potter's angelfish.  They were very dark, with just a hint of orange along the dorsum and around the face.  The blue tail was another clue.

  Over on the shore side, Charles spotted a young turtle breathing at the surface.  We swam to within seven feet, he noticed us and then swam towards us, giving us a friendly once over.  This is the second time recently when we have had relatively young turtles approach us.   Is the current generation of green sea turtles loosing their aversion to homo sapiens?

Devil Scorpionfish,  Kailua Kona Pier, September 2018

    We enjoyed our time with the turtle and then  headed back into the lagoon.   Fifteen yards from shore I spotted a large devil scorpionfish.  He was leaning on a rock, looking up at us.  Note from the picture that the color and texture of his skin is precisely the same as that of the rock.  The one exception is the inside of his mouth, where you might appreciate a raised blue and white projection on the mandible and two matching blue spots on the upper jaw. I have not noticed this before and I wonder if these projections are associated with fishing.  I personally had to restrain myself from putting my finger in his mouth.

    In any event, it was a wonderful fish on which for Charles to end his Hawaiian vacation.

jeff

Green Sea Turtle and blue water.  Does it get any better than that?

Kona Eco Adventures

    Yesterday we spent the day on the Manta, the pride of Kona Eco Adventures and Manta Ray Dives, searching for the wild animals of the Pacific Ocean.  We had been looking forward to this trip for a couple weeks.  This outfitter had been recommended as the best on the island for putting us in touch with large ocean animals, especially sharks.  For some time it had been our son Charles' dream to

Sandra stores her gear aboard the Manta

swim with a tiger shark and this was to be his opportunity.  And Sandra's and mine, as well.

   The night before Charles had prepared us for a tiger shark encounter by presenting a youtube video featuring Ocean Ramsey   And, yes, her parents, who live on the north shore of Oahu, really named her Ocean.  you can find mumerous Ocean Ramsey videos on youtube.

   If you don't have the patience to watch the videos, I will tell you that Ocean is young, a devastating  blonde and takes people swimming with sharks out of Haleiwa, Oahu...in her words, "every single day."  It is her contention that sharks, especially tigers, are not dangerous in most situations if you have an understanding of what makes them tick.

    Before we set sail on the Manta, our guide, Deron Verbeck, gave us a little pep talk during which he made each of us personally attest that we were good swimmers.  Sandra and I appreciated that interrogation.  More than once guests have told us they were experienced snorkelers, only to
demonstrate at an inopportune moment that they were actually afraid of the water.  I personally think going swimming in the ocean, Ramsey or no Ramsey, is serious business.  Clearly, swimming with sharks ups the ante.

Deron Verbeck, shark hunter.  Tap the top of the nose.

   In half an hour us seven hearty shark watchin' wannabes found ourselves in the Manta, motoring slowly in a circle at a fish farm offshore from the energy lab south of  KOA. While we sat attentively, Deron gave us his version of Ocean's speech.  His position was that if you didn't do the wrong thing, which is basically turning away from the shark and attempt a flailing escape, you would probably be OK.  They both thought that facing the shark, even swimming towards it, would deter the shark.  If the shark came towards you, like any gun toting resident of the Sunshine State, you should hold your ground.  If it kept coming, like a matador you should sidestep the charging beast and push down on its nose.  Ocean demonstrates this in her video.  Daron emphasized getting on top of the nose.  If your hand is on the chin, he said, the shark will open its mouth and you will be minus one hand.  Sort of like one of those amputations they perform in the Islamic Republic when you are caught with your hand in the cookie jar.  Bummer.

Sharks hate this.  I love to torture them. 

    Unlike Ms. Ramsey,  Deron thought a shark attack was perfectly possible and had anecdotes to prove his point..  He asked us to stay close to him in the water and if we saw a shark to point at it and yell into the snorkel (you guessed it) "Shark!"  My experience yelling into my snorkel tells me this would come out as "Thark!" At that point Deron would attempt to get between the tourist and the thark and put his hand on the head.  Good Deron.

Female Monk Seal at the fish farm.  Photo Chuck Hill the younger  Canon D10

    We went into the water in batches.  Sandra, Charles and I went first, trailing Deron as he crinkled a bottle.  This is apparently like Bill Murray tinkling the keys of Sigourney Weaver's piano.  The ghosts hate that...he likes to torture them.  In the case of the crinkled bottle the sharks would be curious and
come to check it out.  However, neither Bill Murray nor Daron Verbeck attracted anything with their auditory maneuvers.
   As we were starting to swim back to  boat, Super Dave yelled that a monk seal was a on the fish farm net.  We swam back and got a good look at a 700 pound female monk seal peering longingly through the fish farm screen at a swirling mass of amberjacks.

    From a fish watching standpoint, there was a large number of amberjacks swimming outside the screen.  our guide thought that most, but possibly not all, were escapees.

    We traded out groups for monk seal watching.  At the culmination of seal watching we were all back on board when Super Dave yelled, "Tiger Shark!"  Wiki wiki the terrific trio was back in the

Swimmers and Deron (left) with the big tiger.
Photo by Super Dave

water.  Moments later I was 20 feet away from a ten foot tiger shark.  I watched for five seconds at that close range and then he turned slowly and swam away.  We waited for a minute or two to see if he would return and then it was the next group's turn.  

    While they were in the water, Charles told me that he had seen two sharks, one was behind us while I was watching the one in front.  As he watched, that tiger turned away and at that point he came next to us for a look.  Super Dave apparently had both sharks in view, but Deron, Sandra and I were focused on the one in front.  for those few seconds, Charles was on his own. 

     The third group going in had the biggest treat.  A 14 foot tiger came within 20 feet of our boat.  We could see it from the deck.  It was much more brown than I would have expected and big.  Up on the bridge, Super Dave took a picture of this encounter with his cell phone.  Here you can see how close the swimmers were to the big tiger shark.  Note on the left that Daron is much closer to the shark.   And below you will see his picture of that beast that I borrowed from his Facebook page. 

    As the third group got back on board, the tiger sharks departed.  Before we left the area, a small group of bottle nose dolphins swam right aft of the Manta.  These, too, are big animals, three times larger than spinners.  But how could they possibly compete with tiger sharks?

   In a second installment I will blog about the rest of our adventure.  No tiger sharks, but some pretty cool stuff.

jeff

The biggest tiger shark as photographed by Deron Verbeck.   How cool is that?

 

Getting Ready for Company

    More than anyplace else that I have lived, one can find virtually everything he needs to run a household at garage sales.  The Big island of Hawaii is a place of itinerants, us hau'olis come and go with fierce regularity.  And more often that not, when we leave it is simply not economical to take our possessions with us.  One can save the thousands of dollars required to move our dishes, chairs and beds and replace them with new stuff where ever we land in the lower 48.

Austin Rogers, Jeopardy Champion and Bargain Basement Clothes Horse

    I am reminded of a Jeopardy champion from a year ago.   Austin Rogers works as a bartender in
Manhattan and claimed that all the clothes he wore on Jeopardy he had purchased at second hand stores.  "The people of the lower east side will give away anything", he said,  "except, apparently, health care."  Austin would have a field day on Saturday morning in Kona.

   So it was, on a Saturday morning a few weeks ago, that we happened upon a young family getting ready to leave their home and set out on an adventure.  They were selling virtually everything with the intent of purchasing a motor home in Colorado and touring the country.  Among the things that we obtained from this adventurous family was a wonderful car seat and two bags of toys.  (My younger son and his family of four are visiting in January and we got all this stuff for less that you would pay to rent a car seat for a week.)

Garage sale fisn and the bait ball

   In addition to the above mentioned children's gear, I purchased a fine set of fins and a fine snorkel for three dollars.   My other son, Charles, is coming for a visit in two days and it is time to press that gear into action.  he and I being roughly the same size, it seemed reasonable that I test out the equipment in advance of his arrival.  Besides, its summer at the beach and any excuse to go for a swim is a good one.

    Yesterday I swam on the Ironman side of the pier.  The water was a little cloudy, but it was a perfect temperature.  I'm going to guess 84 degrees with cooler spots courtesy of the nightly rains. 
The new fins were marvelous and I got a picture of the fins with the scads from the baitball swimming just below.

My picture of the coral croucher

   That day I had used the snorkel hitched on to the mask and Charles asked if I would try out the one that I purchased from the Colorado bound family.  So the next day I took a dip on the Paul Allen side.  The water in the Inner Harbour was a pleasant 84 and just a bit cloudy. I saw a nice fat Christmas wrasse by the heiau and then it was over the rip rap and across the small inlet.  Not far from the entrance to Paul's private lagoon, I saw an inviting cauliflower coral with a nearby hand hold.  Diving down and hanging on, I was pleased to see not only the relatively common red guard crab with yellow spots, but also a coral croucher.  This was my second or third croucher.

     My photographic attempts were not very fruitful, so just like the first time I saw a coral croucher, I'm showing you my incredibly weak effort and someone else's picture, so you know what were talking about.

    The croucher is a tiny fish, perhaps an inch and a half in length, a relative of scorpiofish, that lives deep between the leaves of Pocillipora coral.  It is totally dependent on this genus of coral for habitat.  You will hopefully recall that I have been commenting on the warm, rather than hot,  water this summer.   Unless I am mistaken this is our third summer with reasonable water temperatures, following two disastrous years when virtually all our Pocillipora coral was wiped out.

A coral croucher in an aquarium

    As I swam back across the inlet, I noted how many cauliflower corals were now thriving,  I dove several of them and on my third such investigation I ran face to face with a small octopus.  His head was about as big as one of those hacky sacks we used to monkey around with in the seventies.   Every
time I got near, he hunkered down;  my best effort caught a picture of his radial eye  Never the less, this incarnation of the holy spirit got his song and Charles is going to get a very lucky snorkel.

jeff

Your faithful correspondent and the lucky snorkel.