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.