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