Netherlands 2 - Italy 0 or A Sunny Morning at Kahalu'u

    Its funny how things work out.  Yesterday I was going to waste the better part of the day watching young women play soccer halfway around the world in France.  Strange man that I am, I was looking forward to this.

     I had become a fan of the team from the Netherlands while our car was being repaired.  Two hours

of forced leisure had been imposed upon me, so I made may way a few blocks to Daylight Mind Coffee, which happily provides a decent cuppa  joe and a killer view of Kailua Kona.  Eschewing the view, I had plugged both my phone and tablet into a surger and proceeded to waste those two hours texting my friends and watching the Netherlands beat Japan in a squeaker.  The Dutch pulled ahead in the 89th minute on a penalty kick.  Netherlands 2 - Japan 1.  I really got behind the Dutch girls so, with a little help from my friend Paul Simon, I wrote them a bit of a fight song:

   She's a Dutch girl, she doesn't try to hide it
   She's got Orange on the soles of her shoes,
   She's a Dutch girl, She used to play for Leiden,
   Now she's in the World Cup with nothin' to lose.
   Tanana. Tanana.  She's got orange on the soles of her shoes.

   As I was settling in beside the television, Sandra was preparing her escape; she was off to the church for a class in making leis.  But hold the presses!  FS 1 did not have the soccer game.  I pulled

Longnose Butterfly and Yellow Tang.  Amarillo By Morning.

out my phone and asked Google about Netherlands - Italy.  In Mountainview, Ca. at Google Headquarters there is a lady who, much like the Great Oz, sits on a stool behind a curtain and, among her many other duties, she keeps track of the starting time of sporting events and translates them into Hawaii Time.  If one has messed up and the event has already occurred, she provides the final score.  In this instance she stated, Netherlands 2 - Italy 1.

    Suddenly, I had the morning free.  It took me only a few minutes to change into my swimsuit and throw my snorkel and camera into the mesh bag, Then we were off to Kahalu'u, with a quick stop at the Kona Lutheran Church of the Holy Trinity la dee doo dah.

   It was actually a glorious morning, the sky washed to a clear blue, and I should have been ashamed to think that I was going to waste it in front of the TV.  Luckily I have no pride.

   The water was warm and I set off with a fine sense of optimism.  Sandra and I had gone to the City of Refuge with our friends Peter and Marla just two days earlier and had seen nothing of merit.  I was

Gosline's Sharpnose Blenny  Deos the TG 5 rock or what?

sure that the welcoming waters of K Bay would be more productive.  At the start, there were not a lot of fish, but the ones that were present were cooperative, sort of languid as they cruised leisurely along on this Saturday morning.

   At this juncture you will be treated to a bit of a slide show.  I didn't see anything world shaking or have any scientific epiphanies, but I did get a few shots that may amuse you.  The lovely palenose parrotfish speaks for herself and the longnose butterfly and yellow tang make a cute pair.  Especially if you are partial to the color yellow. Sadly, in spite of the pretty fish, these pictures do a fair job of highlighting the state of the coral in this once magnificent bay.

   The camera and I did pull off one coup.  In a small pond I found a Gosline's fanged blenny.  These little wiggle worms make their living by imitating cleaner wrasses and nipping scales off unsuspecting customers. They are about the size of those stubby pencils they give you to keep score when you play miniature golf.  Maybe not quite that big around.  You know...tiny.  In such an instance, all you can do is point the camera in the right direction and hope that it discerns what it is that you want it to focus upon.  As you can see, the TG 5 picked off the blenny magnificently.  Do you like those luxurious fins?  In real life with only your eyes, you will never see the fins.

The adolescent Freckle faced hawk gives yours truly the fish eye.

    Shortly after my blenny encounter I ran into one of my favorite fish, the juvenile of the freckle faced hawkfish.  So different is this keiki from his parents, that I have in the past given him a different name, Forster's Hawkfish, after the species name, P. forsteri.  This fellow,who was attempting to hide under a ledge, was larger than any other I had seen before.  As you can see, his chartreuse cap is fading and his freckles are becoming larger and darker.  Does he need to see my dermatologist?  I took the picture using a fill in flash, not appreciating that there was a bit of sediment between me and my subject.  I hope you are able to ignore the illuminated specks and enjoy this adolescent hawk.

   I was watching a pretty pink tailed triggerfish when a large peppered moray broke cover.  When one thinks about moray eels that are active during the day, one tends to think of the whitemouth moray.  This large eel may not be quite so common as the whitemouth, but especially at the Kailua pier, he has quite a diurnal presence.  This individual was six feet long and, when he flexed, as big around as my thigh.  He swam and

Big, bad peppered moray cruises the coral in K Bay.

swam, working through and around what was left of the coral.  I followed him for almost two minutes.

    Over by the Rescue Shelter I found a pair of Canthigaster jacator, our cute little Hawaiian puffer.  They made a cute couple but I couldn't get them to pose together in the open.

    The swim was winding down, but before I got out I was treated to a show by a group of yellow tail coris.  There were two large males and a number of females.  Here I am including a picture of the latter. She is twisted in such away as to call attention to the deep orange base of her pectoral fin.  This is seldom displayed in this way and gives a pretty accent to her flank.

    After I showered and changed, I sat in the shelter and enjoyed the cool morning breeze.  While I was checking out the pictures on the camera, I struck up a conversation with a young couple who were preparing to go snorkeling. They were about thirty and on a single week trip to Hawaii from New Zealand.  The guy was handsome as a movie star and his wife was equally attractive.  She

Yellowtail Coris female, The orange pectorals accent her flank.

reminded me a bit of Carli Lloyd, one of the stars of the U.S. women's team.  For being so attractive, Carli is a real beast.  A big, strong girl that scores a lot of goals for the stars and stripes, she is married to professional golfer.  Now I ask you, what do you get when you mate an aggressive striker with a golfer?  A hockey player?  I just hope that Carli and her husband are happy.

   The kids from Kiwi-land seemed to be happy.  They took turns spraying each other with sun screen then headed into K bay.  I'm sure they saw some good fish.  Or barring that, at least had some fun in the warm water.

    By the way, our mechanic could not pinpoint the noise in the Honda.  He told me to come back when it got worse.  Sandra made a beautiful lei from plumeria and pua keni keni. I'm hoping she wears it to church. And the Dutch girls play Sweden on Wednesday at 3 PM Eastern Time in Lyon.  That should make it 8 PM in France and 9 AM in Hawaii.  If you want to know when you should tune in, just ask the lady behind the curtain.

jeff

   

Carli Lloyd.  The U.S. plays England on Tuesday in Lyon.  See you there.

   

The Dude Abides or What is the life span of a coral croucher?

    We have been rather busy lately, what with restocking the larder, a never ending bout of presto. 

automotive repairs and cleaning.  Ordinarily cleaning is just one of those things you do every day and doesn't involve so much time that it makes the list.  But we are expecting guests toot suite, in the persons of my nephew Andrew, his husband Shawn and Shawn's beloved mother, Marissa.  As Shawn refers to his mama as a little Italian lady,  I suppose the correct word relating to their imminent arrival would be presto.

   Anyway, Sandra is doing all she can to prepare for Marissa's arrival.  This involves lots of cleaning.  And not a little bit of worrying.  Apparently it has been Marissa's lifelong dream to come to these very Sandwich Islands. As many of you know, it has rained most of this week and we wonder if tempo brutto is what Shawn's mother has in mind.  Most people, when they think of coming to Hawaii envision Christmastime in Waikiki, not hurricane season in Kona.  Mama mia!

A blue eye damsel swims around an antler coral.  Kailua Bay June 2019

  Anyway, we headed to the pier on Wednesday, cruise ship day, and the sea going rats were creating such havoc that my taxi driver, the redoubtable SKG, was so overwhelmed that she found a new alternative for off loading, the parking lot at the Fish Hopper Ristorante.  As I made my way down
Alii Drive to the pier, I thought to myself,  "How much difference is there between a fish hopper and a coral croucher?"  Not bloody much, right?   With that in mind, I made my way through the maddening crowd and over to the beach in front of the King Kam Hotel.  It's summer, so the water in in the Inner Harbour is only a little cold.  Some might even call it cool.  Regardless, it was almost warm as I approached the little jetty that protects Kamehameha's heaiu.  It was calm and warm as I entered the welcoming waters of Kailua Bay.

    Out in the bay, I was pleased to see that during my hiatus, now perhaps nine weeks, the coral on the Paul Allen side has flourished.  There were several good examples of Pocillopora eydouxi thriving in the bay.  This is the bigger, leafier variety of cauliflower coral, actually called antler coral.   Virtually all the antler coral bit the dust a few years ago and these guys look more like romaine .   We have two other species of meandrina, it is actually known as cauliflower coral and is home to such specialties as the speckled scorpionfish.  The smallest is damicornis.  The common name for this species is lace coral, although it looks more like a cauliflower than the other

The Wrong Lindsey

lettuce on steroids.  If we pray hard enough, perhaps we can ward off the hot sea water and in a a couple years our antler coral will be fit for a moose.  Right now I'm grateful for the specimens that we have
which I loosely call cauliflower coral.  The medium sized two.  In my opinion.  

    As I admired the lovely cauliflower corals, I could not help thinking of the warning that appeared in my email on Tuesday.  This admonition came from Lindsey Kramer.  Lindsey is the NOAA  appointed organizer for Eyes of the Reef.  Her email yesterday heralded an oncoming bout of hot water and implored us to report signs of coral bleaching.  As I looked upon the handsome thriving antler coral, I couldn't help posing the question, "What is the difference between Lindsey Kramer and Lindsey Graham?"  The answer: Lindsey Kramer is a charming  young marine biologist and Lindsey Graham is Donald Trump's bitch.  Thank goodness we have the right Lindsey here in Kona.

    With that happy thought percolating in my bright blue brain, I reconnoitered the late Paul Allen's canal and the coral that has been home to the eponymous croucher for nigh on a year.  It took several dives, but I finally spotted the croucher.  On the next dive, I was able to get a solid grip and get the TG 5 close enough to the coral to meter and focus on this peculiar fish which is so adept at hiding in the recesses, between the leaves of the meandrina. 

    What you see here is by far the best picture of a coral croucher that I have produced.   You see virtually the entire fish, his stubby pectoral fin and his little eye, gazing up at you with a sense of foreboding.   I want to give

The Coral Croucher deep between the leaves.  Kailua Bay June 2019

credit to our friend Hai, who has taught me by example to get closer and be patient.  Hai is the master of nudibranch photography and he may well have a better photo of the coral croucher.

    Now that we have established that this peculiar little fish is a permanent resident in this one isolated coral, a question comes to mind.  Did the coral croucher in its youth swim to this coral head or did it arrive as an embryo, find itself in a suitable habitat and simply stay put.  As you will recall, such is the way of waifs in the tropical oceans.  As usual, the internet in this instance is mostly full of aquarists pondering the danger of a sting from their newly acquired pet.  There are some reports of coral crouchers never leaving their home, so this chicken and the egg question is not without merit.

    I'm now confident, that like the Dude, our coral croucher will continue to abide in his home here by Paul Allen's canal.  The croucher abides.

  jeff

  

The Pearl Wrasse Returns to the Kailua Pier

If you don't want to end up like Snorkel Bob, stay out of the cloudy water.

   Just after we arrived home from vacationing in the PNW the swell came in.  Kailua Bay, with its north cusp extending well into the ocean, is usually protected from the ravages of a large swell as the predominant direction of swell is from the north, washing down around Maui.  This swell was from the south, however, and the sand was thoroughly stirred up.  I went snorkeling once and the sediment was really dense.  A few recreational swimmers were still going out, but for us snorkelers there was little point.  Not only was there
nothing to see, but one is constantly reminded that shark attacks are more likely in turbid water.  A fellow snorkeler reaffirmed this idea by telling me that the cloudy water was giving him the creeps.

   It wasn't until three days ago that I gave the pier another go.  The swell had subsided two days earlier and the water, while far from crystal clear, allowed ten to twenty feet of visibility.   Never the less, there wasn't too much in the way of interesting fishes.  Out past the one third mile buoy I saw a stationary swimmer.  Hoping that this meant there was something to look at, I made my way another twenty yards out only to find a rather pretty young lady playing with the test of a sea urchin.  She must have been a good swimmer,

All this one is lacking is a sea urchin test.  Then she'd be perfect.

because all she was wearing was a bikini and a mask...no flippers.  And the water there was fifteen to twenty feet, so she apparently had accomplished that free dive without the aid of fins.

    I asked her if she was looking at something special or simply dicking around with the sea urchin.  She smiled and said there was nothing to see.  If you look at our included photo, albeit of someone else, you will agree with me that this was, like, just her opinion, dude.  I thought about asking her if I could take her picture for the voyeurs that read the blog, but the #Me Too movement has taught even the most dense, among whom I take my place with pride, that you just don't do that sort of thing no mo'.

    And so I turned the army around and swam back towards the pier.  I didn't see anything of note until I was quite close in, at which point I saw a small pearl wrasse co-habiting with some juvenile belted wrasses and parrotfish.  This must have been during a period of unwarranted  optimism, because I had the TG 5 in hand and was able to rip off a five quick shots.  What you see here was the only shot that was remotely usable.  Remember, water clarity is the photographers friend and that was in short supply on this morning.

Juvenile pearl wrasse with keiki parrot and belted wrasse.  Kailua Pier June 2019

 

    This fish was about 6 inches long, about the size of one of those planted rainbow trout you might have caught as a young boy scout.  So by size, we can say this was a juvenile.  While some wrasses have three distinct patterns, juvenile, adult female and (thus spake Zarathustra) super male, the pearl wrasse has only two... juvenile/ female and super male.   As you can see, the juvenile is just as pearly as the adult female, if only half as large.  The adult female used to be an expected visitor to the

Female Pearl Wrasse april 2017 on the PAR

Ironman side of the pier, but I'm going to bet it has been two years since I saw one in this location...maybe more.   If you are a student of the blog, you might remember that I saw a pearl wrasse at Mahukona about two months ago, just before we went on vacation.

    My photographic record reveals that I have seen the super male pearl wrasse (which doesn't look pearly at all) at Kahalu'u and on the PAR.   The picture we are showing here was taken several years in the past at good ol' K Bay.  There were two males who emerged from behind a coral.  Heaven only knows what they had been up to because they were acting totally stoned.  Hence the amazing shot.  

    There is just a bit of a swell today, not big enough to attract many surfers, so this might be a good opportunity to take a dip at the pier.  Maybe the little pearl wrasse is still there.  Or maybe someone is hiding behind the restrooms getting stoned.  Or both.

jeff

Super male pearl wrasse  Kahalu'u September 2012  Anybody got some good seaweed?

Kawaihae with the DeLukes

    Supposing that one needs to get off the rock once or twice a year, but yet is a great lover of the ocean and its inhabitants, what could be better than to be picked up at KOA by some like minded friends, taken to the beach for some superb snorkeling and then have lunch alfresco in the shade by

Gail DeLuke with her trusty TG 5.  Nudibranchs ahoy!

the sea?  That is the sweet deal that Sandra and I fell into two days ago.

   Our friends and house exchangers, Gail and Martin DeLuke, nabbed us and our not insubstantial baggage a bit before 9:30 and we were at Kawaihae around 11.  We had been in contact with the Godfather of Kawaihae, the redoubtable Hai On, and he had assured us that the critters were still in the harbor, so we were primed for an exciting snorkel.

    There was one unfortunate note in this otherwise well timed symphony: for the second year in a row Martin had developed ear problems and was not fit to go snorkeling.  Perhaps this proves that well traveled adage that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him put alcohol in his ears.  In any event, Gail assured us, she enjoyed snorkeling more than Martin and that he was just as happy camped out on the shore.  It was a glorious Hawaiian morning, so maybe that was the case.

Wire Coral Goby   Kawaihae Harbour 2019   Photo Gail DeLuke

    For our first snorkel, Sandra felt more comfortable swimming around the pylons, as opposed to climbing down a cliff, swimming across the harbor and snorkeling under the wharf.  And so, the three of us launched from the landing craft ramp and headed out to the first pylon.  The first thing that we noticed was that the water was a lot warmer than when we left.  The internet said it should be 80 degrees, I would put it a couple degrees higher.  And the water was clearer than we had ever seen it.

Brushy Bryozoan.  The marine equivalent of a tumbling tumbleweed.

    Ominously, perhaps, the marine soup was completely devoid of plankton.  We noticed a few months ago when the plankton was gone, so were many of the unusual organisms that make Kawaihae so special.  had we hauled or friends up here in vain?

   No matter how mnay times the three of us circled it, the first pylon yielded very little.  And so we swam out to number two.  Almost immediately, Sandra found a gloomy nudibranch, resplendent in his sable and blue livery.  We all enjoyed a look, Gail took her first nudibranch picture, and the pressure was off.  A bit after that Gail found the yellow and white trembling nudibranch hanging on to some suspended foulings.  We would see several more gloomies (not to be confused with Goonies) but this was the only trembling.  Given its acrobatic position on a trapeze made of gunk, it was not the best example of this species from a photographer's standpoint.  But Gail found it herself and I think she was justifiably proud. 

    Those are the only two species of nudibranchs that Sandra and I have found on our own on the

A juvenile trumpetfish serves as a foil for an encrusted rope.

platforms.  While we continued to look for the delightful sea slugs, our attention now shifted to what else might be around.  On the makai side of platform two, I showed Gail a pair of wire coral gobies.  Under the platform we all enjoyed a clump of a branching animal that looked as much like a tumbleweed as anything else.  You can see my best photographic effort here.  In John Hoovers critter book, the closest thing seems to be the alliteratively named brushy bryozoan, which he notes is common in harbors in these very Sandwich Islands.

    Beside a column supporting the second platform, I spotted a juvenile trumpetfish doing his best to imitate a rope.  Trumpetfish are among the most successful of fish that capture smaller fish for their dinner.  To accomplish this predatory feat, they are great imitators.  One of Sandra's favorite marine associations involves a large yellow trumptetfish sequestered in a school of hebivorous yellow tang.  To our eye, the trumpetfish

The Kieki of the Milletseed Butterflyfish    Kawaihae Harbour June 2019

stands out...it looks nothing like the tangs.  The color match, however, is uncanny and the strategy must work.  Some of those tang loving trumpets are monsters.

    Last year we spotted a small juvenile scribbled filefish imitating a rope on the same platform.  Filefish eat a variety of sessile prey, sponges, algae, etc, so the hunting benefit probably did not apply.  It was interesting, though, that these two unrelated juvenile fish were applying their cryptic skills to algae covered rope on the second platform.

    The third pylon yielded a couple feather duster worms, thus completing the wish list that we had presented to Gail.  On the rip rap beside the jetty, I found a gloomy relatively out in the open.  On this day the gloomies were out in force, but this was the first nudibranch at Kawaihae that we had seen not associated with a pylon.

The kieki milletseed butterfly with his playmate, a toddling kole.

    We then headed across the makai side of the harbor to look for cup coral.  On the way, I happened upon a juvenile milletseed butterfly.  Milletseeds are fairly regular at Kawaihae, but this was the first baby millletseed of my long and storied career.  It was a life species for our guest and at first she thought it was something else...she had no search image out for milletseed butterfly.   Gail has a fair amount of experience snorkeling in Kona, so it just goes to show how rare milletseeds have become.  Even when they were common at snorkeling depth, the kiekis must have been rare (because the Redoubtable SKG and your hmble correspondent never saw one!)  As is the case with many juvenile butterflies, this guy was a bit more square in profile than the adult.  In addition, the black spot on the caudal peduncle, so prominent in adults, was barely noticeable.

Ebony and Ivory.  The pair of feather dusters at the base of the Kawaihae ramp.

   Like most juvenile butterflies, this little guy played a game of hide and seek around the coral rubble, making photography a pleasant challenge.  For me, this was a treat comparable to playing with a new puppy.

    At this point Sandra headed back to the ramp and Gail and I headed across the harbor to see the dwindling colony of cup coral.  Luckily there were a few of these orange beauties for her to admire.

  As we approached the ramp, we saw that Sandra and Martin had a friend, the Godfather himself.  We greeted Hai from the water and he instructed us to look at the base of the ramp where there were two feather duster worms living side by side. One was dark brown, burnt Sienna if you will, and the other was snow white.  They make a pretty pair.  Unless I am mistaken, these represent a different species from the feather dusters we see out on the pylons.  The feathers are much more delicate, tapered at the tips.

The Justice for the Fishes League.  Hai, Sandra and Martin.

    Once ashore, as advertised, we had our picnic in the shade and enjoyed the good company and the view of our beautiful island.  I wish you could have been there.

jeff