Faith, Trust and Pixie Dust.

   Saturday morning was perfect.  Cool, relatively dry and a blue sky to die for at the beach at Honaunau.  Some call it Two Step, I call it City and the old Hawaiian's say "Komo mai, No kauai, ika

All it takes is faith and trust.  And a little pixie dust.

hale, welakahau."*  If there was a fly in the ointment, it was the crowd.  As we arrived, it was manageable.  There was Peter Pan and the lost boys, of course.  Tiger Lily and the Indians.  Further up the beach, I could just make out Captain Hook and Mr. Snead.  Patrolling the area around our table was a very large chicken named Nana.  And, last but not least, Wendy.  And Kent, Kathy and Vernon.  Although I don't believe that any of the latter have much to do with Never Never Land.

    As you will recall, Wendy was our new best friend and she had been a bit overwhelmed by Ho'kena, .  We were all hopeful that she would be successful snorkeling this time out.  After greeting and gearing up, our group of six made it through the mob to the Two Step entrance.  Wendy was next to last to get in with the redoubtable SKG by her

Kent and Wendy and the Deep Blue Sea.

side.  If you have to do something scary, it doesn't hurt to have an ace psychiatry nurse watching your back.  I take advantage of this all the time!
  
   With some gentle support and some pixie dust, Wendy swam right past the second star and straight on 'til morning, enjoying the coral and the relatively few fish that City had to offer.  She even posed for a couple pictures with that handsome devil she calls hubby. 

   After about half an hour, Sandra accompanied Wendy and Vernon back to the mob scene at Two Step.  Kathy, Kent and I swam on, out the northern cusp.  There were lots of soldierfish, but precious little of anything else.  Just as we reached the point where we were going to turn back, we saw two young Achilles tangs patrolling the top of a coral head.  They paused long enough for me to get the pictures you see here.

Achilles Tang.  City of Refuge  December 2019

    Over the last five years, Achilles tang has become progressively less common. This day at city I saw three goldrim surgeons to two Achilles tangs.  What's up with that? A few years ago at the Dog Beach, Sandra and I watched a pair of spear fisherman haul out eight or nine Achilles on their stringer.  Having seen that, it is easy to assume that this dramatic drop in the numbers of this signature Hawaiian endemic is related to fishing pressure.  My more rational side tells me that this is probably not the case.  What we call climate change is clearly quite complex.  One might better call it environment change.  For example, coral bleaching is pretty closely related to water temperature, but I'm willing to bet that the cause and effect relationship is far more complex than that.  Same with the loss of the Achilles tang.  And the demise of other fish that are less noticeable, less iconic.  To quote my old friend Pogo the Possum, "We have met the enemy and he is us."  Its obvious enough to me that we have opened Pandora's box.  Identifying just what has escaped from the box is the first part of the solution.  Getting the evil back in the box is the second part of the problem. If only we knew what the evil was.  If the dwindling number of Achilles tangs may be used as a measure, time may be running short. 

At the Corner of the Bay, Honaunau, Hawaii

    Suffice it to say, we were pretty lucky to see those two handsome young fish.

    On our way back, I pointed out a nice chocolate dip chromis and the adult Hawaiian dascyllus.  There is no cauliflower coral left at snorkeling depth at City, so there are no juvenile dascyllus to show off.  If we can get these guys to Kawaihae, we can show them a few baby dascyllus.  Its about the only sure thing that I know for the juvenile dascyllus at snorkeling depth.  These, too, were fairly common only a decade ago.

    As there were relatively few fish, I nabbed a picture of the old house that sits in the corner of the bay.

    As we approached the exit, I spotted by far the largest Argus grouper that I have seen.  I estimate this fish to be 30 inches in length, maybe 25 pounds.   In the back of my mind I was thinking, "Do groupers bite divers?  How badly do I want to find out?"  What I definitely did recall was

The monster of an Argus Grouper

approaching a titan triggerfish and having it turn on me.  That species definitely bites divers and this fish was easily as big as a titan triggerfish.   Discretion being the better part of valor, I chose not to dive this fish for a better picture.  I hope you can gauge size in relation to the coral.  Wikepedia and a couple other sites say that 24 inches is the largest that the Argus grouper will attain. By comparison they list the Titan triggerfish at up to 30 inches.  All I can say in reply is that this was a mighty big fish.  As is the case with many large fish, this brute had lost most of the fancy markings associated with smaller Argus groupers.

    Finally, it was time to go ashore.  Wendy was there to greet us as we crawled out of the sea onto the two lava steps.  I looked at her and told her how proud I was of her swim.  In return, she told me that she had prayed the night before that this would be a success.  Suffice it to say I was left speechless.

jeff

*Lyrics,  My Little Grass Shack  roughly translated as, "Come on in and have a good time."

Another look at the young Achilles Tang, City of Refuge December 2019