The Sailfin Tang Becomes a Quarantiner

    Sandra and I went snorkeling today.  It had been over a week.  The only beach available for us down in Kona is the pier, where the homeless are congregating and social distancing is hit or miss.  All the county beach parks are closed.  With this in mind, we headed north again to Kawaihae.

Is a puzzlement!

   On the way we stopped at the Waikoloa Green waste depository.  In its wisdom, the county solid waste division has closed the green waste portion of the Kona transfer station until further notice.  This inscrutable maneuver did not stop the plants from growing and so we are left with the 25 mile drive up to Waikoloa where the county and Waste Management maintain the largest waste depository on this side of the island.

     In addition to getting rid of our palm fronds, leaves and ginger trimmings, we had the opportunity to get chastised by the auntie who is running the scale on Saturday.  She didn't think we should be out.  Perhaps its because I'm not brown enough. Or maybe its because we don't have a pickup truck.  But we are in a pickle.  Its hard to believe that mayor Kim wants us to make a pile of yard debris in our yard, growing daily for the foreseeable future. In the words of the great Yule Brinner (as the King of Siam) "Is a puzzlement."

Porcupinefish.  Like somebody's dottering uncle hanging out in the shade.

   Having left the auntie to justify her phoney baloney job, we quickly covered the remaining miles up to Kawaihae Harbor.  We arrived before Peter and Marla, but not before Hai and Lottie, who were busy alternating between child care and planting succulents.  As the Kroppje's drove up, Sandra scored a strange woody succulent that the sometimes sea slug finder called a Hawaiian jade.

   Soon enough Sandra and I were circling platform number 1.  The water is now much warmer, not that our neoprene seemed superfluous.  And the water was about as clear as it ever is in the harbor; where ever I went I could see the bottom.

   Under the first platform was one of the resident porcupinefish and he proved to be a cooperative model.  Don't you just love that nose.  He looks like someones like someone's demented uncle loitering in the shade on a summer afternoon in Mayberry.  Do I resemble that remark?

The Bull Goose Gloomy nudibranch rears his fearsome head.

    On the sunny side of the platform we found a pair of gloomies.  Although we had heard about giant gloomy nudibranchs seen in the last moth,  we were happy to resume our acquaintance with these handsome blue and black sea slugs.  In spite of the fact that these guys were only of normal size, less than three inches in length, it was still a pleasure to watch them slime their way over the fouling organisms on the pillar.

    On our way out to the second platform I dove down ten feet in the clear water and found a baby dascyllus living in a cauliflower coral.  There are currently no babies living on the cauliflowers attached to the pylons so I was happy to say hello to this little feller. 

   Swimming around the pillars of the second platform, we encountered a huge gloomy nudibranch.  He must have been 5 inches in length.  I thought he was even larger.  What we assumed was his mate was on the adjacent column.  She wasn't quite as big as this dragon of a gloomy, but no shrimp, either.  About a month ago Hai photographed one of these monster gloomies with a pair of surgical scissors to document the size.  He sent the picture on to Cory Pittman who increased the known size for the species by a third! 

The adolescent Sailfin Tang  Kawaihae Harbor,   April 2020

    The third platform yielded nothing exciting and soon Sandra was headed to shore and I was on my way to the small reef mauka of the landing.  I puttered around the silty coral for about 15 minutes and was finally rewarded with the now adolescent sized sailfin tang. If you look back at past blogs, you will see that I saw the keiki on January 10th.  Anyone who can turn the calendar back to that day has my full permission.   In the interim our very world has changed, and not for the better.  It would appear that all the sad things happening on land have had no effect on this developing Quaranteener, as Sandra and I are naming the children born in 2020.  I predict that there will be  a lot of them. 

  Back in January this fish  (I assume this is the same individual)  was hanging out with a small juvenile yellow tang.  Three months later, he is not quite adult shaped, but roughly three times larger. surprisingly, he is still remarkably yellow.  I would have expected that before now he would have traded up to the adult butterscothch brown coloration.  At this stage in his development, he has not hooked up with other sailfin tangs.  Insted, he is chilling with adult threadfin butterflyfish. 

A second look at the Quaranteener sailfin tang.

    While sailfin tangs remain relatively common at places like Kahalu'u,  juveniles, either at the keiki stage or this teenager, are very unusual. Look at the pictures and enjoy.  The fish was a little spooky and he moved in stops and starts so photography wasan't that easy.  Using Peter and Hai as my ideal, I took my time, made multiple dives and took a bunch pictures. This is a rare chance to watch an individual develop over a few months. With any luck I will see him one more time before he moves away to college.

jeff

I don't care if you are stuck in the house.  I want to borrow the car!