Kawaihae and Eye Spot Shrimp

Oval Butterflyfish,

    Yesterday dawned bright and blue in Kailua Kona.  As we drove north, however,  we found ourselves under scattered clouds with a rainbow in the direction of Maui.  When we arrived at the surf park in Kawaihae, luckily, the cloud cover persisted but it didn't show any signs of raining.  soon our buddies form Kapa'au arrived and the four of us were in the water, which was still warm, but at the is slack low tide remarkably cloudy.

    As usual, I visited the first platform, looking for my developing oval butterflies.  Marla swam up and told me that the younger of my two subjects had gone the way of the buffaloes.  This wasn't entirely correct as bison in both Europe and North America are hanging on but that little fish was most likely on the wrong side of the seaweed.  The older sister was still there, just as furtive as ever, affording me only one photo.  this is a peculiar photo in that most of the fish is in modest focus but the face is smudged.  I am presenting it for completeness sake so we can all appreciate how this species matures.

   Out on the second platform I found three gloomy nudibranchs.  In as much as we had cloudy weather and cloudy water gloomy nudibranchs seemed appropriate.  I got a couple still pictures that were not terrible and I took this short movie that shows the gloomy's fancy external gills flopping back and forth.

    At this point Sandra alerted me that Peter and Marla were swimming across the harbor to look for the Eyespot Shrimp, giving us the option to follow.  And so off we went, catching up with them about one hundred yards across the water at the one coral that seems to be home to this unusual shrimp.  We had been here once before with Peter and Marla and not seen any shrimp.  When Sandra and I attempted to find it we failed.  It is a long swim and I'm not at all sure how our friends know when to stop and look for this single coral head. 

   Now, shrimp is an interesting word, being virtually synonymous with diminutive.  Yet most shrimp that I have encountered, while small are not tiny.  Hence, I was unprepared, when my dear friend Peter pointed to one of these shrimps, to look for such a small animal.  John Hoover says they grow to an inch and a half.  I estimated these little fellows to be an inch.  Once i adjusted my search image, I was pleased to see many of these tiny shrimps crawling on the coral.  I might have seen ten individuals. The fact that they were so small posed a modest challenge of the TG-5.  I took about a dozen pictures and the two you see here were the only ones in very good focus.  I hope you agree that these are pretty good efforts, everything considered.  In the second picture, towards the tail of the shrimp, you get a glimpse at what someone called an eye spot.

    Swimming back, Sandra and I found a small Frecklefaced Hawkfish.  He was fairly cooperative so despite the cloudy water we were able to nab this appealing portrait.

    At this point the distaff side of the expedition went ashore and I met Peter at the third platform.  he asked If I had gotten some good shots of the shrimp.  I said that I had taken a lot of pictures, so i hope I had something, but wouldn't really know until I got home.  I then went on, in my tedious fashion, to note how the sport had changed.  When one watches birds, or even larger fish, he makes his identification on the spot.  Dealing with these much sma;er animals, that fortunately hold sufficiently still for photography, one frequently make his identification in front of a computer screen.  three was no way that i would have been able to put a name on those tiny shrimp based on what I could see on the spot.  

   Back ashore we chatted for a bit,then said goodbye to our friends.  They are headed out tomorrow to look at a house in SLO upon which they have an accepted offer.  😢

jeff

Tourist Season Part Deux: Paradise in Ho'okena and Bandtail Goatfish at the Pier

    This blog is being written in two parts and, in effect, asks you to answer this question: Would you rather spend a morning on a gorgeous, sunlit beach or see a life fish?

The view of Ho'okena from our breakfast spot.  Not too shabby.

    A couple days ago Sandra and I headed down to Ho'okena.  It was a classic sunny morning in South Kona.  Along the way we stopped at the Coffee Shack and purchased a cinnamon roll, hot from the oven and dripping with frosting.  Arriving at Ho'okena around 8:30, we nabbed a prime spot at a shaded picnic table, sharing our cinnamon roll al fresco.  

    If you are a young trout, that may not seem like much of a breakfast for two people, but by the time we were spooning up the last bits of the icing, we were stuffed. 

    Well sated, we made our way down the long beach, the cool water sloshing over our feet.  There was only small surf and soon we were swimming through the clear, sunlit water.  Its easy to become jaded at a site you have visited frequently.  Two species of angelfish becomes ho hum.  Beyond the angels we didn't see all that much.  I'm including a short movie of a cleaner wrasse and a white bar surgeon.  Cleaner wrasses have an interesting relationship with the other fish.  For the most part, the host fish

enjoy being cleaned.  In many instances they seem to be experiencing an endorphin rush that leaves them a bit stoned.  Their movements are lethargic and this is often accompanied by a change in color.  But every now and then the cleaner wrasse nabs a scale or two in addition to the prescribed parasite.  Note in this short clip how the surgeon suddenly takes off, presumably in response to a nip.  

 Increasingly Uncommon Achilles Tang,  Ho'okena, October 2020

   On the way in we had a good look at an Achille's tang.  It doesn't seem like this should be a very big deal, but we are seeing fewer of these iconic Hawaiian reef fish.

   At the shower we were joined by a friendly young couple from Orlando, Florida.  They were staying at an Air BnB near  "Pebble Beach", which I presume meant Kona Paradise.  For those of you who are not familiar, Kona Paradise is an unusual development about another ten miles south of Ho'okena.  The road from the highway drops precipitously 1500 feet to the ocean with side roads splitting off at regular intervals.  On these side roads there are a variety of houses.  Like Oceanview, which is just a little further south, I think these homes were constructed in an area without building codes, yielding a variety of structures.  At the bottom of the steep road you can park and walk to two shingle beaches.  Many years ago, when Sandra and I were exploring Kona Paradise, we heard that the snorkeling off these beaches was pretty good.  This information did not come from a fish watcher, however.  We were further dissuaded as entering off two inch round rocks isn't all that much fun and, on the couple days that we made it that far afield, the surf was pounding in.  This is absolutely an open ocean entry.

   As we were preparing to leave, I wandered over to another shower for a foot wash.  There I encountered twin boys of just under two years in age frolicking in the spray. These likely lads took one look at me, identifying Grendel or some other medieval monster, and scuttled off like a couple rock crabs to their mother's skirts.  Or shorts, as the case may be.  The mom was a sweet lady from our very own PDX, who, on cross examination, was a tried and true Kona tourist.  It was a bit like looking

Die Fische mit der Zebrastreifen, Kailua Pier Oktober 2020

through a mirror from a Harry Potter movie that could transport one back 35 years.  

   All these young tourists had gone through the double testing required for entry to the Big Island and I felt confident that they did not pose an unreasonable risk.  This is in stark contrast to the tourists of the last four months who were sneaking in untested, unmasked and then skipping out on their quarantine.  In this context, I'm actually enjoying having the tourists back.

    The drive back up the slope was wonderful, with lots of flowering shrubs and trees.  No wonder Ho'okena remains one of our favorite spots.

     Yesterday, after two days of window washing, the warden sprang me for a swim at the pier.  On this day,  Kona was trying for the Stephen King award, with bruised, overcast skies and a steel gray high tide slopping menacingly against the sea wall.  There were no friendly tourists in the water as I entered on

The short eared owl courtesy of Birdwatching Magazine.

the Ironman side.  

    Immediately upon putting my face down in the cloudy water I got my reward, for swimming in a small school were five bandtail goatfish.  I don't know if this fisch mit zebrastreifen is super rare or if I am just unlucky., but I may not have seen one in twenty years.  Six months ago our friend Peter spotted one in the hallows at Kawihae Harbor.  It could be that he is luckier, or possibly more observant. Suffice it to say, this was a real treat.  The water was so cloudy that taking a picture reminded me of the experience with my first inexpensive underwater camera.  I couldn't see anything in the view finding screen, so all I could do was point the camera in the direction of the fish and shoot.  I got a couple poor pictures using this primitive technique, but I'm still proud to share one with you.  

    John Hoover provides a couple curious notes about this species.  First, he says that the Hawaiians noted a similarity between stripes on the pueo and the stripes on the tail of this goatfish.  This caused me to refer to my well thumbed copy of North American Birds illustrated by the immortal Arthur Singer.  The short eared owl (for that is what the pueo is) hunts like a marsh hawk, soaring low over the grass, often during the day.  When he is doing this, one might get a very good look at the dorsal elbow

Right Out of Grendel's Cave, The Crown of Thorns Starfish.

of the wing.  Indeed, the pueo has alternating white and black stripes in that location.  Like the bandtail goatfish, it has been many years since I have seen a short eared owl in flight and I'm not certain that I have ever seen those stripes.  I would also like to say, that the short eared owl did not colonize Hawaii before the Polynesians, who were responsible for a certain amount of inadvertent introductions, providing owl food in the form of rats. Who can say how many years they had to compare pueo wings to goatfish tails. 

    One more thing about the Bandtail Goatfish:  its nervous tissue contains a toxin that can produce unpleasant hallucinations.  Hence, while its usual hawaiian name is weke pueo, it is also know as weke pahulu, which is translated to Nightmare Goatfish.  

    This conveniently segues into my next sighting, for just a few strokes into the bay I encountered a Crown of Thorns Starfish.  Unlike Herr Zebrastreifen, the crown of thorns isn't especially rare.  However, it is uncommon to find one in four feet of water.  And I hate to say never, but I can't remember seeing on so close to the entry in Kailua Bay.  

   The last interesting critter on yesterday's agenda was (I believe) an unusual sea cucumber.  Just a few

The White Spotted Sea Cucumber.Actinopyga mauritiana. 10/2020

feet from the crown of thorns, I spotted this spotted animal in a coral fenestration.  I had to look several times to assure myself that I wasn't looking at a whitemouth or stout moray eel.  The photograph is definitive...this is not an eel.  Rather I think it is the white spotted sea cucumber.Actinopyga mauritiana.  There is a similar sea cucumber that we see commonly in Kona, and is probably endemic to the Big Island.  At the time Hoover's book went to press, it did not have scientific name.  This guy cuke is clearly different.  John Hoover gives a few locations where it can be found regularly, but Kailua Kona ain't one of them.   

     That was pretty much it for this dark, forbidding day in late October.  And I ask you, which would you prefer?  It's OK if you want a day in the bright sunshine, with clear water and friendly tourists!

jeff

 Here is a little video I took on this last outing.  Its entitled, "Under the Second Swim Buoy" and features baby Sergent Majors, some of them quite small. 

  

It's Tourist Season! And the Freckeld Snake Eel Is Here to Greet Our Visitors.

A refuge from the Four Seasons paddles Kailua Bay.

   To find a hermit crab, at least here in Hawaii, you look for a shell that is out of place, that just doesn't belong.  Yesterday, as I walked down the step leading to the short beach on the Ironman side of the pier, I encountered such a scene.  Here, stretched out on a paddleboard, was a handsome young woman wearing a two piece and a floppy hat.  This in itself is not so surprising, but her level of grooming was
such that, at the very minimum, she should have been reclining by a pool in Bel Aire holding a mojito. Such was the precision of her presentation that I wouldn't have been surprised to see photographers for some glitzy magazine hovering about.  Maybe she was the model tasked with selling that paddleboard?  It certainly didn't look like she was going to paddle it.

   This week tourists have been allowed onto the Big Island, without quarantine.  The caveat is that one needs to take a covid test before leaving the lower 48 and  a second test upon arrival at KOA.  So recent is this change in policy that the only hotel that might meet the requirements of such a chic young thing, the Marriott King Kam, is still closed.  One might expect a flurry of activity preparing the hotel for an imminent opening.  However, the whole scene around the pier and Alii Drive remains quiet as the grave. 

Freckeld Snake Eel and  Flounder. Kailua Pier October 2020

   For those of you readers who may long for accommodations suitable for the rich and famous, the Four Seasons at Hualalai appears to be open.  At the far end of Alii Drive, the Sheraton, although not quite in the upper echelon, is open as well. 

    As I waded into the water, the young woman's friend appeared with two just out of the package flotation devices.  Although it may seem like a good idea, I couldn't recall seeing a paddle boarder with a life preserver.  this had to be a red flag. 

   While they donned their PFDs I plunged in and put on my fins.  I had made it past the first swim buoy when the two paddled into the bay.  The woman pointed to the water beside the pier and asked her friend, "Can we go that way?"  He was only about twenty feet away from me, so I responded, saying that, indeed, they could paddle over the floating line to the pier.  He asked if it was safe and I noted that there were no tourist boats at the present, so not only was it safe, but I planned to be swimming over there in short order.

    In the back of my mind I was thinking that if I got these obvious novices to paddle thataway, they would be less likely to fall on me.  After swimming for a few minutes I noticed that the couple had
turned around and were reclining on their paddleboards a few yards off the seawall.  No chance of getting mutilated by a non-existent boat in there.

Our Freckled Snake Eel with the requisite halo of washed sand.

    I swam out past the last swim buoy.  There I encountered a mu, among a few other fish, and a strange condition in the water.  In patches there was a dense collection of small brown particles.  They appeared to be light brown, more or less square, perhaps three millimeters on a side and one mm thick. I know what you must be thinking, and I don't think it was that.  Whatever it was, a three foot dive took me below it, and swimming back towards the pier took me out of it.  

    A few yards towards the pier on the outside of the swim buoy, I spotted a Freckled Snake Eel.  To the best of my recollection, this is only my third sighting of this peculiar species, lo these many years.  The FSE spends his days with his head protruding out of the sand, perhaps three inches, with another two and a half feet of slender body buried in the soft sand.  Presumably for the purposes of oxygenation, it engages in a continuous mouth movement, forcing water through the gills.  Thus, if one is too spot this curious beast, he should look for a small protuberance , like a rock or stick in the soft sand, with a circle around, produced by the propelled water exiting the gills.  John Hoover tells us that at night you might see this eel cruising all the way to the surface in response to lights.

Girls just wanna have fun!

     I dove the eel, which was about 12 feet down, several times.  I am showing you two pictures.  The first is the eel and a small flounder that just happened to be sharing the same patch of sand. The second is a closer view of the head of the eel.  It certainly doesn't look like much.  Suffice it to say, if you are going to spot a FSE for your own list, you better be a careful observer.   

    From the standpoint of seeing notable stuff in the water, the day was pretty much over.  Luckily Homo sapiens stepped in to fill out our copy.   Just after I played with the eel, I watched as five young ladies approached the pier, shrieking as they jumped in the water. 

   After the swim, I went for my shower, only to encounter a lunatic carrying on at interminable length while making the most of a bottle of shampoo.  I let her go on for a couple minutes then stepped into her field of view and asked if I could get a quick rinse.  Lucky for me, the vibes were

We promise you won't have to shower with Jack Torrance!

right and she graciously stepped aside.  Only after I finished my ablutions did I realize that the authorities have repaired the second shower mechanism. 

   So if you are one of our beloved tourists, don't miss the Kailua Kona pier.  You can pretend that you are one of our sometimes Ironmen, gander at the paddle boarders and take a shower simultaneously with a friend.  And I believe I can guarantee a lunatic.

jeff

Butterflyfish and Butterflies: North to Kapa'au

    A few days ago we made our way north to Kawaihae.  In the process we passed two dependable sights.  Two miles north of Costco, at the corner of Hulikoa Drive, is a herd of goats.  Sandra loves these goats and this time she got me to slow down for a photo op.  You will notice that the goat is standing in front of a sign proclaiming the general area to be Kohanaiki.  This is the name of the beach, about a mile makai from the highway that is home to Kailua Kona's most famous surf break, Pine Trees.

If you're not a goat, you better be a surfer.  Or filthy rich. Photo SKG

  There is now a traffic light at this intersection, but it is not there to help the surfers.  Over the past five years moneyed interests have built a fancy residential resort ....so fancy that they won't let the riff raff,  among which you can apparently count your humble correspondent, access for a free peek. The road, as far as the turn to that resort, is much improved over the dirt track that provided access up until ten years ago.  Pine Trees, at the south end of Kohanaiki Beach has been saved and one can park, as of old, and walk to Kohanaiki Beach Park.  But one best not attempt to breech the security at the Kohanaiki Private Club Community. 

    The surfers, by the way, mutter that the improved road allows the hoi polloi (like me) to make it to what was once their secluded surfing beach.  This is sort of like the Bart Simpson paradox.  You're damned if your rich and your damned if you're not.

Oval Butterflyfish, extreme juvenile.  Note the hatchet shape.

     Thirty miles further north we ran across our next unusual, yet dependable, sight.  I have fought with my conscience for months about reporting this, so please do not think too badly of me when I tell you this story.  There is a person who we see every time as we race north to Kawaihae.  This person, that may be a lady of a certain age (but its sort of hard to tell) camps in the scrub forest adjacent to the highway about a mile south of the turn into Hapuna Beach Park.  Sometimes, especially in the early morning, we see this person hanging her tarps and bedding on a scrubby tree.  Later in the day, we see her sitting in a lawn chair adjacent to her cart full of belongings on the shoulder of the highway, in a spot where a cut through a rolling hill provides some shade.  Only once have we seen what appeared to be someone supporting this person. 
Suffice it to say, there is no food or water anywhere near this encampment.  I do not wish to disrupt her life, but this person is as much a fixture of a trip to Kawaihae as the LST landing. 

Oval Butterfly, approximately ten weeks, a well rounded individual.

    Up in Kawaihae we met with our friends.  Hai and Lottie were running that morning, Marla was going for a walk and Peter was going out on the ocean side to count fish.  Baby Naia was doing what seven month old babies do, taking it all in.  Sandra and I were going to document the developing Oval Butterflyfish.   

    Out on the first platform, we found our fish.  Peter had warned us that there was now a second keiki, this one relatively newly hatched.  As before these fish stuck mostly to the inside of the cauliflower coral, so if my pictures seem less than perfect, its not because I had lots of opportunity for better efforts.  The baby is quite small, probably less than an inch in length.  You will note that she has a very pronounced hatchet shape.  Even at this beginning stage of development she is apparently able to dine on coral polyps.  

Juvenile Jack Swims near Sandra's Glove.

    The older fish, who must be at least ten weeks old at this point, has filled out.  One might say that she has achieved her existential destiny and become oval.  What she has not done is become more gregarious, at least as far as photography is concerned.  It took all of fifteen minutes, possibly more, to get this picture.  

    I between taking pictures of the two oval butterflyfish keikis, we took a tour of the three platforms, seeing very little.  Of course, a weak day at Kawaihae dwarfs almost any day in the Kailua area.  Two trembling nudibranchs, an albino feather duster worm, milletseed butterflies and all you can eat baby Hawaiian dascyllus.  La de da.

   One thing that was different was an encounter with a baby jack. One doesn't see these small fish inshore.  They have compressed bodies and are yellowish with black stripes.  The only time I have seen them is offshore with Deron Verbeck, congregating around flotsam. I was working on the makai side of the second platform when the small fish swam right into my face and didn't want to go away.  It was so close that it was hard to photograph.  Shortly after that encounter, I thought it would be interesting to take a movie of a school of goatfish and circle past the pylons.  This video finished with Sandra sans head but with the tiny jack circling around her.  Sadly, I can't get the

The ventral surface of the Gulf Fritillary Butterfly.

video to load on Blogger, so I am showing you a picture that is a bit head on near Sandra's glove. Its not a bad picture and you can certainly tell how small it is.  You can see the video on my Facebook page, where longer videos load.

 https://www.facebook.com/jeffrey.hill.7758/

    Back ashore I discussed this fish with Peter who supplied the idea that it was a very juvenile jack.  Research in my library and on the internet suggests that this is indeed the case, but gives no clue as to just which jack it might be. Clubs diamonds, Island or ulua or spades.  

Gulf Fritillary Agraulis vanillae.  Kapa'au October 2020

    Speaking of Peter. After swimming we headed up separately to their estate in Kapa'au.  Two miles past the statue of King Kamehmeha, turn right and hope for the best..  For months Marla has been tantalizing me with tales of butterflies, possibly of the genus Vanessa.  As it turned out, Marla has a garden full of what to the uninitiated looks like red clover on steroids.  The resident botanist points out that, as this plant has leaves coming off at the same spot on both sides, it can't be clover.  

    The butterflies of which she was the most proud turned out to be Gulf Fritillaries Agraulis vanillae (Linnaeus).  I had about a handful of gulf frit sightings under my belt, but this was spectacular.  Nectaring on the red blossoms, these handsome butterflies gave us an infinite number of chances for a great photo.  Perhaps more than any other butterfly commonly seen on these Very Sandwich Islands, the gulf frit exhibits a huge difference between the dorsal and ventral surface of his wings.  (Of course the Kamehmeha butterfly has very different surfaces, as well, but it is hardly commonly seen, especially on our side of the Big Island.)  Such a beautiful butterfly, no wonder Marla thought it must be a Vanessa.

   A number of butterflies are named "fritillary", which refers to a checkered pattern, usually on the

The not so Fiery Skipper nectars on the psuedo-clover

ventral surface of the wings.  People who apply common names to insects do not attempt to name them with any taxonomic goal in mind. This is to say, these fritillary butterflies are not related to each other, they just have spotted wings. 

    

   There were also some hairstreaks and skippers thrown in for a little variety.  So in addition to the two luscious pictures of the gulf frits, which is also known as the passion butterfly (it employs lilikoi for its host plant both in Hawaii and in its native Caribbean home) we present to you a nice photo of a  Fiery Skipper, Hylephila phyleus.  I may have seen this chubby little butterfly before, but had not been able to identify it;  this picture is text book.  In the picture he doesn't look very fiery, but in fact the dorsal surface of his wings were a dusty orange.

Peter Peels a Scrumptious Jamaican Tangelo.

    As you may recall, the highlight of an afternoon at Chateau Krottje is the swag.  On this day we walked away with a few starts of the psuedo-clover, papayas, a citrus fruit shaped in folds like a bell pepper  and two fruits the size of a lemon but with a smooth skin.  Isn't a tropical garden wonderful?  The odd shaped fruit that Peter plucked for our tasting pleasure may be an Ugli fruit, also known as a Jamaican tangelo.  The Ugli fruit is a naturally occurring hybrid of tangerine, orange and grapefruit.  Wikipedia says it tends to taste like tangerine, which corresponds nicely with what we enjoyed.  The small smooth fruits might be  pomelos.  I suggest you show up at Marla's fruit bar for a tasting.

   As we were getting ready to go, we talked seriously about putting Deron Verbeck to work.  We could fill the boat with cautious friends, see some birds and maybe score a pod of pilot whales.  So stay tuned.

 jeff

  

The Gold Lace Nudibranch at Kahalu'u

    Saturday began as it always does.  With the green waste depository open only three days a week, Saturday being one of them, the day started with hacking the dead leaves off the banana trees and pruning a kukui nut tree away from the White Tree of Gondor.  Sandra emerged from her boudoir around 7:00 AM and we segued in to the pièce de résistance: pruning off the top five feet  of our avocado

Gold Lace Nudibranch,Halgerda terramtuentis. Kahaluu  October 2020

tree.  The point of the cut was twenty feet up in the air and four inches thick.  Suffice it to say, by the time we were done with that little endeavor I was bushed.  

     Even at my advanced age I was able to rally.  After we dispensed with our sundry leaves and branches we drove back south to Kahalu'u. Although it was still early, there was a surprising number of swimmers out in the bay.  I counted eight, which for K Bay during the time of the pandemic, that may be a record.  The tide was high, so getting out was easy.  And the water was cool and clear, so all we needed was for something interesting to come along.  

    I swam over to the breakwater, seeing just a few fish, and then turned around and headed for the middle.  Just as I made the turn, in a bowl about six feet across, created by three modest corals clinging to life, there was something small and fleshy washing back and forth.  Essentially oval, and possibly an inch or two, it at least merited investigation.  It took only a couple dives to discern that, as it rolled over,

Gold Lace Nudibranch floating

it possessed a foot.  Another dive or two and I could identify rhinophores and gills.  This was a wayward nudibranch, possibly washed in from somewhere outside, but still essentially intact!

    At the end of the blog I am including a short movie so you can see what I saw and ask yourself, "Would I stop and look at that little lump?"

   I spent the next ten to fifteen minutes diving down, hanging on and taking pictures with a variety of settings, hoping for something in focus, with enough light and with our tiny sea slug in the correct posture to display his features.  During most of this time, he was washing back and forth, tumbling slowly over and over.  Me and the camera had our work cut out for us. 

   At one point the nudibranch was washed near the surface and I cradled it in my gloved hand, managing to take a picture before it was washed away.  This picture is not too bad, and shows that the nudibranch was smaller that I thought, more on the order of an inch at the longest dimension.  

    Towards the end of my effort, the nudibranch wedged between a piece of rubble and a coral.  He may have responded to this bit of serendipity by actively attaching himself, but this was hard to tell.  Regardless, my last few dives involved attempts at a relatively stationary organism. 

Gold Lace Nudibranch, floating ventral surface

   Back in the shelter, Sandra and I looked through the multitude of pictures and movies I had taken.  As you can see, there are a few that are pretty good.  In one frame, the camera caught the nudibranch floating with the light shining  through, all in focus.  One has to consider all the things the camera might choose to focus on to appreciate the luck. We could clearly make out the black and white gills and rhinophores. 

   At home, we found his picture in John Hoover's Sea Creatures.  This is the Gold Lace Nudibranch, Halgerda terramtuentis.  John says it is found between 15 and 100 feet, often in caves.  Divers, who are the author of most such field guides, often say things like that, when they might very well mean from 2 to 100 feet.  They simply don't spend enough time in shallow water to know what is up there. Nevertheless, Kahalu'u is not good nudibranch habitat and it is most likely that this tiny fellow got separated from his home and washed into the bay.

   Sandra and I also checked out Sea Slugs of Hawaii,  the internet bible managed by Cory Pittman and Pauline Fiene.  They have some amazing pictures of this animal, which you will find among the

One more look at the Nefarious GLN

Discodorididae nudibranchs.  My friend Pauline says it lives as shallow as 5 feet and in rocky areas, so I suppose it is possible that this individual might live in the bay.   

   As we were rapping up our effort, Sandra looked at our good friend Peter's blog and found his post from about a year ago.  He and Marla encountered a Gold Lace Nudibranch washing free in the water at Mahukona.  Apparently this is one of the more common nudibranchs so we shouldn't be surprised that every now and then one gets dislodged and appears for our enjoyment.  A big part of the trick is to be out there looking around when something wonderful occurs.

jeff  

The Pier Is Back

    As of today, the Kailua Kona pier as a snorkeling venue is totally back on track.  The sewer has been repaired and the algae, which was so prominent on the Ironman side two months ago, is now completely gone.  Palani has been repaired; today it was so smooth you could have done it on a skateboard.  The restrooms have a fresh coat of paint, but in an ongoing nod to the corona virus and

social distancing, there is still only one operational shower head.  If the Ironmen were here, that would be a problem.  As it is, with no tourists vying for the facilities, the wait for  a shower is a couple minutes at the most. 

   I wish that I had some fantastic fish pictures to go along with my rosy news.  In the last week I have snorkeled the pier three times.  Each time the water was a little less clear than the time before.  From my first swim, I have a video of an ornate butterfly that  segues in to a guineafowl puffer. 

A Potter's angel lives among the coral beneath the mooring buoy.

   On that first swim, I found a Potter's Angelfish in the coral by one of the large mooring buoys.  There is little usage of those mooring buoys and it seems safe enough to swim in that area as long as you are cautious.  A Potter's angelfish is certainly a good reward.

   There has been a nice selection of the usual suspects and we hope something special shows up soon.  

   In the meantime, its good to know that the peir is now a safe, clean place to swim and that access has been restored.

jeff