Snorkeling Kahalu'u The list goes on.

    Yesterday we went snorkeling at Kahalu'u. Our New Years Day swim at the pier was pleasant enough but had netted only a small number of species.  Some days Kahalu'u can be quite good and on others, it borders on pathetic.  this was never the case the thirty years ago, but then, what is?

An elegant hermit peaks out of a Strawberry Drupe.  Kahalu'u

   As we arrived, Sandra and I were greeted by our friend Yasuko, who scampered to her SUV and produced a Christmas card.  It was addressed to Sandra and Jeff in both English and Japanese characters.   This is not to say that I read Japanese, so I'm making an assumption.  The card unfolded to produce a tree.  A Chinese couple from San Francisco, preparing for a snorkel at an adjacent table, remarked that they had seen one just like it while knick knack shopping in Hilo.  As if there was insufficient kitsch for sale in Kona!

    It was another beautiful winter's morning in Hawaii.  The sky was blue and the tide was high as I slipped through the sand channel into the bay.  The water was not particularly cold, and only a little cloudy.  Almost immediately we started seeing fish and invertebrates.  Early on I found a gorgeous strawberry drupe with an elegant hermit crab hiding inside.  

    We saw most of the expected fish, including rockmovers and cleaner wrasse.  At a cleaning station, my first of the new year, I saw an Achille's Tang, which is a pretty good fish for the relatively calm waters of Kahalu'u.

   As I made the final turn for home I saw a Snowflake Moray Eel,  perhaps the prettiest of our eels and,  following on the heels of the whitemouth and the yellowmargin, , among the three most likely to be seen during the day 

An Achilles Tang at Kahalu'u

   Finally, only a couple yards from one of the buoys that the Reef Teachers post, admonishing the full contact snorkelers to swim, not stand on the remaining coral, I saw an octopus.  He was mostly hiding in a lava crevasse, with an arm draped over the top of him.  His two eyes on their stalk, which was a rich milk chocolate brown, textured like tafeta protruded above the arm, which at times turned the color of the encrusted stone, a pearly gray.  I watched this wonderful mollusc for a few minutes before swimming past the buoy and into a mass of holiday snorkelers.

   Back ashore, I showered with a family from LaGrande, Oregon, who said there was two feet of snow on the ground when they left for Kona.  

    Before we headed home, we had a chance to talk with Chris.  Remember him?   A pleasant young man who as a Reef Teacher does the chemical tests for Kathleen Clark. In the process of talking about the relative merits of snorkeling at Mahukona versus Indonesia, he revealed:

Will we ever make it back to Bali?

1.  That following graduation from college he is living with his family in Hawi (which explains why he snorkels Mahukona.)

2.   That he recently had friends visit Indonesia.   Sandra and I love Bali so much and would love to go back, should travel ever become safe.  Chris said that things are more or less open, but upon arrival in Indonesia, one is obligated to spend three days in quarantine at a hotel near the airport, awaiting the results for a Covid test administered on arrival.   This is clearly a boon for the over priced hotels of Jakarta and Denpassar.  One would have to ponder the pluses and minuses before committing to that plan.

3.  That the surf was going to come back up on Thursday.  hence, Kanaloa has granted us snorkelers one more day to work on our list (which is now up to 51.)  With that information in hand, Sandra and I are preparing a trip to Mahukona for today.  With even a small amount of luck the list will grow as fast as the Omicron cases in Honolulu.

jeff