A Requiem for the Easter Coris. Atule mate and a Good Look at Slipper Lobster

         Easter day promised to be full of obligations,  spanning the ecclesiastic, entertainment and home maintenance.  With that in mind, Sandra dropped me off at the Kailua pier on Saturday around noon for my Easter swim.  The first thing we noticed was that the changing rooms were locked up.  Although you may regard this as the pinnacle of banality, it is hardly an insignificant piece of information.  To shutter the changing rooms on weekends, especially holiday weekends, would appear counterintuitive.  Nevertheless, if you don't want to go home in a wet suit you will be advised to check out the situation prior to your ablution.

Easter Coris, Kailua Pier,  February 2015

     Prepared for a wet passenger in her near future, Sandra headed off to Target, leaving me to brave the cold water.  As I was getting ready to swim, I made friends with a lady tourist who was perched on the curb at the edge of the pier.  As it turned out she is a recovery room nurse at Harborview, that large, ancient hospital near downtown Seattle that was the model for Gray's Anatomy. Being myself a sometimes anesthesiologist, we had plenty to talk about.  Suffice it to say, anesthesiologists love recovery room nurses, who bail us out of more trouble than we would ever admit to. 

      About six years ago, in an attempt to find a holiday fishwatching event to correspond with the annual search for the Christmas Wrasse, I decided to rename the Elegant Coris the Easter Coris.  I even toyed with the name Easter Chorus.  The male bears a handsome aqua cross on his forehead so the designation seemed perfect.  The one thing that I didn't count on was that this species, once a virtual sure thing both at Kahalu'u and the Ironman side of the pier, would become progressively rare and then essentially nonexistent.  I still take a swim on Easter with the hope of seeing an Elegant Coris, but the effort is quixotic at best. 

Peppered Moray eel, G. pictus,  Kailua Pier April 2022

    The water on the day before Easter, 2022 was cold.  We have entered the rainy season and as I snorkeled out I could see multiple fresh water geysers spewing cold water up through vents in the sandy bottom.  Additionally, the water was not all that clear.  

    Out near the third swim buoy I saw some suspicious movement in a coral and dove down to discover a Peppered Moray Eel, the first of the year.  This has been a fairly common eel on the Ironman side for many years and I have been surprised that it took this long to add one to the list.  I dove down twice for a picture.  There was a hand hold about a foot away from the eel, which I chose to disregard..discretion being the better part of valor.  

   John Hoover tells us that this eel is usually found deep, but also says that on occasion will leap clear of the water in hopes of nabbing a crab on the rocks.  Just think how fast the eel must get going, starting fifty feet down and then shooting, missile-like from the sea, in hopes of a crustacean repast.  Perhaps we should send some peppered morays to Ukraine. 

A pair of yellowfin surgeonfish by the Kailua Pier

  For those of you keeping score at home, the peppered moray brought my 2022 list up to 119 species.  I can only imagine Bob Hillis hanging his head in shame on my behalf.  Needless to say, there are several species that should be relatively easy that have yet to make the list.  Crocodile Needlefish (also called Houndfish) and Lined Butterfly have yet to appear on the list, along with the aforementioned Elegant Coris.

    I swam out past the last swim buoy and back in without seeing very much else. I then crossed the swim line into the area near the pier.  Immediately I started seeing a lot more fish.  Among others, thee was a trio of smaller Yellowfin Surgeonfish.  It was a cloudy day, so the pictures aren't as pretty as they might be.   Nevertheless, this is not the most common of fish and I felt lucky to see these at close range.

  

Yellowtail Scad schooling with Square Spot Goatfish

Also in the area were a group of fish that one would take for Bigeye Scad.  A closer examination revealed a bold yellowstripe on the flank of these fish.  Perhaps they were seeking similarly colored fish to school with, because these guys were hanging with a large group of Square Spot Goatfish, which also have a dramatic yellow stripe, along with the eponymous square spot.  

     If you look carefully, the tails of these fusiform fish are tipped black.  When I saw these pictures I wondered if these could be fusiliers, somehow displaced all the way from the Western Pacific.  There is a species, the Yellowstripe Fusilier, that looks quite a bit like these fish and lives on the reefs of Indonesia.  It wold require more than climate change to get a whole school of fish from the other side of the world into Kailua Bay....  something on the order of aliens.  Close encounters of the fishy kind, perhaps? 

Yellowtail Scad, Kailua Bay, April 2022

     Realizing that this was more than far fetched, I read John Hoover's account of the Bigeye Scad more carefully.  In his last sentence he notes a similar fish, the Yellowfin Scad, Alute mate, which occurs in Pearl Harbor and Kane'ohe Bay.  This species is not pictured in John's book, but there are pictures in Google images and I am here including one of them. It should be noted that this is usually called a Yellowtail Scad. It is found across the tropical Pacific, possibly more common in Australia than points further east.  I have a note (or three) in to John Hoover, but based on this photo from Professor Google, I believe we can declare a winner.  Life fish for Jeff.  Details on Big Island distribution to follow.

Atule mate courtesy of Professor Google

    One might have thought that this was enough for one day.  Certainly I was cold enough to last a lifetime.  But on the way in, just before I hit the floating line that denotes the swim area, I saw something flopping around beneath a dead chunk of coral. A quick investigation revealed a dead slipper lobster, completely intact, flopping around in the swell.

Sculptured Slipper Lobster, Kailua Bay 2022

     This was a Sculptured Slipper Lobster, P. antarcticus.  Despite that misleading species name, it is found only in tropical waters.  My picture taking was limited by the position I could get the lobster into long enough for a photo.  Or to put it another way, I could not get it to lay flat with the dorsum up.  Hence, we have a cracker jack picture of the bottom of the slipper lobster and a good picture of the dorsal side with the lobster in the lateral position.

   Here are a few things we can learn from these photographs.  Lobsters are decapods and this slipper lobster does indeed have ten legs.  You can count them!  What it does not have is claws.

    As the most interesting feature of a slipper lobster is the antennae, I did a little extra research, finding an article by Lavalli and Spanier,  The Behavior and Sensory Biology of Slipper Lobsters, 2007.   

    When I think of crabs and lobsters, my mind rushes quickly to the catching of them in a trap with progress to a pot of boiling water and hence to a plate with some lemon and butter nearby.  So how do we get the lobster in the trap?

    As in other decapods, the "smelling", which is another way of saying long distance chemoreception,  is done by the antennules, those small spike like antennae that you see protruding from the front of the slipper lobster. It was surprising to me that "tasting" is done by neuroreceptors that are on the legs.  As "tasting" is contact chemoreception, perhaps this isn't so surprising.  It is these receptors that guide your crab or lobster into the trap and on its way to our dinner.

april

Sculptured Slipper Lobster, April 2022, Kailua Bay

    The chemoreceptors in the antennules and on the legs lead the slipper lobster to food,  but it is those other antannae, so remarkable on slipper lobsters, that interested me.  The anterior quarter of the slipper lobster is two large, rounded flaps.  These are called secondary antennae.  In fact, they are large flaps that are covered with a myriad of tufts of hair-like hydro receptors.  These tell the lobster information about speed and attitude, especially as it swims.  The swimming is accomplished by flapping that large tail and those so called secondary antennae also serve as rudders; they not only receive information about motion during swimming, but adjust the course as the animal propels itself through the water.  

    Well, I did not get the Easter Coris, but we did spot a new fish and we got some insight into the life and times of slipper lobsters.  Sandra and I hope you had a wonderful Easter and that the chorus, if you happened to be around one, was singing harmoniously.  

jeff

A Tiger Haunts the King Kam or Snorkeling with the Tiger Snake Moray

     About a week ago we had some friends over for dinner.  Sandra let it slip that I wrote a blog and our dinner companion asked, "How often do you post?"  The short answer would be, whenever we find something that is worthy of  a blog.  That doesn't exactly answer her question, but we keep on swimming, hoping that something special will turn up.  Mired in an observational drought that was approaching a fortnight, I decided that I would go to the beach in front of the King Kam Hotel and turn the outing into a blog.  In the absence of interesting critters, I could talk about the condition of the reef.

    I got down to the beach just after 8 AM.  When I swim on the Paul Allen side of the pier, which is to say entering on the fine sandy beach in the lagoon in front of the Marriott (the iconic King Kamehameha Hotel is, indeed, currently a Marriott) I change into my snorkeling gear on the beach below the beach boy shack.  As I changed, I noted a significant line at the shack.  It turns out the beach boys open up at eight and the early birds were lined up to rent kayaks and paddle boards.  Like me, they wanted to be among the first out on the water.

Tiger Snake Moray,   Scuticaria tigrina,  Kailua Bay,  March 2022

    As I entered I shared a few words with the lone bather in the lagoon.  She was a nice lady in her thirties from San Mateo.  I commented that the water was a lot colder in San Francisco and she replied that she wished that the water was warmer in the lagoon,where she was standing in cool water about waist deep.  Things are starting to warm up, but at any time of year the Inner Harbour will have the coldest water in Kona.  She seemed pretty happy to be there, enjoying the peace of the early Hawaiian morning regardless of the water temperature.

    As I shoved off, I was struck by the remarkably clear water.   The winter swell has yet to subside and before we left home we had watched the surfers down at Lyman's, enjoying some big waves, so I was a little surprised at this water clarity.  Of course, the winter swell comes mostly from the north and Kailua Bay is largely protected under these conditions.

    So I swam out, enjoying the clear water but seeing nothing of note in the lagoon.  I cleared the last of the big rip rap which extends from the small breakwater and turned for a quick look among those giant rocks on the bay side.  Immediately I got my reward.  In a crevice between the rocks I saw a segment of a small eel.  This eel was as smooth as a well made garden hose and just a little larger in diameter.  I was looking at a section about five inches in length which at that moment was in motionless repose.

   The eel was a uniform ecru.  The sartorially handicapped would call it beige, but that sounds so boring.  Decorating this elegant suit were a variety of black spots.  These spots had a slightly irregular margin, some were large extending the width of the eel's dorsum, while others were smaller.  

Zebra Moray, Kailua Bay , March 2022

   Mr. Eel was only about three feet below me, so I was able to dive down and  take a couple pictures.  As you will notice, there is no evidence of a dorsal fin.  After about a minute, the eel began to move and in short order he slithered out of my view.  Despite paying careful attention, I did not get much of a look at his tail.

   This was a Tiger Snake Moray, Scuticaria tigrina, the first one in my long and checkered snorkeling career.  The Tiger Snake Moray is secretive, nocturnal and rarely seen by snorkelers.  One might think that an animal named Tiger would have stripes.  John Hoover tells us that in the early nineteenth century (this eel was named in 1828) all large cats were on occasion called tigers.  Sandra thought he might be named for some person called Tiger, like Tiger Woods, perhaps.  

Five Stripe Wrasse, juvenile, Paul Allen's Reef  March 2022

    The other curious thing about the common name is the snake part.  This is definitely a moray eel, not a snake eel. John Randall in Shore Fishes of Hawai'i, 1996, calls this eel a Tiger Moray.  This is still an acceptable common name for this eel; common names of fish do not seem to be regulated as strictly as they are for birds. Randall also placed the Banded Moray in the genus Scruticaria.   I'm pretty sure that even 25 years ago this was a mistake that should have been caught by his editor.  For the blog, I read an article from the proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 1997 authored by Eugenia Bohlke and John McCosker  The authors were determined to clear up taxonomic questions about the genus  Scruticaria.  The authors tell us that the two species in this genus possess a long cylindrical body, a small head and a very short tail.    So these eels actually do look more like snakes than most other morays.

   Adults can reach 60 inches, but my specimen was probably only 18 inches in length. And I now feel relieved of any blame for not getting a better look at the tail fin, which in this genus is almost non-existent. 

Five Stripe Wrasse, juvenile, Paul Allen's Reef  March 2022

     I swam across the small bay and on the far side, hiding under a rock on the shore of the the Thurston Estate, once the vacation retreat of Paul Allen, I saw a large Zebra Moray.  On my first dive, I held on briefly near his lair, and got a look at the entire eel including the face.  Subsequent dives produced a good look at the body and that is what you see pictured here.  This was my first zebra fr 2022.

    As I approached the point that separates the small bay from the reef facing the open ocean, I caught sight of a small wrasse with a red face pattern.  I chased this guy over the shallow reef, often in less than a foot of water with lava and dead coral right below me.  I was fairly sure that this was a juvenile Five Stripe Wrasse and I was determined to get a picture.  Out of ten shots I got two that demonstrate what I was looking at, although neither will be printed on aluminum and displayed on the wall.  

White Spotted Surgeons in the surge, Paul Allen's Reef 2022

    At one point in the chase, a juvenile Surge Wrasse appeared.  I tried to swim in for a picture, but he was gone before I could get in range.  At another juncture a set came in.  I was already over the shallow reef and the wave was pushing me in.  Lucky for me, I was wearing a glove and able to stop my progress before getting a nasty scrape.  

    I cruised the open ocean for a few minutes and then made another pass at the wave swept reef.  There I found a large group of White Spotted Surgeons cavorting in the surge next to the wall.  That was a fine kettle of fish upon which to end this very productive snorkel.

jeff