The Dragon Wrasse of Kahalu'u

One of our favorite movies, A Fish Called Wanda, features Kevin Kline.   In this story, about a jewel theft,  Kevin associates with a star studded cast.  Jamie Lee Curtis as the woman holding the plot together, Michael Palin as Ken, the get away driver, and John Cleese as the barrister for the accused.

And what do the English eat with chips?

    Kevin plays Otto, a demented thug.  He drives Jamie wild with desire by speaking Italian...Mussolini, spaghetti Milanense...  And towards the end of the movie he tortures KaKaKa  Ken, the getaway driver with a tremendous stutter, who also keeps a home aquarium.  Palin is bound to a chair with French fries stuffed in his nostrils while Otto interrogates him.  And to force a confession, he scoops the guppies from the aquarium one by one and sucks them down.  At one point he says, "Don't eat the green ones.  They're not ripe yet." 

    Which brings us to yesterday's snorkeling experience at Kahalu'u.  As I arrived, I admired a rare appearance of a Black Crowned Night heron on the lava reef near the shelter.  This is a native Hawaiian bird, known in Hawaiian as the Auku'u.  It survived the arrival of the Polynesians and the inadvertent introduction of rats.  On this morning he made a stunning appearance at our favorite local snorkeling beach. 

Almost immediately, as I started my snorkel, I encountered a magnificent Dragon Wrasse.  This is the spectacular juvenile of the Rockmover.  Even as the reef fish are diminished, much like the elves of Middle Earth, rockmovers, like hobbits , I suppose, persist at Kahalu'u.  In fact, of all the species we see there, they seem to be among the least affected by coral death, which is truly dramatic everywhere on the Kona Coast, no less at Kahalu'u.

 

   Other wrasses have spectacular juveniles, but this guy and the juvenile of the Yellowtail Coris are the only ones we see snorkeling.  

The Auku'u promenades at Kahalu'u

    This wasn't just any dragon wrasse.  First of all he was green, as is the case in about twenty percent of the individuals (Jeff Hill, unpublished data). 

Dragon Wrasse Kahalu'u   April 2024

    And he was big.  It is  a curiosity that this juvenile matures at different rates.  As you will see in the accompanying pictures, this guy is not only green, but quite large and retains all the features of a juvenile, which is to say the peculiar fins and "antennae " of the  dragon wrasse.  It is far from uncommon to find young rockmovers, smaller than this guy that might retain a bit of their antennae, but otherwise look entirely like small adults.  They may persist in flopping around like a juvenile.  There is speculation that the dragon wrasse are imitating a leaf of seaweed.  In the case of these transformed young adults, who are now universally clothed in a  hounds tooth brown and black, they aren't fooling anybody.  And to be honest, as big as this beautiful fish was, he wasn't fooling anyone, either.  

   So I took some pictures and a video and swam away in search of some other underwater delight.  I took a couple more pictures and then decided that the camera was operating on an altered program.  In fact, I went swimming at the pier a few days earlier and came home with pictures that were not very good.  Or perhaps they were awful.  

   Why I didn't deal with the camera then and there is a good question.   There had been nothing blog worthy on my swim and perhaps we can blame my sloth on mother nature, or climate change, which is certainly the villain of choice for this millennium. 

   I floated with the current across the bay fiddling with the camera  menus, finally accepting a re-institution of the original program, all while looking at the camera underwater.  Not an entirely unpleasant experience.  Unfortunately, after I got the camera working acceptably, there was nothing special to photograph.  Rats!

    But luck was on our side.  As I made my way to the exit, I did a little hunting and happened upon the big green dragon, performing as he did an hour earlier.  the water was still clear and I spent a happy five minutes getting the pictures and video you see here.  t

The ones we took earlier have been relegated like an inferior football club.  

    I hope you enjoyed the pictures, and I'm hopeful that as spring comes on, where ever you are, you are out seeing some good stuff.  I leave you with a single caveat, "Don't eat the green ones. they're not ripe yet!"

jeff

  the video is fantastic, but our IT department can't handle it.  C'est domage.