The Tail of the Smooth Seahorse

    Somewhere north of the  airport there is a secret bay.  (Actually the bay is not so secret, but multiple parties have asked that I don't go out of my way to advertise the location in this blog.)  Over the last couple years there  have been rumors that seahorses exist in or near this bay. The lady concierge at the Mauna Kea 

Smooth Seahorse, Secret Bay  Photo Bob Hillis

Beach Hotel was the first to alert me to their presence.  A month or so ago, in his capacity as a dive guide, Bob Hillis was appraised of seahorses in the secret bay by a client diver.

     This was just too tantalizing and the fab four (Bob, Kim, Sandra and Jecko) made a special trip to the secret bay with the intention of tracking down this unusual fish, which by all accounts is quite rare in these very Sandwich Islands.   Suffice it to say that despite Bob's sharp eyes and Sandra's delicious sandwiches, we were unsuccessful.

      Then a week ago, as Sandra and I were trying to stay cool (yet another unsuccessful enterprise) Bob called.  He was driving home from the secret bay and had found the seahorses.  Although he was unavailable to go back for several days, he gave

An Ulua Hunting With a Snowflake Moray in Secret Bay

me some instructions as to the location of the seahorses.  Later that evening, he even sent us a picture that he hoped would aid in our finding them.  And he included this admonition:  The seahorses were in eight to ten feet of water and although they were associated with sticks, they were only found over the sand.

    The next morning was beautiful and Sandra and I made the drive north with high hopes buoyed by the gorgeous weather.  We hit the water about 9 AM.  Immediately I saw a large snowflake moray hunting with a small ulua.  I took a couple nice pictures of these fishes engaged in their symbiotic endeavour and then schmoopie and I swam to the spot that Bob had described  There was a secret landmark on shore.  Bob had instructed us to line up with the landmark and then find a spot eight feet deep.  Unfortunately for the Snorkelkids, X did not mark the spot.  We worked the area he had described, looking for seahorses clinging to sticks for about thirty minutes.   Curiously, in this location there were not many sticks.   After a half hour of fruitless searching we treaded water and held a pow wow. 

      "You know," I said to my beloved, "Bob's eight feet might be deeper than ours, but there is no deep water around here associated with that secret landmark.  And not only that, Bob has very sharp eyes."   We enlarged our area of search to no avail.

    At 45 minutes we swam to a different part of the bay where I knew there was more debris.  Lined up with the secret landmark, now forty yards away, I found lots of sticks.  In fact, the majority of these would be better described as small logs. "It would be a mighty big seahorse,"  I said to myself through my snorkel, "that would coil his tail around one of those."  Most of the sticks and logs were deeper than 10 feet, but Bob is such an adept diver that I thought his eight to ten feet might actually be twelve to fourteen.  Diving down to the sticks that were over the sand (much of the debris was over rocks and coral), I still did not find any seahorses.  Another 40 minutes passed and, finally exhausted, I went ashore.

     As I went to shower, I met a gentleman and two ladies who were serving as docents for the secret bay.  I asked if he knew about the seahorses.  At first he denied that there were any.  When I mentioned my friend's success just the day before, he became alarmed and shushed me.   Yes, he said sotto voce, there were
seahorses in the bay.  He quietly related that they had been introduced by the seahorse farm located at the natural energy lab.  Although the secret bay is supposedly protected from fisherman and collectors, he was eager for their presence to remain, well, a secret.  He noted that they were very hard to see and perhaps I had not been sufficiently discerning in my search.  Or to paraphrase John Lennon,  "Gotta be good looking cause they're so hard to see."  Interestingly, as you will soon see, he agreed with me that it was more likely to find the seahorses in the deeper part among the sticks and logs.

     That evening I contacted my friend and shared our failure.  He promise to guide us after the weekend, when he had to work.  On Monday, a small fly landed in the ointment.   Friends from San Diego had appeared out of nowhere.  On Tuesday he was taking them (at great expense) on the dive boat with the promise of a frolic with dolphins. And how would we like to go with the whole gang on Wednesday to look for the seahorses? In general, I like to conduct my explorations on a small scale.  Two couples is more than enough if I get to choose.  But we really weren't given a choice and the seahorses were looming large.

      We all met at Bob's condo down by the beach.  Team Seahorse would be composed of nine players, same as a baseball team.  (And then the Mormon said, "I've got seventeen wives and if I had one more....)

Smooth Seahorse, Secret Bay, September 2015   jwh

As we became acquainted, I detected a mild undercurrent of dissatisfaction.  Apparently the dolphins had not shown up, turning the previous day's outing into an expensive boat ride.  Suffice it to say, this put a little more pressure on our seahorse finder to produce.

       An hour later we assembled on the shore of Secret Bay.  Luckily, the San Diegans were all adept swimmers.  I would say snorkelers, except my new friend Mike is so comfortable in the water that he eschews a mask and snorkel, choosing instead small fins and racing goggles.

     Our guide took us right to the spot he had described a week before and found a smooth seahorse immediately.   After we all had a good look and your correspondent took the accompanying photograph, we got together at the surface.  Bob said, "Isn't it interesting that the guy (the reef docent) said they were somewhere else?"  Or to put it another way, to assure my continued lack of success the reef docent was a font of disinformation.

    There are several points I would like to make about the smooth seahorse, Hippocampus kuda.  First, it

Our New Friend Mike (AKA Aquaman) Points to a Seahorse

is  not quite as large as you might expect.  When ichthyologists measure a seahorse, they uncurl it so it may be five inches long from the tip of the tail to the end of the nose, but in its normal attitude this is reduced to three inches, top to bottom.  This species is kind of thin, compared to some seahorses and it does not have dorsal spines. Worst of all, the Smooth Sea Horse covers itself with filamentous algae and silt; this fellow wears a seriously cryptic coat!   The lumpy box crab has a similar modus operandi and unless it moves, one is hard pressed to suspect that it not just another silt covered stone,

    One final observation:  the Smooth Seahorse does not necessarily hang onto a stick in an erect position.  It wobbles down near the sand and frequently sort of drifts long the bottom, not attached to anything.  When approached, it turns away, denying the observer the classic seahorse silhouette.  Put this all together and I would suggest you get yourself in the right spot and look very carefully at every small bit of stick and weed on the bottom.  If you are lucky, you will have brought along someone with very sharp eyes.

     The pressure was off.  the Mudville Nine swam around looking at the other things that the secret bay has

Now That's What I Call Crabby!

 to offer.  I found a couple colonies of hydras and had a quick glimpse at a fantailed filefish.   As we swam towards the deeper part (where the seahorses aren't) we found a box crab scuttling across the bottom.  I was able to dive close enough to get the clear picture you see here.  Over in the deep, Bob found a crackerjack lobster carapace. I must admit, that it was really fun to swim with the large group in this relatively safe location.  Ashore we had a nice tea replete with self-satisfied congratulations and promises to get together and do it all again.   

    One can find the Ocean Rider Seahorse Farm at the end of the Natural Energy Lab, spitting distance to the runway at KOA.  Although several years ago they charged only a five dollar donation to look at their project, TripAdvisor correspondents suggest that the fee is now exorbitant.  If you check out their web site, on the other hand, you will see that they may be doing some very important work.  As the docent at the secret bay was apparently spreading disinformation left and right, I can not confirm that the seahorses we saw were introduced.

jeff