Leaf at K Bay!

   Some days are better than others.  And some days are way better than others.

    Yesterday I went snorkeling at the pier.  Sandra doesn't really enjoy hobnobbing with the people from the boat and it was Wednesday so the Carnival cruise ship was definitely in town.
 

Red-backed Fairy Wren  in the dunes at Sapphire Beach, NSW

     On the way down to the pier I had a pleasant chat with a gent from Brisbane.  I told him we were in Coff's Harbour a year or so ago. Coff''s is 6 hours from Brisbane, which is pretty close in Australia.  He decried that Coff's Harbour had been ruined, converted into a plaything for the tourists.

   While that small city is growing, it certainly didn't seem to revolve around the tourist industry when compared to our little cruise ship mecca.  The village of Kailua Kona is most definitely aimed at tourists.  Coff''s, on the other hand, it is being killed the way the developers killed Sisters, Oregon.  Fancy houses near the beach are replacing the forest and dunes that supported koalas and kangaroos.  In Sisters the fancy houses and condos are replacing the cowboys and blotting out the pristine views of the Three Sisters.  Those sisters, for
 those of you who don't know, are a trio of snow capped peaks that rise just south of this sometimes 
cow town.

     In Coff's Harbour, fancy new houses and condominiums are sprouting all along the beach, replacing smaller dwellings and undeveloped forest.  I presume these are homes of retirees from Sidney, not exactly the same as the pure tourists who crawl off the cruise ships to take over Kailua Kona for a few hours.  One might even accuse us of taking a slice of the same pie.  Yes.  Kailua, Cofff's Harbour and Sister's have all changed over the last 30 years.  As I said to my new Australian friend, anywhere  desirable is being is bought up and developed.

     Two years ago in Coff's Harbour, Sandra and I had stayed in a caravan park about five miles north of the city, just over the dunes from the ocean, with spectacular birding right on the property.  In fact, I am pleased

 to tell you that the Sapphire Beach Holiday Park is hanging on.  This prime property had been surrounded by fancy houses, so I give a tip of the hat to the owners, who must be tempted to sell their beach front paradise to developers.  Good on ya, mate.

Leaf Scorpionfish from the top

  
 Well, my Aussie friend and I commiserated for a while about paradise lost and then I headed down to the beach.

   If only the fish watching had been as good as the people watching.  I saw one peppered moray and was finally reduced to taking pictures of a rock coated with pink coraline algae.  Pretty, but how low can a fish watcher sink?

    the best part of the day occurred when three kids playing on the beach approached me as I was getting out.  There were curious about my swimming and what I might have seen..which wasn't much.  They were especially interested in my camera and one of the girls was over joyed to swim under water and have her picture taken.  

    Today Sandra and I timed the high tide and had breakfast down at Kahalu'u, making friends at 8 AM and entering the water a little before 9.  It was a cool day, threatening rain, but the water was super clear.  As I went through my foot friendly fin application, I was entertained by a large whitemouth moray, a saddleback butterflyfish  and a large and colorful Christmas wrasse.  We had the previous day beat before we swam a stroke.

     Out in the bay we were checking the near coral heads when I spotted a big zebra moray curled up in a crevice.  Just around the corner in the same coral was the treat of the day, a leaf scorpionfish!  He was only

Leaf Scorpiofish, Kahalu'u 2016

four feet deep, but he was chilling out on the bottom of a cavity in the coral.  So while it didn't require a deep dive, it was a challenge to get in position to photograph the fish in his lair.  I was mildly concerned that my hand holds were about a foot away from the zebra moray.  Like the proverbial lobster, I devoted one antenna to the eel and one to the scorpionfish.

    This was only my second leaf scorpionfish and my first in Hawaii.  It was Sandra's third.   As you can see, this leaf  was mottled black and white.  He cooperated for a number of profile shots.  Luckily, I took one without flash.  At home I discovered that there was just enough particulate in the water to spoil all the pictures I took with flash.  I especially like the overhead shot that shows how thin this fish is, side to side.

Gosline's Fang Blennies   Green and Brown...Who knew?

    At this time, two ladies swam by and I signaled to them to look at the leaf scorpionfish and the zebra moray.  They were really enthusiastic.   After enjoying these two remarkable fish, one of them said said that there was an octopus nearby.  I sort of shrugged this off.  Once you see an octopus, it heads for the barn, never to be seen again.

    We finally grew tired of annoying the scorpionfish and advanced to the agenda posed to me by John Hoover.  Lately he has been asking me what fish I see snorkeling, as he is writing a guide app for snorkelers.  This is a great honor.  And as you will see, perhaps undeserved.

   Apparently I gave a wrong answer regarding fang blennies and he was hoping I would clear it up. I believed that I was seeing both ewa and Gosline's fang blennies in the shallows.  The correct answer is that Gosline's fang blenny probably comes in both a green and brown varieties, although they are invariably represented in field guides as being green.  Being

Cushion Sea Star imitating an octopus

just a poor country boy from Polk County, for a great many years (up to today) I thought the brown ones were ewa blennies. These latter are much more colorful and found by divers below snorkeling depth.

   Dutifully documenting my culpability, I took pictures of green and brown Gosline's fang blennies.  I suppose if Gregor Mendel had been a Hawaiian instead of Moravian monk, he might have done his genetic studies with fang blennies instead of peas.  Then we might call them Mendel's fang blennies and children all around the world would read about them in biology class.  Or maybe they could replace Drosophila melanogaster in the genetics lab at UH HIlo.   The possibilities are endless.

    My shame documented, we moved on.  But not very far.

   The two ladies now swimming in front of us started pointing and there on a coral ten feet away was a small octopus.  In hopes of getting my name on the evening news (for something positive, of course.  I leave the negative possibilities to your sordid  imagination.)  I have been taking

Ornate Wrasse Juvenile With Ocellus

 some movies, which KHNL shows associated with the weather. This I did with the octopus, as he climbed up to the top of the coral, slithered down inside and then peered out while hanging upside down through a fenestration in the coral head.

    The movie lasts for 22 seconds.  The water is clear and the coral actually looks pretty good.  Sadly, no matter how hard I look I can not see our little octopus.  The octopus is a master of disguise, and this guy matched the color of the coral perfectly.  I guess the guys at KHNL are going to have to wait until next time.

    We really enjoyed the octopus, but our new found friends weren't done.  Fifteen feet ahead, they were pointing again.    One surfaced and said, "Look at this octopus."

    What she had brought to my attention appeared  to be a cushion starfish, so I politely asked if she had seen it swim, or move at all.  Following the expected negative, I explained about cushion starfish, which are extremely good animals in their own right.  This is the second cushion star we have seen this year.  In all my previous years I have seen only a few.   And were it not for our Indian guide, I probably would have missed this one.

   And in defense of the ladies who found him, I would be the first to admit that I have made some egregious mis-identifications.  My best (or worst,depending on one's perspective) was presenting the Great Oz with a picture of a very deceptive stick and asking him what species of small scorpionfish he thought it might be.  Talk about slinking unceremoniously form the Emerald City!  So ladies.  If you are out there, you keep finding the good stuff.  

I got it in Hong Kong.  Home of the Shiny Green Suit

    Had it not been for the leaf scorpionfish, this sea star might have been the find for the day.  On seeing the cushion star, I had nabbed a single picture.  As we had just left the octopus hiding in a crevice, the camera was set on flash.  So the picture isn't great.  You can see that this starfish is purple with the expected colorful papillae.  I spent so long talking to the ladies on the surface, that I drifted away from the starfish.  Not only was I unable to get another picture, but I could not find it to show Sandra.

    As soon as we swam away, we came to an amazing little fish.  About the size and shape of a small fang blenny, he was darting around between a couple corals.  This tiny fish, probably less than 2cm, had a series of iridescent green stripes.  I thought ruefully that this might be an ewa blenny, but I knew it was not.  Sandra waited patiently while I took a half dozen pictures, some with flash, some without.  In none of my pictures does the irridescence show very well.  But in one you can see an ocellus.  As you enjoy the picture of this little fish, consider that the ocellus is no bigger than the head of a common pin!  We never would have appreciated that with our bare yes, with the little guy darting back and forth. The only fish I know that has that brilliant green striping is the ornate wrasse.  This was clearly a fry of that handsome species.

Banded Coral Shrimp  botany.edu

   All four of us were able to enjoy this quick fellow in his shiny green suit.   (You like it? I got it in Hong Kong,  Home of the shiny green suit."  Jimmy Wah,  Good Morning Vietnam.)

    Now here is a curiosity.  I'm pretty sure that we have seen one of these shiny green immatures before. Probably at Ho'okena.   After all,  the ornate wrasse is not an uncommon fish.  However, one usually sees it at a little more depth than is offered at Kahalu'u.  Like the oval butterfly, ornate wrasse is not usually seen here.  Thus, the egg must have been brought in by the current.   It will be interesting to see how long this baby wrasse survives in his refuge at K Bay.

   At this point, our faithful Mohicans swam out towards Surfer's Rock and Sandra started making noises about being cold.  Before we could turn and burn, I spotted a banded coral shrimp hustling into a coral.  It was a brief but excellent look...too quick to get the camera up.  It is my impression that other people see these delightful candy striped shrimps fairly often.  This was only my third or fourth and I still don't have a good picture. 

Punctured Miter with Snail

   As our new found snorkeling buddies headed out, we took a vote and it was unanimous: time to go in.  On the way, though, I spotted a punctured miter on the sandy bottom.  Thinking that there must be a hermit crab inside, I dove down and plucked it from the sand.  As I did so, I realized that the mollusc was still inside the shell and that his head (or is it his foot?) had been buried in the sand,  In the next instant, I saw him withdraw into the shell.  As you can see from the pictures, it was a beautiful shell.  I'm not sure what we see inside the orifice, mutilated snail parts or an intact animal.  After checking him out, I buried his head back in the sand.  Nice mollusc.

   Ashore we sat around and looked at our pictures, made friends with an Asian family from Long Beach.  they had four girls ranging from three to seven.  The older two were actually going snorkeling by themselves.  And we were lucky to apprehend  our swim buddies at the shower.  As it turns out, they are from British Columbia and they are staying at our old haunt, Alii Villas.  I told them to look up Kyle and maybe they could get in at Kona Makai...emphasizing that it was more of an intermediate experience than a morning at K Bay.  But if the water remains calm, it should be possible and perhaps they will see something wonderful.  As we know, there is a lot out there to discover.

jeff

Ornate Wrasse Keiki playing with a small crab