Getting Ready for Christmas

     Over the last two weeks, the rain has continued with just a few clear days.  In that time we have

Luminescent Jellyfish

forced ourselves to get in the water regardless of the weather.  I have a few things to report, but by far the most interesting thing to come across our desk here at the Kona Beach Blog is a report from our compadre in Kapa'au, Peter Krotttje,  About a week ago, Peter went snorkeling in his favorite spot, the small bay at Mahukona. He took along a couple friends and they ran into a bay full of luminescent jellyfish.  This is a very rare animal here in Hawaii.  You can read Peter's report by signing on to his blog, onebreathekohala.worldpress.com.  Peter is good photographer and was able to get some usable pictures of these jellies.

   I'm including a picture from google images so you can get an impression of what this animal looks like.  According to Peter, the bell is about three inches across and in addition to the central mass of tentacles, it trails longer stinging tentacles from the edge of the bell.  If you find Peter's pictures, you

I'll have a McMinion with fries, please.

will agree that this animal is quite distinctive.

In case you missed it the first time, stinging is the key word here.  When people see Sandra and I donning our swim shirts and dive skins, which are really just thin nylon with some UV reflective properties, they frequently ask if they keep us warm.  The short answer is , "Not very much."  However, they prevent sunburn, they prevent us from getting scraped on rocks and they protect us from noxious elements in the water.  Like stinging plankton and jellyfish.  You really need to sign on to Peter's blog to get a look at one of his companions on that fateful day.  She wore one of those athletic swimsuits, where straps are substituted for covering material, the very antithesis of a diveskin, and had a mass of stings over her back.  In a word, "Ouch!"

   

    One day before the Krottje Party met their doom at Mahukona, Sandra and I went south.  The night before, she had said that she wanted to visit a couple friends in the hospital and I noted that the Kona Community Hospital is at least half the way to the City of Refuge.  So we decided to kill two birds.

Mother Dolphin With Remora

with one stone.  Just  a little hospital joke.

   Of course, when we woke up on Monday morning it was raining.  Ordinarily this might have caused us to alter our plans.  However, we have had to adjust our meteorological expectations and now we realize that if we want to get out and do things we can not be dissuaded by a little rain.  Or a lot of rain.

    In Kealakekua I dropped Schmoopie off at the hospital to visit the sick while I motored across the Mamalahoa Highway to McDonald's, where I nabbed a few burgers and fries for our lunch.  With one notable exception, the clever inflatable and kinetic hamburger shilling  minion was the best thing we saw on his day.

The Alpha Male Swims to the Surface

   Soon we were down to City of Refuge, where it had stopped raining and there was a parking spot near the beach...a veritable double dip of happiness.  Adding to our happiness, the dolphin pod was swimming in the bay.  Wiki wiki we were changed and in the water, swimming out to the dolphins where they honored us with a few close passes over ten or fifteen minutes.  It had been a few months since we had swum with our friends the dolphins, in large part because we no longer jump in with them if it is inconvenient.  Twice recently we have finished our swim and changed into dry clothes, only to have dolphins arrive while we are dining sumptuously on our après swim sandwich.  this may seem exceptionally lazy.  Perhaps we are spoiled.

 On this day there was an added element to the dolphin show.  You may recall the blog where I described round lesions in the skin of many of the dolphins in the pod and the cookie cutter sharks that creates these hideous wounds.  In such a situation its difficult not to feel helpless, depressed, even sickened.  On this day we saw something at least as depressing.  This pod has a mother dolphin and her keiki.  The mother had a gaping wound just to the left of her dorsal fin.  This wound, perhaps a foot long slice revealing the muscle below, may have been the result of a propeller strike.  Attached to the wound was a slender remora, E. naucrales.  I was never able to get closer to the

Note the healing cookie cutter wounds.

mother dolphin than fifteen feet and the water was rather cloudy.  Hence, I do not have a very good picture.  In this instance, my eyes were better than the camera; I could clearly see the stripe down the side of this long, narrow remora as it whipped back and forth like the tail of a kite, attached firmly to the dorsal wound in the dolphin.

   My impression at the time, was that it was attached by the mouth and was parasitizing the dolphin as she swam.  As we have all known forever, remoras attach by a suction device on the top of their head, often to a shark, dropping off to feed at a propitious moment.  In as much as I have never seen a shark in Hawaii, I had desponded of ever seeing a remora.   (the alternative being to hope for a look at a large shark.)  The bottom line is that I could not see this very thin remora clearly enough to say if it was attached to the wound by the dorsal suction cup or by its mouth.  At the moment, I was sad and disgusted.

So ya sliced up the dolphins for just a little money.

   Just as an aside, from the guy at the blog who's in charge of conspiracy theories:  There is a fairly active movement among the people at NOAA and the  State of Hawaii to stop people from swimming with the spinner dolphins.  (Or as I like to think of it, to keep the dolphins from swimming with us.)  I have long observed that it is the multiple boats bearing paying customers, who approach the pods, encircle them, interfere with them.  And in his instance, carve them like a Christmas goose.  In the words of Frances McDormand in Fargo, "All for a little money."   Curiously, the folks who are in charge of regulating those boats do absolutely nothing to stop this illegal behavior.  If the will of the people of Hawaii were enforced, they would fine the bastards out of business.  And what of the native Hawaiians, who feel so strongly about the telescope.  We have never heard a word on this issue from that community.  

    The remainder of our swim in the cool, cloudy water was uneventful.  We got ashore and changed and ate our sandwich with a fellow amateur naturalist, discussing cookie cutter sharks, who live in the depths by day

Pervagor aspricaudus By Paul Allen's Lagoon

and swim up at night to do their dirty work, propeller injuries and other transgressions, natural and man inflicted.  We loaded up the car just as it started to rain.  Again. 

    It should be noted that the following night I was awakened by the light of a full moon.  Such has been the inclemency, that there had been no mooonlight for several days.  Both our snorkel at City and Peter's adventure at Mahukona, occurred during the full moon period, when stinging plankton are more common.  But who knew?   I don't know if jellyfish have any relationship to the full moon.

    Getting ready for my Christmas swim in search of the eponymous wrasse, Thallasoma eponomatum, following that trip to Two Step I have taken advantage of a couple sun breaks to do some snorkeling.  My swim on the Ironman side of the pier a few days ago revealed nothing more interesting than a stout moray eel.  No Christmas Wrasse, but I did have the opportunity to chat with the skipper of the Body Glove, who I assume was getting ready to go out and carve up a marine mammal or two. 

    Yesterday, I went swimming on Paul Allen's Reef, leaving the Redoubtable SKG ashore in search of

Yellow Spotted Coral Guard Crab  Kailua Kona Dec. 2016

things to place under the Christmas tree.  The water was not as cold as I feared it might be and was only moderately cloudy.  I didn't see a Christmas wrasse, but I had two modestly exciting sightings.  

    Just around the corner from Paul Allen's lagoon, I spotted a Yellowtail Filefish in about twelve feet of water.  I got the picture you see here from just below the surface, but each time I dove down, he would swim for cover.   This is only the second time I have seen aspricaudus near Kailua pier.

   On my way in, I examined a promising bit of cauliflower coral.  

  And what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a yellow spotted guard crab and a six pack of beer. 
With aluminum snaptops that popped with a click. 
If I drank all at once, I was sure to be sick.  

    Well, there was no beer, but isn't this exciting?   With the annihilation of the various species of Pocillopora coral following the high ocean temperatures of 2015, many of us have wondered if species highly dependent on this genus of coral are on their last legs.  I had wondered just the other day if I would ever see another guard crab.  This little fellow hunkered down at the base of the leaves of the cauliflower, so I was lucky to get the inferior picture you see here.  But what a treat, perhaps the best Christmas present of all.  

jeff