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| Thou Shalt Not Watch Fish! |
Tuesday has become an important day for swimming, what with Sandra working in the church office Wednesday morning and both of us having a potential church obligations on Thursday mornings. Its almost as if God doesn't want us to go snorkeling. Actually, as I have previously reported, the bible takes no position what so ever on wildlife observation. Noah and the Ark aside, it's almost as if wild animals of any variety didn't exist in the Holy Lands. (I don't think the snake in the garden qualifies as a wild animal and I don't think we can credit Eve with being the first herpetologist.)
Regardless of ecclesiastical conflicts, we loaded up the car Tuesday morning and headed north to the Mauna Lani. We had been aiming for a trip down to City of Refuge, but the wave predictor, which is sort of like the bible, prophesied that we would be better off avoiding City on that day. The morning was bright as we drove under a blue sky, fleecy clouds gracing the heights of Kohala Mountain, the observatories
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| Flying Gurnard Black Sand Beach 49 July 2017 |
I was surprised when we arrived at Black Sand Beach 49 to find that there was a significant amount of wind, perhaps fifteen gusting to twenty knots blowing right at us from the north. This wasn't enough to deter us, so we unloaded our folding chair, which only blew over once before we found a hedge that would shelter it sufficiently, donned our swimming togs and headed down the steep black sand slope to the beach. It was early, around nine in the morning, so that black sand hadn't had a chance to warm excessively.
The water was fairly clear and a pleasant temperature, probably in the low 80's. As we swam, the wind blew us back a bit so we ended up swimming through rocks that hug the seaward shore. Finally free, we enjoyed the remaining coral, which is as good as anywhere in these days of coral bleaching. Towards the middle, we spotted a patch of coral that was
supporting a number of soldierfish, other wise known to spear fisherman as menpachi. It is a really good year for the epaulet soldierfish, which are appearing in significant numbers in lots of spots where we hadn't seen them before. As we watched them hovering in their coral depressions, I noticed a Hawaiian squirrelfish swim across a fenestration. This is a fish that we ordinarily only see at night, so this quick look was exceedingly lucky.
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| Kentucky Fried Benthic Worms, They're Finger Flickin' Good! |
Moving on, I was happy to find a big, fat flying gurnard in the sand patch smack in the middle of the bay. This odd fish, with pectoral fins that look for all the world like wings, had eluded us so far this year. We always look for it at the pier, where it appears with modest dependability on both the Ironman and hotel sides, plying its trade in the sand. We have been lucky to see some juveniles in the past, these being much more handsome with lots of blue in the wings. This old bird was big and gray, hardly any color at all. The gurnard has the curious habit of crawling slowly across the bottom while finger like projections from the elbows of the wings (hence just to either side of the mouth) flick at the sand, disturbing small invertebrates which, in their attempt to flee the incessant flicking, become lunch. I took a ten second movie, attempting to capture this finger flicking, but the fish was too deep, probably around thirty feet, so I wasn't able to get close enough to capture this interesting behavior effectively. Never the less, we suspect the gurnard was enjoying his brunch, which was (I have it on good authority) finger flickin' good.
There was little else to see in the bay, so we swam ashore, showered and retired for our own lunch. I like to let you know about the facilities available near the snorkeling beaches. In this instance I am sad to
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| A Coneshell Hermit Crab at Kahalu'u Hopes for Cooler Water |
Well, the manicured bits of lawn by the courts, shaded by flowering trees were still there, so I on the beach chair and Sandra on her mat, spread out our repast. What do you think about that? In fact, it was damn near heavenly sitting in the shade, dining sumptuously and watching the tourists trudge by with their beach equipment. Between bites, we took a moment to gaze through the chain links into the tennis court, which was piled at one end with dead leaves. If one were looking forward to his next visit to BSB 49, he might add all these things together and be a bit
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| Run Silent, Run Deep. Scribbled Filefish at City of Refuge |
The following day Sandra did her stint at the church while I ran errands. Somehow in the afternoon I found the energy to drive down to Kahaluu for a swim. The bay was nice and flat and the tide just right for an easy entry. That is about where the good news stops. The water was cloudy and very warm. In fact, when I was getting out I swam through a patch close to shore that had to be in the upper 90's. Early on I saw a cone shell hermit crab which escaped my grasping fingers. Following my fumbling attempt, he peered up at me from between the rocks. Out by Surfer's Rock there was a pair of saddleback butterflies. And that was about it. Even the tourists in the shelter didn't provide much amusement. So for this installment, the hot water is the story. Heaven help the coral at K Bay.
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| Heller's Barracuda |
numbers. There were great clots of them out in the water, some with matching life preservers, entire extended families with color coded noodles. We struggled through the maddening crowd to the two step entry, found a place to put on our fins and, swoosh, we were in the delightfully cool, clear water. After my experience of the the day before, the water looked like crystal. There were buckets full of fish of every stripe and once we swam ten yards from shore, we were pretty much on our own.
Our mission on this day was to see the scribbled filefish, which was easily the most common fish missing from the 2017 list and the threadfin jack, which is appearing in bays this summer in Kona and Kohala With that in mind, we swam straight out forty yards to the lava ridge that in extreme low tide pokes its head above the water. Hence, we call it the island, even though it is rarely so. The water around the island is deeper, perhaps 30 to 40 feet, but it was at the surface that I saw the first good fish for the day. A small thin fish about ten inches long was swimming in front of me. His body was quite straight, his tail a neat little fan and when I looked quite close, he had a fine blue line running the length of his flank. As he swam, he joined an identical companion. I decided that these must be juvenile Heller's barracuda. They were too elusive, small and gray for a photo, but they were fun to observe.
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| Yellow and Black, Longnose Butterflyfish at City of Refuge |
Sandra and I swam around the island, at one point interacting with a fellow snorkeler who was enthused with a large turtle hanging out on the bottom. Not seeing much else, we headed north, with the coral below becoming progressively deeper. Suddenly there was a scribbled filefish deep below us. As we watched he was joined by a mate and they circled slowly below us before heading out to sea.
We shared a high five, but didn't have much time to gloat before we saw a small school of adult Heller's barracuda. They were about twenty feet down, but before I could get a picture the school went deeper. At about the same time, a school of opelu, swimming wildly, occupied the spot previously held by the barracuda. At times like this, the opelu remind me of crazy ants.
Those of you who don't live in Hawaii may not be familiar with crazy ants. Suffice it to say, we are blessed with ants in all sizes. We have large red ants that often appear singly. Mostly we have black ants that vary from medium size to microscopic. I suppose there is a branch of invertebrate zoology that specializes in ants and a practitioner of such would be in hog heaven here in Kona. Most of these black ants
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| Longnose Butterflyfish Transitional Coloration City of Refuge, July 2017 |
Well, we attempted to photograph the scribbled filefish and the Heller's barracuda and in the process I got a couple of poor pictures of opelu, which as we have noted were sort of mixing with the barracudas. Further exploration didn't yield anything of great interest, unless you live for extremely plain and not so
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| Dragon Fruit Cactus South Kona |
Just as we were preparing for the two step landing I was stopped dead by a very long nose butterflyfish in remarkable transition. You will recall that this fish comes in two colors, yellow and black. It is accepted that they change color from time to time, and that this color change does to indicate anything special. For example, the black ones are not males. We occasionally see a black one with a bit of yellow here and there, but this fish was way different. His wide flank was bronzy, an effect created by a mixture of yellow and black scales, His face and the trailing edge was black, but that edge was lined in yellow, as were the little spines on the dorasal fins. Fancy! This was a truly remarkable individual, one that we have been anticipating for years.
We surfaced and looked at each other and I said, "the f***ing missing link." And so it was.
On the way home we stopped while Sandra took a few pictures of the developing dragon fruit on the cactus in the lava rock desert. a fitting end to good day in South Kona.
jeff
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