Drones Die, Kim Dives, and the Hermit Sings the Blues.

   Since we have last met around the old laptop,  Sandra and I have been scrounging for a good, blog-worthy story.  We have a few tidbits to relate to you, but first, in the spirit of our sometimes neighbor Bradley Smith, a joke. 

Dive-reticulitis?   Inconceivable.

   Brad teaches college physics at the Skagit Valley Home for the Bewildered.  He tells us that to set the proper mood, he starts off each lecture with a joke. Considering his high powered intellect, these jokes are routinely sophomoric and, to be acceptable in the classroom, devoid of racy themes.  Fortunately for us, in addition to all his other accomplishments, Brad is an excellent cook.  Unfortunately for us, he frequently begins the dinner routine by telling us one of the jokes that he inflicts upon his students.  After our excursion to Mahukona (Pyramid Butterfly, Rock Damsel, et al.) Sandra came up with a joke worthy of Physics 101, and in that spirit, I present this to you. 

   As we were approaching the Pyramid Butterflies, about fifteen minutes into our swim, Sandra spotted a a lone reticulated butterflyfish.  Like many species of butterflies, the reticulated is usually seen as a mated pair.

Dwatted Dwone.

  This troubled her and she thought about it day after day.  At last, she decided that the mate had succumbed
to dive-reticulitis.  Ba-dum.

    Sandra presented that little bit of humor to me on our drive to City of Refuge about a week ago.  At the picnic table, as we were donning our dive suits, we met what we initially assumed was a handsome young

couple from San Diego.  The girl was a cute little pixie, so naturally I had to chat her up.  As it turned out, this boy and girl combo were associated with an adverting firm and were at City of Refuge filming an ad for a water-borne drone produced in China. The drone was radio controlled and could take pictures of things both under water and on top of the water.  We had noted a couple scantily clad beauties on paddle boards just off the two step entry (hardly a common occurrence) and it turned out that the drone was attempting to film them while the divers filmed the drone.

A drone's eye view.  Things were never like this back in San Diego.

   One might be reminded of Howard Wallowitz with his satellite-controlled car attempting to look up Penny's skirt.

   The guy wandered off to assist in the production and the girl remained.  According to her, she had scored a trip to Kona for the purpose of watching the stuff.  Just think, if I was a cute twenty something girl , maybe
I could score a free trip to Kona. 


    While you are trying to get your mind around that bit of aberrant sociology, I will tell you that the Chinese had sent this crew two drones.  One had ceased to function the day before and the second bit the dust while Sandra was putting on her dive skin.  Hence, the picture you see here are members of the team contemplating the second non-functional drone.

Howard can't wait to get her on a paddleboard!

    We looked really hard for a blog worthy fish.  We found some boulders way out on the north cusp, but try as we might, we could not roust out a rock damsel.  But the water was cool and clear and there were lots of other fish.  Not to mention the handsome young advertising team from San Diego.

   Last Friday we went swimming with the church ladies.  We had been threatened with another non-swimmer, a newbie of a certain age at the Methodist church, but she had decided to go on the Fairwinds, the cruising catamaran that takes swimmers and non-swimmers alike for a dip at the Captain Cook monument down in Kealakekua Bay.  This worked out well for Sandra, who has developed a healthy fear of non-swimmers.  And the new non-participant was afforded the opportunity to get rid of a portion of her extra money.  So things worked out well for one and all.

   The water was cool and just a bit cloudy.  Out by the fourth swim buoy, I spotted an octopus about nine feet down.  The water was just cloudy enough, and the octopus was so cryptically colored, that Kim and

Kim Davison.  The next Jacqueline Cousteau.

Sunny were unable to see him. Sandra, now an accomplished diver, was able to descend for a fine look at this handsome cephalopod.

   After several frustrating minutes of diving and pointing to no avail,  I swam off in search of something shallower. As I returned to the group, Sandra and Kim were talking gaily.  In my absence, Sandra had taught Kim to dive.  No more missing out on octopi for Ms, Davison!   In the case of Sandra, it was see one, do one, teach one.  She was so proud that she had me take Kim's picture in mid-descent. 

   Yesterday, mostly to get away from the stifling house, Ms. Gray and your humble correspondent wandered down to Kahalu'u.  We are in a period of what the news is calling King tides.  This has been going on for a couple weeks now, with tides in excess of two feet.  This won't sound like much to those in temperate latitudes, but when augmented by offshore winds, it has been enough to cause flooding both in Honolulu and on the windward side of this very emerald isle.  These floods have created a brown water situation and it took some fast talkin' on my part to convince Sandra that it was safe to swim.

Gotta be a hermit crab!

   The water at Kahalu'u was high, higher than we expected, and as cloudy as I have ever seen.  But it wasn't too warm and it cleared a little when we got away from the entry.  There was a good bunch of fish, including both red labrid and dragon wrasse.  Towards the end of the swim, we spotted a beautifully encrusted triton shell sitting on the coral about three feet down.  Hermit crab!  Even better, through the adjacent fenestration we could see some really large legs, a washed out orange in color, I thought they must belong to a lobster or a larger crab. 

   We directed our attention first to the the hermit, diving down and positioning the shell to coax him out for a free peek. As has been my luck of late, he just would not come out except when his triton shell was face down.  There was just enough current in the vicinity of the rescue shelter to make this experience frustrating.

  I never got a good look with my eyes.  Perhaps as a consequence of the current, but more likely secondary to operator error, I took a bunch of inferior pictures.  But luckily, there were a couple good ones where we

Hazlett's Hermit Crab Peeks Out From His Triton

captured the little fellow poking his nose out from under the edge of the shell.  In the pictures his legs look black, but I am writing that off to the lack of light in the shade of the shell.  three is no doubt that his eye stalks are rufous terminating with a white band.  So I'm calling it a Hazlett's hermit crab in a Hawaiian hairy triton.

   As for the large crab or lobster, after I finished with the hermit I dove down, held on and looked from the upside down perspective under the coral head.  A raccoon butterflyfish looked back at me, but there were no arthropods.  Perhaps you'll see a lobster the next time you go swimming.  Or better yet, maybe you will buy one or two at the market and serve them with butter and lemon.  And a cool, crisp pinot grigio.  Yeah.  That's the ticket.

jeff