Juvenile Barred Filefish, Disaster Strikes and a Fish Story

   Yesterday Sandra dropped me off at the pier for an hour in the afternoon, while she enjoyed the friendly confines of the air conditioned  mall.  It was a super high tide and a Sunday afternoon with a host of locals cavorting in the warm, turbid water.

    I saw nothing on the way out and by the time I neared the pier on my return I was wondering how I was

Barred Filefish Juvenile  Kailua Kona 2017

going to waste the next half hour. Luckily,  near the first swim buoy I spotted a juvenile barred filefish, the black fish with the pin point white spots.  As I was admiring him, and hauling out the camera, two kids swam over.  It was a boy and a girl in the ten to twelve range, the girl being the older sister, but just barely.  Before spotting your humble correspondent, they had been annoying an older brother who was attempting to fish.  He would throw his lure in the water and they would grab it and throw it back.

    It's a sad thing in this day and age, but a single adult, no matter how well intentioned, must consider the implications of befriending children. What a shame. I talked to them a little, but didn't ask their names, somehow figuring that might cross the line.  For the purposes of the the blog let's call them Kimo and  Jen.

    The girl was wearing swim goggles and the boy a mask.  Neither had flippers, but when you grow up swimming like a fish, perhaps they aren't so necessary. I asked if they would like to see a cool fish and when they assented we watched from the surface while the keiki filefish swam out from under the coral overhang.

Kimo   "That's a damn big eel!"

 We we all got a good look.   Kimo was surprised that a fish as big as this was still a baby.  Suffice it to say, the barred filefish is a big fish and the keikis are
commensurately large. From the standpoint of getting the kids interested, one has to admit that with the filefish shape, the fine black spots and its butterscotch tail, this is a pretty cool fish.

    The kids swam a short distance then turned together and gave me a wave.  I asked if they would like to have their picture taken for the blog and they waved eagerly.  I spent the next five minutes trying for a picture.  The filefish was just cooperative enough to make it a challenge.

   When I was done with the filefish,  I swam out beside the pier.  Near the end of the small coral reef there was a large peppered moray eel.  The kids were about fifteen feet away and looking at me, so I beckoned them over.  They swam faster that I could wearing fins. I showed them the pictus and Kimo allowed that it was, indeed, a damn big eel.

A Lovely colony of Hydras, Kailua Pier August 2017

   By this time I was having fun, so I swam back by the pier, where Kimo and Jen were hopping in and out onto the pier like a couple of otters.  There, looking in a spot that had supported the colony in the past, I found a nice clump of hydras.  I explained that they look like a bunch of tiny Christmas trees and both of the
kids were able to dive down and enjoy these beauties.  I managed one last photo opportunity, getting Kimo and Jen to dive the hydras and point.  What delightful keikis!

    Time was about up so I swam to shore, noting a dead male boxfish on the way. Alas poor Boxfish.  I knew him Horatio.  A fish of infinite jest and a host of significant angles.

    Back at the ranch, Sandra plopped the camera in to soak while I hung my swimming outfit to dry.  Inside, I took the camera from its bath and was caring for the lens, carefully sucking up each drop with the ragged edge of a paper towel.  It took just a moment, one or two sucked drops, as it were, for me to realize that

What's Missing in this Picture?

something was desperately wrong.  The ring that surrounds the lens was missing and I was able to look right in to the lens assembly.

   We hunted in the camera bag, in the trunk of the car and in the pockets of my suit, all to no avail.  With Sandra's encouragement we drove back to the pier.  I had some vague recollection that when I pulled the camera from its bag I heard a ping, like something metal hitting the asphalt. We looked all around, near the cubbies, around the shower and in the dressing room.  The ring was nowhere to be found. 

    The following morning I went for an early swim, hoping that I might find the ring in the vicinity of the first swim buoy, the first place I had pulled the camera from my pocket.  Of course, it wasn't there.  Not only that, but the juvenile filefish had moved on.  After a thorough search, I began examining the other areas I had swum the previous afternoon.  Not too far along, I ran across a longjaw squirrelfish that had been hooked, probably the night before, and broke the line by

Longnose Squirrelfish and a Web of Monofilament, Kailua Kona 2017

wrapping around the coral.  The coral near the fish, with a web of criss-crossing monofilament  line, was reminiscent of the inside of busted piano.  I dove down and cleared some of the line, but failed to free the fish. 

   I also took a couple pictures of the fish in its predicament.  These were taken with my old buddy, the Canon D10.  I had hoped to use the Canon to take a picture of the lens trim ring on the sand near the first swim buoy.  Now I was pressing it into battle for real fish photography.  An hour or two earlier, the nice man at Olympus echoed their website; the camera can be used without the trim ring and they plan to have more replacement trim rings for sale by November.  Apparently, this part which appears to protect the space around the lens is non-essential.  This is lucky, since both the T3 and the T4 shed this so-called trim ring faster than a growing hermit crab changes shells.  

    This idea of non-essential parts reminds me of a bird watching trip to Ecuador 20 years ago.  As there was a coup going on, the government had closed the airport, so our options were limited.  Thus, at the Hotel Intercontinental we had  rented a VW Fox, made in Brazil.  Early in our adventure, we encountered a mudslide covering our path.  We had birds to see, so my good friend

The Cock of the  Rock says, " Hey Miguelito.  Via con Dios"

Mikey plowed right through.  A bit further on there was a tractor with a scoop parked by the side of the road.  The tractor proved to be a harbinger of things to come, specifically more mud slides.  As we exited the third of these exciting driving obstacles, we noted that the car was dragging something.  It proved to be the front stabilizer bar.  Mike asserted that  (like the lens trim ring on my Olympus T3) the stabilizer bar on the Fox was extra and unnecessary parts.  Being a resourceful anesthesiologist, I attempted to secure the dragging bar with a roll of one inch cloth tape.  For a little while the car thus looked a bit like a narwhal.  However, when we plowed through the next mudslide the other end of the stabilizer bar was torn free.  I assume that unnecessary part is still in the depths of the Andean mud, somewhere on the old road to Santo Domingo.

    Mike was right, though, and we were able to complete our circuit of western Ecuador sans stabilizer bar.  Eventually we got the Fox back to Quito where we traded it in for an Isuzu Trooper, which we took into the Oriente.  There we survived the rest of the military coup and saw many wonderful birds including the Andean

Usain Bolt.  Some guys have all the luck.

Cock of the Rock at a lek: seven orange birds, each the size of an NFL football, bouncing up and down on a branch.  This on a misty morning hard by the Cascada San Rafael.  Those were the days. 

Mike is gone now.  I'm hoping that he's ripping through mudslides and avoiding the Federales up in heaven.  With any luck, he's out bird watching right now with St. Peter along for the ride.

   A bit further out, on the far edge of the same coral, I saw the trailing two thirds of an enormous undulated moray.   He was a gorgeous specimen with a chocolate ground and a fine white undulated pattern. And I'm reasonably certain that this was the largest undulated moray eel I have ever seen.  My thought at the time was that his body was bigger around than my thigh.  That I am a spindly white man, who's thighs in no way approximate those of Usain Bolt  (the fastest man on earth, now recently retired) may lend

Undulated Moray courtesy of Maui. net. 

credence to my assertion.  Regardless, this was a truly big eel. 

    I swam further out, not finding the trim ring or any other unnecessary parts.  On the way back, I checked in on my friend the hooked squirrelfish.  To my surprise, during my brief peregrination he had vanished.  I dove down, attempting to discover where our friend had gotten off to and came face to face with the ginormous undulated, who was welcoming enough to grace me with a real close look at his shiny, sharp fangs.  It is our understanding here at Snorkelkids that the undulated is one of the few moray eels that really wants to bite you.  In fact, I know a man who was bitten, more or less unprovoked, by an undulated moray eel.  The fact that he was a well known asshole probably had little to do with it, unless you're a big fan of karma, in which case he had it comin'.  Regardless, I was in no mood to test out my standing with Vishnu and his ilk, so I backed off carefully, without attempting a picture.

   Well.  You got an uplifting story about the keikis, a tale of tragedy worthy of the bard himself, and a heck 

Notice How Vishnu Still has All Twenty of His Fingers. Good Karma!

of a fish story.  I'm trusting that our friend the eel enjoyed his fish dinner and is none the worse for having to shoot some line and a hook out the other end.  Them eels is tough.  I hope you are too and we'll see ya out there on the reef.

jeff