Springtime at Kahalu'u

Napoleon Escaping Calvary.  Or No More Plays for You

   This morning we awoke to thunder.  We didn't see any lightening and it only rained a modest amount, but the rolling cannonade lasted for at least an hour.  Perhaps Napoleon  had returned from the grave and, with a battery of twelve pounders,  he was demolishing  Kainaliu.    Depending on your religious persuasion, this may not be so far fetched.  I mean, it is the season.  Right?  And who's to say that the Little Corporal, apparently as charismatic a fellow as one is likely to meet in this lifetime, had less of a shot at it than JC.  So good bye Aloha Theater.  No more plays for you.  Ka boom.

   We have relatively few rules here in Holualoa Heights, but one of them is, "Don't go snorkeling in an electrical storm."  Lucky for you guys out in the blogospere, I got a nice swim in at Kahalu'u two days ago.  We had been experiencing a hot sticky spell (winter is apparently over) so a swim seemed like just the thing.  The tide was way out so I crawled, more than swam, through the rocky gap in only three inches of water.  Once free of the congestion at the entrance, the water, while shallow, was not particularly cold.  In fact, there was an area over by what used to be the hotel that was down right warm...possibly around 85 degrees.

I'm gonna bite you.

    Early on I had an encounter with a male humu humu busily protecting the family nest.  When you think about it, there really aren't that many animals that have an interesting egg protecting strategy.  Killdeers come to mind.  I was barely aware of those small inland plovers when I was a child and I suppose that was a good thing.  Once you get the knack of finding those rufous pipers, you can drive the male killdeer completely bats by repeatedly entering the nesting territory.  And the broken wing display is pretty fun to watch.  This is not the sort of temptation with which you should confront an adolescent male.  He has enough problems as it is, without harassing helpless birds.  

   The deal with the triggerfish is different, of course.  Not possessing the requisite equipment for a broken wing display, he has to be a bit more straight forward.  First he threatens to bite you and if that doesn't work, well, what's a daddy triggerfish to do?  I would suppose that most of us who snorkel regularly in Hawaii have experienced  the business end of a humu.  Luckily it only hurts a little bit.  I let this brave father threaten me

Its over here!  Over here, I tell ya.  Over here, over here, over here...

a few times, took his picture and headed off, unbidden and unbitten.

   Shortly after my triggerfish encounter, I saw something unique in my experience.  A pair of sailfin tangs swam by, very close to me and very, very close to one another.   The thing is, that for a moment I didn't realize that they were both sailfin tangs, as the smaller of the pair was completely black.  I tried to get a picture of this unusual pattern, but by the time I took my shot the fish was already returning to his normal striped pattern.

   John Hoover tells us a few things.  First, the smaller member of the pair is almost certainly the male.   For those of you who don't see sailfin tangs every week, let me assure you that as much as any fish in the Hawaiian sea, the sailfin tang always occurs in pairs.  Always.  And one is always significantly larger than the other.  One might say, apparently, larger than her mate.

Tangus Interuptus.  Que Triste.

    Hoover goes on to say that sometimes a sailfin tang will turn almost black when "driving off an intruder."  John doesn't specify if the intruder is an unaffiliated SFT or some other species that is interfering with the plan.  Whatever that is.

    On our reef,  the comical orangespine unicorn tang is commonly seen driving off an intruder while exhibiting a remarkable color change.   The fish darkens from gray to black and both his pectoral fin and the spot on his forehead turn bright yellow.  And invariably the guy with the yellow forehead is chasing away an intruder.  

    That was definitely not the case with this pair of SFTs.  It was springtime, dammit, and they were going to make the two headed beast.  Unfortunately, after they almost bumped into yours truly, their ardor cooled and, as I stated above, the male rapidly returned to his striped color pattern.  I apologize for the poor quality of the accompanying photograph.  I certainly have lots of better pictures of sailfin tangs, but I thought you might like to sympathize with the obviously frustrated male. Once every six

Orangespine Unicorn Tang Aggresive Coloration  Kahalu'u 2014

months or so, John Hoover reads this blog and perhaps he will include this sexy information in the next, dare I say, Penultimate Guide.

    There was one more good thing to be seen in K Bay on this warm day.  Just as I was making the clubhouse turn I saw a humongous dragon wrasse.  He was probably only four inches, but I would swear he was five.  If I'd had a net I could have scooped him up and he would have fed an entire family of four.  What we had here was the bull goose looney of dragon wrasses.

    As you all know, the dragon wrasse attempts to fool predators by flopping this way and that in an attempt to imitate a tattered leaf.  This Baby Huey wasn't fooling anyone, least of all your humble correspondent.  I got a few pictures from the surface.  The best of that bunch you see here.  When I dove down for a better shot, he flopped away, never to be seen again.  If Randle McMurphy, the true bull goose looney, could have flopped so effectively, he might have saved himself a few volts and

"But its the truth, even if it didn't happen."

possibly a lobotomy.  As for the bull goose dragon wrasse, I predict he will turn into a Fine big rockmover and that nurse Ratched will rue the day that she went snorkeling at K Bay.

   As for the rest of you, come on in,the waters fine.

jeff