A Bluestripe Butterfly in Kailua

    Our period of relatively calm seas coincided with clear weather and it lasted for roughly three brief days.  Being neither the world's greatest oceanographer nor a meteorologist of note, I can only speculate that this was total coincidence; the winds that blew the volcanic emissions away from the

The kids on Oahu call our favorite meteorologist  Lie (as opposed to Guy) Hagi

leeward side of our beloved island had nothing to do with the paucity of surf.  Or maybe it did.  How should I know?

   Yesterday morning was still clear with blue skies, but the swell was increasing.  These conditions were not enough to entice my sweetie into the local waters and so she kindly dropped me off for a quick dip at the pier while she attended to the purchase of papayas, Pepsi and Pappy Van Winkles.  My beloved is, indeed, an all around great girl.

   Kailua Bay was cloudier than I had hoped.  But there was enough visibility, as I swam out to the fourth swim buoy, to see that there was nothing special to look at.  Nor were the conditions very good for trying out the new camera. I had been given a pep talk by our photographic editor and he asked me to bracket some photos.  Was the silt over exposed or under exposed?  Who cares?

Bluestripe Butterflyfish   Kailua Bay  June 2018

   Not until I made it back to where I had started did I see something worth writing about.  There, in the shallows right by the entry, was a handsome bluestripe butterflyfish.  This fish is rare enough down south in Kailua that the people at Honu Divers were surprised when I stated that I saw one at least once a year on the Ironman side of the pier.  He was tooling around the rocks in four feet of fairly clear water.  From a photographic standpoint, I had really caught a break.   Here you see a couple acceptable pictures of this uncommon fish making his annual homage to King Kamehameha's favorite beach. 

   A note to the photo editor: the TG5 has four underwater settings, each of which must be subjected to the bracketing test.  On this day, employing the "underwater snapshot" setting, the camera's

Bluestripe Butterfly chillin' by the pier.

metering was spot on.  Adding or subtracting light made the pictures worse.  But it was a good exercise and it did provide the impetus to get my lazy bones into the water. 

   If you are living here in Kailua and need the bluestripe butterfly for your list, it is likely that he will stick in the shallows by the pier for a few days.  The bad news is, if you live in Kailua, you know that giant breakers are today pounding the coast and the skies are once again an angry, volcanic gray.  But it could be worse, it could be raining.  (Marty Feldman as Igor in Young Frankenstein.)

Keep smiling,
jeff