A Great Day at Kawaihae

    Kawaihae is a small town at the apex of the Great Kohala Bight, a name I coined yesterday as

The Great Kohala Bight

Sandra and I drove north to join our friends Peter and Marla for a very special snorkel.  Kohala includes the northern portion of leeward side of the Big Island.  From Waikoloa the coast bends north east,  inward to Kawaihae, at which point the coast reaches north and west, creating the bight.  The scooping of the shoreline means that there is less wave action at Kawaihae and perhaps this is the reason that in 1957 the Army Corps of Engineers began development of the only deep water port on the west side of Hawaii Island.  The town is dwarfed by the port facilities.  As one makes the turn north towards Hawi, he (or she) would be excused for failing to notice the town of Kawaihae, but its impossible to miss the three large breakwaters and the collection of Matson containers found at the port.

Peter and Marla point the way out into Kawaihae harbor.

    About two months ago, Peter told us of meeting a gentleman who trumpeted the snorkeling in Kawaihae harbor.  I had heard of  snorkeling at Kawaihae before, but never in such tantalizing details.  Among the promised critters were nudibranchs!  Since then we have been working towards the day when we could join our friends and search for sea slugs.

   The harbor, which is enclosed by a serious chain link fence topped with four strands of barbed wire,  is accessed through two gates on the makai side of the road.  Opposite the port there are a few
restaurants, a dive shop and an art gallery...Kawaihae is a short drive from the swanky resorts of the Mauna Kea and the Mauna Lani.  Once you pass through a gate, the actual port is still protected by a checkpoint.  Once through a  gate, avoid the checkpoint and the actual port and take the huge gravel road along the south side of the large lagoon.  About 50 yards before you would run into the breakwater, a boat launch appears on your right.  And just off shore one sees three large structures used by the military.  It doesn't look like much, but those structures and the myriad of cement columns that support them are the miracle of Kawaihae invertebrate heaven

   It was at this spot that we parked next to Peter and Marla.  As we donned our snorkeling gear, and

The boat launch and the first mooring structure.

Peter and Marla explained the plan,  Sandra nabbed a couple really good pictures with her cell phone.  The first shows our guides pointing out into the lagoon and the second shows the first of those three structures.  You can see that it rises about twelve feet above the water.  Use your imagination and picture a ship that needs a pier twelve feet above the water against which to moor.  Now ask yourself, how much does that ship draw?   Such was the engineering expertise of the corps, that a deep water ship can moor against those structures which at some points are a mere twenty feet from the breakwater.  Suffice it to say, the forest of cement columns upon which those structures rise go seriously deep.
 

   It was a piece of cake to slip off the side of the boat launch and into six feet of water.  The water,

Black cave sponge living next to the common vagabond sponge

shielded by the breakwaters, was calm and cool.  As we swam out, we encountered a variety of things suspended in the water including numerous tiny jellyfish.

    It was high tide, and when we got to the first structure.  Although the bottom of this mooring platform was less than two feet from the water surface.  It wasn't like you could swim under the platform and not be able to surface for air, but it sort of felt that way.  But swim under the platform we did, finding unusual invertebrates attached to the forest of cement pylons.

    Although we were looking for nudibranchs, the first thing I noticed were a variety of small sponges that were new to me.  Peter had warned us that by swimming under the platform we would encounter animals that would commonly be found in caves.  Yellow dactylospongia, a cave species, was common.  I failed to get a good picture of that one, but what about this  black cave sponge?  Who even knew it existed?

Snowflake coral with polyps extended and feeding

   Shortly after entering the space under the first platform, I encountered a snowflake coral.  This is a soft coral that grows like a group of gray winding sticks.  We were lucky, as the polyps on this coral were out and feeding.   Later I encountered a colony where this wasn't the case; it looked just like a bunch of gray sticks and I'm sure I wouldn't have given it a second thought.  In this case, though, Sandra and I got a chance to marvel at all the little polys foraging for plankton.



 
     By the time we made it to the second mooring structure, we still hadn't seen a nudibranch.  Peter and Marla, better divers than yours truly were swimming down the columns to a depth of about fifteen feet.  At last, Peter found a Gloomy Nudibranch  about twelve feet down.  we took turns

Gloomy Nudibranch, Kawaihae Harbor July 2018

diving for a picture.  On the day we saw at least three of this species.  It isn't terribly surprising that the pattern of spots is different from one individual to another.  This is also the case with the green geckos who live in our house.  There is a theory that geckos are territorial and that if you chase one out, it will do his best to sneak back in.  As a result, when she catches one, Sandra takes it for a walk and releases it a few houses down.  If we were really smart, we would photograph each gecko prior to transportation.  Then, as if he had been fingerprinted, we would know if he had made the trek back up the street and re-entered Casa Ono.

    But I digress.

    I was luckier with these Gloomy Gusses, er, nudibranchs, and I have more than one picture of which I am understandably proud.  I will start you off with this one and at the same time promise something even better later in the blog.

A baby blue sponge clinging to the column.  Kawaihae July 2018

    Our friend Marla is in love with nudibranchs.  for those of you who are less familiar, let me give
you a nudibranch primer.  They are often called sea slugs, even by the scientists who specialize in them.  And, like slugs, they are molluscs. They bear a pair of cephalic rhinophores that look like blunt antennae and are sensitive to smell.  They belong to the family opistobranchia, wich is Latin for gills behind; those fancy appendages on the tail end of a nudibranch are his gills.  Like terrestrial slugs, nudibranchs are hermaphroditic and exchange both male and female products of conception with their partner.  so there are no boy or girl nudibranchs.  In this way, the kingdom of nudibranchs is a bit like Sweden, where they have pronouns that would include a child of either sex. 

   Before I leave you here, I'm going to show off one more sponge, a baby blue number that as of yet I can not identify.  this particular beauty was clinging to a pylon near the water line.  I have written to our internet consultant, Marta De Maitenon, PhD, ace invertebrate zoologist, and perhaps she can name this handsome animal.

Milletseed Butterfly, Kawaihae, July 2018.  Hello!

   We swam around the end of a small breakwater and into an area that sported lots of dead coral and some fine remaining stands of pillar and plate coral.  In there, I saw my second milletseed butterflyfish on the day.  Isn't he cute?













      On the far breakwater, Marla found us many colonies of orange cup coral.  Despite their fleshy appearance, these colorful animals are true stony corals.  Peter and I engaged in a small unspoken contest to see who could get the best picture of these cooperative animals.  In my endeavor to

Orange Cup coral, Kawaihae July 2018

surpass the maestro, I cut my knee on the rocks.  All in the name of science.

















     On the way back to the platforms, i saw what was for me the second best fish of the day...a Disappearing Wrasse.  the water was a little cloudy, but I'm not sure that fully explains the distortion I found in all my pictures.  This was only the second disappearing wrasse I had seen in Hawaii.  When I called Peter over to look at it, he was nice enough, agreed that it was a disappearing wrasse and then

Disappearing Wrasse, Kawaihae 2018

went on to say that at diving depths it is hardly an uncommon fish.   Sort of like enjoying Alzheimer's Disease (because you always get to meet new people) snorkeling allows you to get excited about fish a scuba diver finds pedestrian.











       If I had any shame, I would wind things up.  But when we made it back to the platforms, Peter suddenly went nuts.  He found at least two more gloomy nudibranchs.  These guys were very near the surface and Sandra, who doesn't dive twelve feet even on a good day, was able to enjoy them.  Also in relatively shallow water, he found this other small species.  yellow with white pustules (I'm

Geniobranchus vibratus, the Trembling Nudibranch Kawaihae July 2018

quoting here) purple rhinophores and gray gills also lined with purple, this is Geniobranchus vibratus.  I'm not sure that this handsome little devil has a common name as accepted by the International Academy of Nudibranchologists, but that doesn't stop the boys at Wikipedia.  They call it the Trembling Nudibranch.  If you can have a quaking aspen, why not  trembling nudibranch? By any name, its a beauty, and unless I am mistaken its a life sea slug for Marla.




       While we were watching the trembling nudibranch, a group of boys had escaped the Kawaihae intermdiate school and occupied the second mooring platform.  From that dizzying height, they were leaping into the water, safe in the knowledge that the Corps of Engineers was maintaining a substantial depth into which they could plunge with impunity.  Sort of like the way Donald Trump plunges into a Playboy centerfold.  But with any luck at all, with less impunity in the long run.

Bombs over Stormy Daniel's, as we say at Kawaihae Intermediate.

    Presidential politics aside, as I was attempting to get the perfect shot on quaking sea slug, I was subjected to a series of loud splashes, sort of like a depth charge going off next door.  Coulda, shoulda, woulda been a bit distracting, but us wild life photographers have a keen sense of concentration when our rhinophores smell a really good shot in the making.





    I know I should be letting you go, but I have one more fish story.  About five years ago I was swimming with my older son in the lagoon at the Hilton Hotel at Waikoloa.  There is every reason to believe that this pond is not stocked; fish are washed over the breakwater.  Every now and then we see something remarkable there and, because it is in theory a wild fish, I feel it can be counted.  But in the back of my mind, that species retains an asterisk.  On that day, Charles and I saw an immature sailfin tang.

Juvenile Sailfin Tang, Kawaihae July 2018

  It was about four inches top to bottom, with a strange fin arrangement, it was in the awkward teenager phase.  However, its dramatic vertical stripes, golden, black and silver gave it away as a developing sailfin tang.  We corroborated our sighting in the older copy of Hoover and I never saw another.  Until yesterday.

   As I swam past the first mooring structure, I saw a tiny edition of the juvenile sailfin tang among the coral growing on the rip rap..  He was as shiny as a silver dollar and about the same size.  Probably an inch and a half.  And this diamond-shaped baby was delightfully cooperative.  I got several good shots and I hope you enjoy this one.

    I realize that this was a marathon blog.  In my defense, its summer,so the water isn't at all cold.  As a result we swam for the better part of two hours.  And, as you can see, we were snorkeling in a location that has a lot to offer.
And, as promised, I'm leaving you with one more picture of the not so gloomy nudibranch which should be ample reward for your persistance.

jeff

 Gloomy Nudibranch imitating a peacock.