Sandra Meets Mrs. Scribble's Children

    Give us a new place to snorkel with a variety of interesting animals and we will make the most of it.   Having been introduced to Kawaihae harbor, seeing better fish and new invertebrates, we made the drive back north just a a few days after our introductory adventure with Peter and Marla.

Possibly an Orange Stylinos sponge in the shape of the USA.

    The sky was not bright blue, as it had been on our first visit, but the air was crystal clear.  Such a difference from down in Kailua where my lovely wife has become an aficionado of the AQI, air quality index.  We were happy to enjoy a clear look at a few cirrus clouds as they hovered over Kohala Mountain.  After living in the vog, the crystal clear panorama of  Kawaihae Harbor from the road was a treat.

     We parked the car under a tree in the little Kawaihae harbor park and walked across the large gravel parking area,  entering as before from the boat ramp.  Looking for fish as we swam out to the structures, we spotted a disappearing wrasse, but the tiny sailfin tang juvenile was nowhere to be seen. On our first visit to Kawaihae, Sandra had spotted, for a treasured moment, the common but rarely observed Kellogg's Scorpionfish.  While I was scouting for the tang, she was searching the rip rap for her scorpion.  Suffice it to say, our efforts on this day were equally Quixotic. 

Go Huskies!  Do it like a sponge. 

    Once out at the structures, I was admiring the different sponges, secure in the knowledge that unless I took some home and looked at the spicule structure under a microscope, their identification was beyond my ability to place a name upon them. 
   
      I like this picture of an orange sponge that may well be an orange stylinos; at least it looks very similar to the picture in John Hoover's Sea Creatures.  This particular individual has a shape similar to the United States, with Baja California hanging down the left coast.  John Hoover tells us that it is a friable sponge, as easily torn as our unfortunate country under the current and benighted president.


    But heck.  Were at Kawaihae!  Let's not get depressed.

Scrawled Filefish Juvenile.  Kawaihae July 2018

With the Husky football season in the offing, I was especially enthusiastic about the little purple ones.   But Go Dogs!  Do it like a sponge!  What does he mean by that?  Great Husky defenses have, in the past,  been given names...like Purple Reign.  I ask you, does Purple Sponge not sound pretty awesome?  We soak up the opposing offense.

     As far as I can tell , there is no sponge in Sea Creatures to correspond to these one-eyed, one vent tiny purple plankton eaters.

Peek a boo filefish

    As I was dodging around the cement columns, I heard Sandra call my name.  I disentangled myself  from the maze of columns and swam around the structure to where I could see her holding position by the ladder.  My first impulse was, "Thank goodness she seems to be safe."  I trust that as you read these accounts of this unusual snorkeling site, you appreciate that swimming around in tight spaces is not with out some risk.  Suffice it to say, it was immediately obvious to us.

Not as good a picture, but in this one you see the whole three inches. 

    I swam to Sandra and she raised her head and said, "Baby filefish!"  I swam close to the ladder where she was pointing and saw something I never would have hoped for: a tiny  elongated filefish doing his best to imitate the weedy ropes hanging vertically from the ladder.  I surfaced and said to Sandra, " I guess this means you don't have to cook for the rest of the week."

    This little fella was about three inches long, his base color was a creamy caramel over which was a pattern of dark chocolate spots and wavy lines.  If one were to open a package Christmas morning and find such a toothsome confection, I dare say,  one would be more than pleased.

   Thankfully, the juvenile filefish was cooperative and I took many pictures.  Naturally, he wanted to be on the other side of a rope, so the picture taking was a little challenging.  But he let me take as many pictures as my heart desired and I'm sure you will appreciate the results.

Feather Duster Worm  Kawaihae  2018

   Shortly after that we met a gentleman who was also out enjoying the animals on the columns.  I believe his name is Hai On and he he was the one that turned our friend Peter on to this snorkel site.  Hai had seen the tiny filefish... and a larger one.  He was a wealth of information and soon guided us to a couple fine feather duster worms.

   After we dove around the poles photographing the feather dusters, he guided us in to the first structure, which is much smaller than the outer two.  Unless I am mistaken, it pre-dates those larger ones.  Although the columns look identical above water, there are larger coral aggregations on the posts of the first structure..  Under one of these posts, Hai had found a banded coral shrimp.  One had only to dive down about eight feet and turn around, so he was looking up at the depression in the bottom of the coral.  And voila!  There was the banded shrimp. Hai is clearly a superior diver and I believe he got a picture of that crustacean.  All I got was a pretty good look and water in the ears.

 The larger Scrawled Filefish Juvenile

    Around the corner from the shrimp, he showed Sandra and I a marvelous large reticulated cowry.  We then discussed the filefish, which he correctly identified as scrawled filefish.  He noted that there was a larger juvenile hanging around that same structure, allowing that the reason we probably didn't see it was that he had chased it around trying for the best picture.

    After Hai went in, Sandra and I swam out to the outer structure, where I eventually found and recorded the larger of the juvenile scribbled filefish.  (I prefer the older common name and so does Sandra...Mr. Scribble is her totem.)  This individual, perhaps eight inches in length, was wearing a pattern common in some adult scribbled filefish.  If we had any concerns about the identification, this fish put them to rest.

   When I made it back to shore,  Sandra and Hai were chatting away on the boat launch.  We promised that we would see each other again in this amazing spot.

jeff

A Bivalve Growing in the matrix.  Possibly a Pen Shell!