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| The southbound end of a batted filefish. |
Considering everything, the cool winter weather and the persistent high surf, conditions were pretty good. The water wasn't freezing and the current was manageable. Early on I enjoyed a convocation of long spined black sea urchins. It never ceases to amaze me how mobile these unusual animals can be. Often they are attached to rocks or coral in a loose distribution, but sometimes they come out and get together, perhaps for breeding, but possibly they just enjoy each other's company.
On this day there were several young pearl wrasse in the mix, and I had some fun chasing them, trying to catch one of these elusive children with the camera. The highlight, such as it was, was an adolescent Barred Filefish. The Barred filefish comes in three flavors. The juveniles are dark with white spots, the adults are much larger, a dark gray, resembling, to some extent, the lid of a tin garbage can. The intermediate form is with a dramatic yellow tail. 
The latter was what I found way out past the rescue shelter. Like the wrasses, she was a rapid swimmer, but her yellow tail was so attractive that I devoted a bit of time trying for a picture. I managed to get some pretty good pictures of the tail...the southbound end of a northbound filefish, but I never got a great profile photograph.
As I came ashore, I was greeted by my beloved who had found a bird. It was nearby on the reef and as we walked over to it, Sandra explained that it was quite a puzzle because it wasn't in the book. The book is Hawaii's Birds, published by the Hawaii Audubon Society. This is a small paperback that found its way into the reef teacher's collection. If you want a good guide to the birds you see at the beach, any of the North American field guides are superior to this book.
The bird was easy, it was a juvenile Black Crowned Night Heron. One sees this species occasionally at the beach, but usually in the adult form...a stately black head with a crest, a pure white bib and pearly breast. The juvenile is streaked and looks much like a bitttern, which lives in marshes and is not found in Hawaii.
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| Black Crowned Night Heron, juvenile January 2025 |
"Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," I intoned as we walked into the shelter. I would like to report that I was surrounded by a gaggle of bathing beauties bursting from their bikinis as I explained that juvenile animals of many an ilk look like a common ancestor. The Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse, for example, bears a single blue streak like its ancestor, that still thrives in the Western Pacific, the cradle of the reef. Alas, Horatio, there were no voluptuous maidens to absorb these pearls of wisdom, just one stern looking reef teacher who looked like she might cold cock me if I got out of line.
While I was showering, Sandra showed her excellent picture to our friend Yasuko. She admired Sandra's handiwork and said, "Ahhh. Io!" My lovely wife knew that this was definitely not a Hawaiian Hawk, but in the name of Japanese-American relations she let it slide. We need to keep the Japanese on our side or they might put a 15% tariff on sushi...right?
And that's life from the beach...
jeff
