Recently, these two yachts were anchored off Mauna Kea Resort. I couldn’t make out the name of the blue boat but the other one is the Anawa, a Dutch built superyacht owned by a Brazilian billionaire. I confess my first thought on seeing this yacht was that it might be the ugliest boat I’d ever seen. Perhaps it was the angle. Perhaps not.
In the area I usually swim, there’s a bit of a cliff with rocky parts protruding above the water. One of these, we call Viper Rock, because a very large Viper Moray Eel could often be seen in a small cave below the peak.
When the eel is not home, others sometimes take up residence. I’ve seen other eels, lobsters, and crabs in there. Yesterday, I saw this Giant Porcupinefish occupying the space. Sometimes fish will make a quick escape, but this one just watched me. It was only when I got home that I noticed, in one of the photos (not a good one alas), a small Giant Porcupinefish. So perhaps it wasn’t just this fish, but a family occupying the space.
The Big Island’s weather is greatly influenced by northeast trade winds blowing up against Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa and dumping generous quantities of rain on the wet east side. Not much of this moisture reaches the much drier west side.
On a recent hiking trip to the saddle between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, I saw a visual example of what goes on. Cresting a hill, I saw a bank of cloud rolling in from the east. My hike was somewhere under that cloud. When I got closer to that wall of cloud, I could see it fading as it pushed to the west.
My hike started under gray skies, with some light rain, but on this day, the clouds did not keep building. Instead, they burned off somewhat so that it was dry and quite hot by the time I returned to my car, such is the fickle nature of Big Island weather.
A Hawaii Amakihi rests in a tree fern alongside the Pu’u O’o Trail off Saddle Road.
This is Hawaii’s largest nudibranch and can reach a foot long. Mostly active at night, the best chance for snorkelers to see signs of this nudibranch, is to see one of their egg sacs, such as the one in the top photo, attached to a rock. These rose-like sacs are quite beautiful and waver as the water swirls around them.
I’ve only seen an actual Redmargin Spanish Dancer once (second photo). My marine invertebrate book says it resembles fatty ground beef, which is a pretty good description!
A view of the light tower between Lapakahi and Mahukona on a day when the swells were rolling in.
According to my fish book, Finescale Triggerfish are rare in Hawaii, except for the west coast of the Big Island. I see one or two most times I get in the water, and when I see them, I try to take photos. Most of the photos are terrible.
Finescale Triggerfish are, by some way, the largest triggerfish in Hawaii’s waters, so they’re not hard to spot, and with their dorsal and anal fins flopping from side to side as they swim, they’re easy to identify. However, they do present problems. For one thing, they’re generally a blotchy grey or brown color so they tend to blend into the background. While they can be seen close to shore, they usually swim nearer the bottom than the top. And they’re skittish. When I do see one nearer the surface, it’s usually seen me first and is headed down and away.
This one was a bit trapped in a relatively shallow area, so I got a few photos, though unfortunately the water was very hazy that day so the quality wasn’t great.
Cleaner wrasses establish territories where they remove mucus, parasites, and dead tissue from other fish. These cleaning stations can exist in the same place for years and can have several wrasses performing those services. Their clients can be anything from other small reef fish to eels and sharks.
In these photos, a Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse services a Whitebar Surgeonfish.
Graham's Island 