Sunday Stills challenge theme this week and next week is ‘Your 2023 Year-in-Review.’ See more responses here. As before, I’m going with a favorite photo from each month of 2023, with a caption and link to the post the photo first appeared in. This week, I’m posting favorites from January through June. See the rest of the year next week.
There are many things I like about chubs. One is how they swim near the water’s surface and catch the light beautifully.
There’s an area where I swim where large numbers of Pyramid Butterflyfishes could always be seen. Over the years their numbers have diminished or they’ve moved elsewhere. But this year there has been something of a resurgence in that area. That’s where I saw these two.
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.
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.
A couple of creatures in the water that are like to blend into the background. The Titan Scorpionfish is fairly easy to spot in this one, but the Whitemouth Moray Eel is a bit trickier.
These are a couple of fish that spend a good deal of their time sitting, stationary, on coral or rocks. The similarity ends there.
The hawkfish is a predator, waiting for small fish or crustaceans to come within range. The blenny feeds solely on living coral. And while this blenny is probably an adult at about 6 inches long, the hawkfish can grow to twice that size.
