Category Archives: Fish

Bright fishes

Three Pyramid butterflyfishes off Hawaii — *Pyramid Butterflyfishes*

A female Pearl Wrasse off Hawaii — *Pyramid Butterflyfishes*

This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Something Fishy.’ See more responses here.

This seemed like a good opportunity to post a gallery of some of the fish I see when I snorkel around here. Most are brightly colored or have distinctive markings.

Also posted in response to Becky’s April Squares challenge theme of ‘Bright.’ See more responses here.

Two lizardfishes

Two reef lizardfish waiting on lobe coral

A pair of reef lizardfish rest on a patch of lobe coral. I usually see lizardfish by themselves so this was unusual. Their complete lack of movement was not unusual. That’s what they do unless you get too close.

A spotted eagle ray passes below

A spotted eagle ray swims off the Big Island, Hawaii

I hadn’t seen a spotted eagle ray in quite some time before I saw this one, hunting in deeper water. It looked in very good condition and had a fine array of spots.

A whitetip reef shark cruising

A whitetip reef shark cruises off the Big Island, Hawaii

It’s been a while since I last saw a shark (cue seeing one this morning!) so I thought I’d post a couple of photos to remind myself what they look like.

This whitetip reef shark was cruising back and forth at the foot of a rocky ledge, possibly looking for a recess where it could rest.

Yellow tang school

Yellow tang swim off the Big Island, Hawaii

Yellow tangs are common here and are usually seen in schools. I like how, when they move from one feeding spot to another, they string out in long, colorful lines. They’re often seen in mixed schools with convict tangs, the paler fish with vertical black lines.

Yellowstripe squirrelfish

A few days ago, I posted a photo of a common bigeye, a fish that tends to hang out in recesses in the rocks. The yellowstripe squirrelfish is a similar creature. I see them occasionally, but they’re down in holes and recede even farther when I appear. This one lingered momentarily before sinking out of sight. They’re more often seen in deeper water, but not if you’re a snorkeler.

Common bigeye

When I see very red fish hanging around in deep recesses in the rocks, I assume they’re soldierfishes. That’s what I thought this was, so I was a bit puzzled when I couldn’t identify what kind of soldierfish it was.

It was much later that I was thumbing through my fish identification book, looking for something else, and happened on the pages for bigeyes. I’d never heard of them before. There were only two listed and this one is the common bigeye. It’s most easily distinguished by its slightly convex tail, as opposed to the slightly concave tail of the other one, the Hawaiian bigeye.

Feed the birds

A black-crowned night heron tries to eat a tilapia

A house finch eats tree heliotrope fruit

This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Feed the Birds.’ See more responses here.

In the top photo, this ambitious juvenile black-crowned night heron snaffled a tilapia from a large backyard pond. However, that was the easy part. I watched it for quite a while, trying to swallow the fish. It flew from the pond into a tree, then on to another one, before returning to the ground beyond some rocks. The fish was still in its beak, but no closer to reaching its stomach.

In the middle photo, a house finch chows down on the fruit of a tree heliotrope (Tournefortia argentea).

In the bottom photo, a palila feeds on a mamane (Sophora chrysophylla) seed pod. Typically, a palila will grab a pod from one place and then take it to another branch to eat it. It pins the green, immature seed pod to the branch, as in this photo, and then bashes away at it with its powerful beak. The seeds are poisonous, but palilas have developed an immunity to the toxins. The brown pods in this photo won’t be eaten by palilas. They will remain on the tree for a long time before dropping and hopefully producing more trees, though mamane seeds have quite low propagation rates.

Graham's Island

Life on the Big Island of Hawaii