A variety of reef fish – including yellow tang, goldring surgeonfish, whitebar surgeonfish, brassy chub, and ember parrotfish – forage on a shallow rocky shelf.
Reef fish
Category Archives: Fish
Longnose butterflyfish and bright-eye damselfish
There are two kinds of longnose butterflyfish in Hawaii, the common longnose and the big longnose. Neither name is especially flattering, but I think this is a big longnose butterflyfish. It feeds mostly on small shrimp, which it catches by thrusting its long nose into small crevices and swallowing its prey whole.
The little bright-eye damselfish on the left might have been startled by the butterflyfish, but not threatened. They can be quite aggressive in defending their small territories.
Multiband butterflyfish atop coral
This multiband butterflyfish was cruising past the top of a head of coral. The dark stripe through its eye is a feature seen on many fish species, helping to confuse predators.
Posted in response to Becky’s April Squares challenge theme of ‘Top.’ See more responses here.
The top of Two Step
Two Step is a popular snorkeling spot, next door to Pu’uhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park, otherwise known as Place of Refuge. It gets its name from one of the entry points to the water, where two flat lava ledges make it easy to get in and out. Well, fairly easy; there’s usually a crowd gathered around the steps so it can be a bit of a scrum. Also, small sea urchins sometimes lurk in hollows in the steps.
Once it the water, there’s room to roam. I like to swim the length of the bay and out a little bit, to where I can look down the coral slopes leading to the sandy floor of the bay.
Posted in response to Becky’s April Squares challenge theme of ‘Top.’ See more responses here.
Flowery flounder
A flowery flounder glides across the top of some rocks prior to dropping down and disappearing on one of them.
Posted in response to Becky’s April Squares challenge theme of ‘Top.’ See more responses here.
Orangeband surgeonfish shoal
This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Re-imagine Orange.’ See more responses here.
A shoal of orangeband surgeonfish is fun to see with their orange bands making them easy to identify and follow. For the purpose of this challenge, I took the photo below, desaturated the other colors, then boosted the orange to emphasize their defining feature. These changes virtually eliminated the other fish, particularly the yellow tang which went from bright focal points to almost invisible.
Whitemouth moray eel peeking out
A small whitemouth moray eel peeks out from its hideaway in the rocks. It’s astonishing how even quite big eels can disappear into a crack that I can’t even see.
Spotted pufferfish
Usually, I see spotted pufferfish swimming alone, but these three spent some time together as a group. Also unusual was that they were swimming up in the water where they caught the sunlight.
Graham's Island 