When you want to see the stars, find someplace dark
Exploring the wet
A close relative of seahorses, pipefish are usually found sheltering in crevices or small caves. They are not uncommon sights for anyone who makes a habit of investigating the nooks and crannies of the reef…
A nice day for a dive, and a new species of nudibrach for me. At first I thought it might simply be a juvenile P. varicosa, but there were no yellow pertuberances. Getting back I hit the books, no doubt, P. rosans. New species! This fellow was in a cave at Puako I have entered a dozen times. Even in a place I have often explored I can find something new…
What is that? That is too big to be a nudibranch, but that is what it looked like. I could only see part of the beast looking into the cave crevice. Fortunately it turned out to be somewhat photophobic, the bright light flushed it out of the crevice into the cave…
I make a point to look for nudibranchs, pretty critters that are wonderfully photogenic. Looking into the nooks and crannies of the reef for nudibranchs also tends to turn up other tiny surprises.
This was not small!
While the typical nudibranch is one or two inches long, this fellow was the size of a dinnerplate! Adding to the wonder was the dance. As soon as the animal left the crevice it swam across the cave. I flashed Mark to get his attention, he was ready to leave the cave. I suspect he is glad he came back. Deb also wondered what we were still doing in the cave and came in to check on us. Thus we all got a good look at the dance.
After a few photos… OK, a lot of photos, I shepherded the fellow back into his crevice. Once I withdrew the light he settled down to stay in the darkness.
Another weekend, another dive. This time at one of our favorite dive spots, Puakō End-of-Road. It was just Deb and I this time. The usual crew was out this weekend as well, but we had other goals in mind for the dive and choose to go to a closer site.
The other pleasant surprise was finding two new species of nudibranch. As Deb and I were diving without the rest of the crew, I was particularly slow. As usual poking my head into every nook and cranny. The result was finding examples of Phyllidiella rosans and Phyllidiopsis sphingis.
Going slow and shallow had another effect, almost 80 minutes underwater. Not a record for us, but high on the list of our longer dives. Not bad for a single aluminum 80 cylinder.
A nice Saturday dive, another hour spent underwater, and some new stuff found. A good day.
We managed three dives last weekend. It was a holiday weekend, Kamehameha Day, that helped. But still, we average a couple dives a month, three dives in a weekend was a bit unusual. We dove with some friends at Pukao on Saturday. Then two more on the following Monday. This was conservative, a few of the guys dove on Sunday too!
Thus, Monday morning saw us packing up the dive gear, a cooler with drinks and sandwich makings for everyone, and heading for Honokohau. There Deb and I joined Dennis and Mark for a very nice day diving.
We have been diving a lot in the NELHA area lately, I expect we will be diving some more there. It is some spectacular diving in the area. A rich reef sloping out to a steep drop-off that descends far beyond scuba depths. You look into the deep blue and know that somewhere down there is the abyssal plain, 8,000 feet below.
As usual I had my face in the coral, in and out of every crevice or small cave I came across. This is a great way to find the little stuff I love to photograph, but you can miss the big stuff… A series a sharp clangs gets my attention, the sound of Mark’s tank banger. I pull myself out of an alcove and swim over the large coral outcropping just in time to see a ten foot manta sweep by! The manta was just beyond the reef drop-off, against the deep blue of open water.
The find of the day was a Spanish Dancer, the largest nudibranch found in the islands. I do mean large, while most nudi’s I locate are an inch or two long, this fellow was the size of a dinner plate. Dancers have another feature… They Dance! Actually a form of swimming through undulating the body. I flushed him out of a crevice in the cave and the nudi proceeded to dance for us, everyone got a good look. After a few photos, actually quite a few photos, I carefully shepherded the pretty fellow back into the crevice I found him in.
No dives this weekend, I was on call. But we are already planning another outing next weekend. Summer diving season is here, bringing calm and clear water to the Kona side. The crew is ready to go, discussing where we will dive next.
This is not a case of “I wish you were here”, but rather another lesson in the many hazards of diving.
I know when I got hit, a series of pricks down my left forearm. I didn’t even react, I was concentrating on the photo. I continued to brace myself against the surge by using the rocks of the cave floor. Those rocks were home to some little critters that had an issue with the disturbance I was creating… Hydroids.
Through the rest of the dive my arm continued to sting, discomfort that persisted but was not really all that bad. I took no action other than noting that I had gotten hit. It wasn’t until the next day that I realized that the stings were not going to go away quickly. I had a series of red welts across my forearm, and they itched. Time to break out the hydrocortisone cream. A week later the welts have faded and shrunk to pinpoints, no longer itch, but are still there.
Friday evening we stopped into the shop of Kohala Divers for a bit. There were a few folks we know in the shop as they were having an open house. As I chatted with Lina Preskitt, a local marine biologist, I mentioned the stings, showing her my forearm. She raised her forearm to display a very similar set of red welts on her left arm! We laughed as we looked at a mirror of almost identical stings.
This is the second time I have been seriously stung by hydroids. Will it stop me from diving? Not at all. Perhaps be a bit more careful when mucking about on a cave floor.
No, I am not in the video, I didn’t get out Sunday. But I did dive Saturday and Monday with the folks who are in the video…
No diving this coming weekend as I am on-call. The following week? I expect we will be diving, perhaps at the same site shown in the video.
As I have discussed before, there are some weird critters on the reef. Some of the more alien appearing creatures are the sea cucumbers of the family Synaptidae, the thin-walled sea cucumbers. These look like large worms, moving across the reef by expanding and contracting their bodies. At the front end are a set of feeding tentacles, sweeping out in slow motion to move food to the mouth at the center. The body is flaccid, supported and given shape through an internal hydraulic system.
The small brown Keferstein’s sea cucumber is surprising sticky, with small hook-like spicules on its outer skin. It sticks readily to dive gear, twice now I have seen these critters stuck to a diver without the diver knowing. Carefully peeling them off they make a nice photographic subject before allowing these normally nocturnal critters to escape back into a crevice in the coral.
