Category Archives: unusual fish sightings

Cabo Pulmo fish geekery

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Our trip to Cabo Pulmo was the first time we’d dived in the tropical East Pacific. A lot of the fish we saw resembled those we’d seen in Hawaii, Bali, and Samoa, but were just a bit different. Due to the vast, mostly islandless expanse of the tropical Pacific east of the 130th meridian the west coast of the tropical Americas is biogeographically distinct from the Central and West Pacific, so fishwatching in Cabo Pulmo left us feeling like beginners. Fortunately, the Smithsonian Institute offers a free app describing over a thousand East Pacific fish species. It’s aptly named Fishes: East Pacific. I don’t know how we’d have begun to identify the fish we saw without this comprehensive guide.

Delightful little Pixy Hawkfish (also called Coral Hawkfish) were everywhere you looked. Every coral head seemed to house at least one, and often several of these fish. While the majority of reef fish found in the East Pacific do not occur in the Central and West Pacific, the Pixy Hawkfish is an exception—it’s found all the way west to the Red Sea. This fish is very similar to the Dwarf Hawkfish I photographed in Bali in 2018: https://onebreathkohala.wordpress.com/2018/11/25/back-to-bali/
Someone familiar with Hawaiian and West Pacific reef fish might identify this head shot as a Fivestripe Wrasse, but they’d be wrong.
Here’s the whole fish. It’s a Sunset Wrasse, found only in the East Pacific. Its head resembles the Fivestripe Wrasse, while the body looks more like a Saddle Wrasse. Here are photos of the Fivestripe and Saddle I took back in 2015: https://onebreathkohala.wordpress.com/2015/05/14/fivestripe-wrasse/. (Man, my photos were pretty sucky back then.) All three of these species are closely related. The Saddle Wrasse is endemic to Hawaii, while the Fivestripe ranges widely through the Indo-Pacific region.
While the East Pacific has several species of butterflyfish, members of this family are not as abundant at Cabo Pulmo as we’re used to seeing in Hawaii or the Indo-Pacific. This one, the Blacknosed Butteflyfish, also called Barberfish, was the most common. The scientific name for this species is Johnrandallia nigrirostris, honoring the late Jack Randall, a true giant in the field of reef fish studies. Johnrandallia is a monotypic genus—nigrorostris in the only species. It’s another species confined to the East Pacific.
The lower fish in this photo was a special find. It’s a Clarion Angelfish. The primary range of this species is restricted to the tiny, remote Revillagigedo Islands, about 300 miles southwest of Cabo San Lucas. Only a few stragglers ever make it to the Baja Peninsula or Mexican mainland. This one makes a pretty pair with the adult King Angelfish above it. The smaller fish cluttering the photo are Scissortail Chromis.

Blennies blending in

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On our December trip to Hawaii Hai brought Wendy and me out to a spot in Kawaihae Harbor where he’d found a colony of tiny, translucent shrimp—so-called long-armed shrimp, Cuapetes sp. The shrimp were living on the heavily overgrown remains of an old buoy suspended a couple of feet below low tide level. We saw several shrimp, but, vertebrate nut that I am, I paid more attention to the little fish living on the buoy than to the shrimp.

I lingered at the buoy for several minutes after Hai and Wendy had gotten their shrimp photos and moved on. It turned out there were at least three species of blenny living there. They were, like most blennies, tiny and cryptically colored to blend into their surroundings. These fish have a way of darting and freezing, blending into the background so well that the only way to spot them is to look for motion. There were probably several more blennies on the old buoy than I was able to find, but here are the three I did manage to spot:

This little Bullethead Blenny, maybe an inch and a half long, was living in a grown-over shackle attached to the buoy. It would pop its head out to see if the monster with a camera was still there, and quickly dart back in. I tried to photograph it several times, but the little guy would always disappear just before the shutter fired. I finally got this one. Bulletheads are probably the most common small blenny in Hawaii.
I’m pretty sure this one is a Mangrove Blenny, a species apparently introduced to Hawaii from the Indopacific. As far as I know it has only been observed on Oahu; never on the Big Island. So if it’s indeed a Mangrove Blenny, it’s a first for this island.
This may look like one of those old Magic Eye illusions, but it’s an endemic Hawaiian Triplefin that has really blended into the background. This species is not a blenny in the strictest sense—triplefins are in their own family—but they’re close relatives, belonging to the same order: Blenniiformes.

The order Blenniiformes is huge, consisting of over 900 species worldwide. Hawaii has only around a dozen species, mostly inconspicuous bottom-dwellers. I have a particular fondness for these fish, and I’m not alone. Ned and Anna Deloach, world renowned authors, photographers, and general fish geeks have a blog devoted entirely to blennies. You might want to check it out: https://www.blennywatcher.com. You can see my numerous blenny posts by searching for “blenny” on this blog.

Oh yeah, here are some photos of the Long-armed shrimp we were originally looking for. Hai’s photos are a lot better than mine: https://kawaihaereef.org/page/2/. There’s a lot more great stuff on Hai’s blog.

The Mahukona report

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The historic sugar port of Mahukona is a much-beloved recreation spot for North Kohala residents. The old dock now functions as a sizable parking lot with direct, sand-free, access to the ocean. Many users just hang out on the dock drinking beer, watching the sunsets, and maybe letting their kids splash around near the swim ladder. Others take long swims or snorkels, but don’t seem to pay much attention to the reef life below them. And then there are those like us, who spent time closely observing the diverse fish and invertebrate life, noting seasonal and longer term changes to the reefs.

The biggest change that’s occurred in the roughly fifteen years Marla and I’ve been watching Big Island reefs was the coral bleaching event of 2015. Beginning in the fall of that year excessively warm water throughout Hawaii, but especially along the west coast of the Island of Hawaii, resulted in the loss of over ninety percent of Kohala’s branching coral and much of its mound coral. With the loss of coral came the loss of fish, but the impact on fish was not as extreme.

We made a lot of admittedly rather subjective observations of coral and fish populations both before and after the bleaching event. Observations were mostly done while snorkeling, so they only apply to the nearshore reefs—depths of thirty feet or less.

Branching coral (primarily Cauliflower Coral) has been slowly clawing its way back since the bleaching loss. We see many small colonies these days, but nothing approaching pre-bleaching populations.

Several fish species that we’d see fairly frequently prior to the bleaching—notably Cigar Wrasses and Shortnose Wrasses— seem to have disappeared. Others, including most of the butterflyfish, were reduced in number but were still present. Populations of surgeonfish—a group that comprises a large portion of fish biomass on the reefs—appeared unchanged. Rather surprisingly, overall parrotfish populations did not change much, but it seemed that there were fewer Ember Parrots and more Stareye and Bullethead Parrots after the bleaching.

A few observations from our recent trip:

Scarface Blennies have flourished at Mahukona since the 2015 coral bleaching event. This is not necessarily a good sign, since these fish are common in degraded, coral-depauperate habitats.
Redbarred Hawkfish are another species that seems to have gotten more abundant recently. Hoover says they’re among the most common hawkfish on Hawaiian reefs, but I haven’t found that to be the case at Mahukona until the last couple of years .
Pyramid Butterflyfish populations appear to have remained stable over the years. We have never failed to locate these mid-water schoolers when we looked for them at Mahukona.
Shortnose Wrasses were fairly common prior to 2015, but we haven’t seen any at Mahukona for several years. However, our friend Wendy, who spends a lot more time in the water than we do, reports seeing them this year.

Sharks

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Last week we joined our friends Ned and Susan on a snorkel trip to the pelagic zone offshore from Kona. Kona Diving Ecoadventures takes passengers about five miles offshore to waters around a mile deep. There they search for pelagic cetaceans—pilot whales, sperm whales, open-ocean dolphins—and other pelagic megafauna such as sharks and billfish. The passengers are allowed to get into the water and snorkel with anything interesting that is encountered, in a manner, we were told, intended not to unduly disturb the animals.

In stark contrast to the bustling nearshore reefs, the open ocean is mostly mile after mile of emptiness, so there’s a lot of searching and no guarantee as to what, if anything, you’ll encounter. On this trip we saw little in the open ocean—only a mixed pod of spinner and spotted dolphins that we observed from the boat.

Fortunately, open ocean is not all there is off the Kona coast—there are also fish farms operating in these deep waters. All sorts of marine life congregate near the aquaculture operations, partly attracted to wasted fish feed, and partly due to the shelter provided by the farms’ netting and associated structures where smaller organisms can hide from predators. Our boat visited one of the farms, where we had the opportunity to swim with Rough-toothed Dolphins (no decent photos though) and two species of shark.

This Silky Shark, about seven feet long, was quite curious about us, approaching very closely a number of times. Glad it didn’t take an exploratory bite. These fast swimmers are common in tropical and subtropical waters worldwide.

Here’s the other side of the same shark. It’s got a nasty, fairly fresh wound in front of its gill slits. There’s a remora attached behind the gill slits. The elongated rear edge of the second dorsal fin helps distinguish this species from similar sharks.

I’m not sure how many Oceanic Whitetip Sharks came up from the depths to check us out, but it was more than one. This one, again about seven feet long, is accompanied by several Pilotfish. Oceanic Whitetips are easy to recognize by their large pectoral fins and, of course, their white fin tips. The slow-swimming Whitetips are often found with the Silkies and are also found worldwide. In the nineteen-sixties this shark was so abundant that it was estimated to be among the most numerous large animals on the planet. Fishing pressure over the intervening decades has rendered the species rare through much of its range, but it’s still fairly common here in Hawaii.

We also visited a so-called fish aggregating device. They’re basically buoys moored in offshore waters for the purpose of attracting large fish and facilitating sport fishing. The FADs are placed and maintained by the Hawaii Division of Aquatic Resources. There were no big fish present when we were there, but there were a lot of interesting smaller fish. The boldly striped fish here are Pilotfish. The fish on the left are some sort of young jack. I think they may be escaped Kampachi (also called Almaco Jacks) from nearby fish farms, but they may be young Amberjacks.

Lapakahi’s magic coral patch and an alien urchin

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The other day Marla, Wendy, and I snorkeled south from Mahukona to the northern end of Lapakahi Marine Life Conservation District—about a three-quarter mile swim. As the name suggests, Lapakahi is a protected area where “the taking of any type of living material (fishes, eggs, shells, corals, algae, etc.) and non-living habitat material (sand, rocks, coral skeletons, etc.) is generally restricted.” This means, in contrast to Mahukona, no spearfishing or aquarium collecting* is allowed. The results of this protection are quite apparent—the fish at Lapakahi are significantly less wary than at heavily-spearfished Mahukona, and fish diversity is better too.

During our swim we stumbled into one particularly rich patch of coral. It was only a few meters in diameter and about five meters deep. Marla quickly spotted a Flame Angelfish—uncommon for such shallow water, and considered a nice find even at scuba depths. It turned out there were at least two Flame Angels, and the patch was crawling with Hawaiian Squirrelfish, Saber Squirrelfish, Iridescent Cardinalfish, and many other species.

It dawned on me that I’d been to this same coral patch with Hai and Lottie a couple of years ago. It was similarly rich in fish back then. Hai visited the site at least one other time back then, and reported that he’d counted forty species of fish there—a very impressive number. These days we’re calling it the Magic Coral Patch. It’s kind of a long swim, and not very easy to find, but we plan to return soon.

One of the Flame Angelfish poses with a Goldring Surgeonfish. These little angels, like most Hawaiian angelfish, are quite shy, but their vivid coloration makes them easy to spot. No other Hawaiian reef fish shows such a highly-saturated red.

An Iridescent Cardinalfish and a Hawaiian Squirrelfish hunker in a dark recess.

On the swim back eagle-eyed Marla spotted something unusual in about eight meters of water. Her first thought was that someone had discarded a hubcap out there. Turns out it was a Blue-Spotted Urchin.

This splendid Blue-Spotted Urchin was about eight inches in diameter. Hoover says the species is uncommon in Hawaii and usually found below fifty feet. Those spines are screaming look but don’t touch.

This closeup shows why it’s called Blue-Spot Urchin. See those tiny blue spots arranged along the arms? Hoover says the spots can expand or contract, I guess according to the urchin’s mood. 

*Thankfully, a recent court ruling has effectively ended commercial aquarium collecting in West Hawaii.

A furtive moray

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There’s a rock near the Mahukona lighthouse that intermittently houses a Yellowhead Moray. Our snorkel buddy Wendy turned us on to this spot several months ago, and since then we’ve swung by occasionally to see if the moray is there. More often than not the eel is absent, but sometimes…

Yellowhead Morays are supposedly fairly uncommon—this is the only one we’ve ever seen—as well as nocturnal, and usually found at scuba depths. This one has stuffed itself into what seems like an impossibly small hole only a few feet below the surface.

One of the voices in my head urged me to stick my finger into this hole, but better sense prevailed. (Come on, don’t you sometimes want to do something like that? No? Hmm, go figure.)

A castaway

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We’ve been seeing a solitary, shy, yellow butterflyfish at Kawaihae Harbor for the past several months. It’s a Speckled (or Citron) Butterfly, a common species in many parts of the tropical Pacific, but quite rare here in Hawaii. Hoover and Randall* say rare in Hawaii, while Stender says “very rare.”

Good old reliable Jeff** (who does not run a floating crap game as far as I know) has recorded his Speckled Butterflyfish encounters since the eighties. Over countless hours of snorkeling the Big Island he’s seen this species roughly seven times—three pairs and four solitary individuals. This is a species that, like many butterflyfish, has a strong tendency to form mated pairs when given the opportunity, so Jeff’s ratio of four singles to three pairs is rather odd. I think this has got to be due to the species’ rarity in Hawaii. Like most reef fish, the Speckled Butterfly goes through a planktonic larval stage that drifts freely in the open ocean until settling in on a random reef. In the case of fairly common species, numerous larvae will settle onto any given reef and transform into adults, providing individuals the opportunity to find others of their kind and establish mated pairs. But, alas, for the Speckled Butterflyfish low numbers mean that some larvae will be the only members of their species to settle on a given reef. Of course the adults are free to wander the coast in search of mates if they choose (I believe in fish free will—not sure about humans), but for this rare species the nearest potential mate may be very distant. So, based on Jeff’s and my observations, I figure that Kawaihae’s single Speckled Butterflyfish is doomed to the lonely life of a castaway.

Kawaihae’s lonely Speckled Butterflyfish. It seems to be a home body, attached to a quite small portion of the reef. We don’t see it every time we visit the harbor, but when we do see it it’s always in the same area.

A Milletseed Butterflyfish. This much more common, endemic species is similar enough to the Speckled that it’s easy to overlook a solitary Speckled among the multitude of Milletseeds. In fact, that’s what I did until Jeff pointed the Speckled out to me months ago.

* Links to the three fish experts listed here can be found in the “About” section of this blog.

**Jeff on the other hand, while very knowledgeable, would not profess to be an expert. He’s my snorkel buddy and papier-mache fish modeler extraordinaire though.

A toby pushes the envelope

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Tobies are a group of cute, diminutive puffers belonging to the genus Canthigaster. Four species occur in Hawaii and several more are found throughout the Indo-Pacific. I’ve posted about different tobies a handful of times before—search this blog for “toby” if you’re interested.

Anyway, a few days before leaving on our recent California trip Marla and I spotted a solitary Crowned Toby while we snorkeled at Mahukona. We’d seen this species a handful of times before, but never while snorkeling—only on scuba. It turns out that, according to both John Hoover and Keoki Stender, these fish prefer depths of twenty feet or greater. Hoover goes further, saying the species is “seldom seen by snorkelers.” This one was at about nineteen feet—pushing the depth envelope.

The Crowned Toby warily eying me. My camera recorded a depth of 5.6 meters—18.4 feet—for this shot. Besides being unusually shallow, the little fish was alone as far as we could tell. The species (endemic, by the way) usually occurs in pairs. I bet it returned to deeper waters, and its brethren, pretty soon after we saw it.

Jockeying for photo ops at Black Point

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Yesterday Marla and I joined our friend Wendy for a two-tank dive trip with Kohala Divers. As usual, the KD staff was excellent and the dive sites were great. The only trouble was that there were too many passengers with cameras. Due to the virtual absence of tourists on the island these days there were only nine paying divers on the boat, but at least six of them, including Wendy and me, were toting cameras.  With that many photographers in the water, sighting of an interesting fish can result in something resembling a rugby scrum—everyone muscling in for a good shot before the poor, terrified fish bolts. It seems like the people with the biggest, most expensive photo rigs are the worst. I guess they figure that we peons with smaller, less expensive setups will never be able to take a good photo anyway, so what the heck. Wendy and I, with our modest cameras, and our senses of civility, tended to hang back. (Marla is wise enough to not mar the experience of enjoying the fish by carrying a camera at all.)

Kohala Divers, like most West Hawaii operators, tries to mitigate this situation by sending divers down in small groups—in this case one group of four and one of five divers. This helps, but sometimes, especially if an unusually uncommon fish is sighted, the groups will converge.

That said, it was a great couple of dives, with lots of interesting fish at both dive sites. And don’t mind my kvetching—we all had a great time.

Almost immediately on our descent at the first site (Black Point) we spotted this Bandit Angelfish. This endemic species is uncommon to rare here on the Big Island, and neither Marla, Wendy, nor I had ever seen one before. By time I waited out the initial scrum the fish had had enough of us and started moving off. I got this parting shot.

We came across a handful of Ewa Fang Blennies—also endemic. Not particularly uncommon, but so pretty. This one is joined by one of the ubiquitous Gold-ring Surgeonfish.

We came across this Tiger Snake Moray on the second dive at a site called Black Point Caves. Marla and I had only seen this species once before—sans camera. John Hoover calls it secretive and nocturnal rather than particularly uncommon. He also informs us that the species preys primarily on other eels.

A Potter’s Angelfish popped its head out while I was trying to photograph the snake moray. We also saw, but did not photograph, a Flame Angel, and I briefly spotted a Fisher’s Angel. That makes all four of the angelfish species one has any likelihood of running into in the main Hawaiian Islands.

This one was a heartbreaker for me. I’d been wanting to see and photograph a Longnose Hawkfish—a fish that Hoover calls “an unusual find in the Islands”— for several years, but have never encountered one until yesterday’s dive. Once again I was late to the show—the fish bolted right after my arrival and this was the only shot I managed. Oh well, better luck next time. (Don’t you love that plaid pattern?)

So, yeah, a really great trip. I was buzzed for the rest of the day. Maybe I should be more like Marla and just enjoy the dive instead of getting so wrapped up in the goal of acquiring photos. Maybe one day, but for now it’s a fun (okay, a bit expensive, too) way to exercise my inner hunter-gatherer.

Optimism pays off

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The plan was to go for a snorkel inside the harbor at Kawaihae. Marla and I entered the water while Hai was still suiting up. We found the water full of gunk. More precisely, it was full of larvacea tests—tiny, clear, gelatinous blobs that are the used-up remnants of the feeding apparatus of free-floating tunicates (more on that in a later post). They were so thick that it looked like an underwater snowstorm. While they’re harmless—don’t sting like some of the blobby stuff you often run into in Hawaiian waters—they’re kind of disgusting, so we decided to scratch the harbor swim.

Marla and I suggested an alternative plan: snorkeling in the less disgusting water outside the breakwater. Hai was unenthusiastic—fish diversity outside the harbor is low, and coral is mostly dead—but for the sake of camaraderie he agreed to come along. As we walked to the alternate entry point I talked him up on the idea, emphasizing that you never know what you’ll encounter on any ocean outing. That’s one of the best things about saltwater snorkeling and diving: the ocean is big, and anything can show up. Hai agreed and in we went.

I was first in the water, and low and behold, within 30 feet I spotted a brown, camouflaged fish scuttling along the bottom in about eight feet of water. It was an Oriental Flying Gurnard. It was only the second time any of us had seen one of these very odd, very uncommon fish. We spent quite a long time excitedly following the fish around getting photos. It turns out there was another gurnard nearby—we’d presumedly found a mated pair.

It’s the promise of encounters like this that keep us fish geeks going out day after day. Any day you find a fish as uncommon and interesting as these is a great day.

Here’s the larger of the two Oriental Flying Gurnards. It was only about seven inches long, small for a species that, according to Hoover, reaches fifteen inches. (Its presumed mate—no photos—was more like five inches.) The “wings” are enormous pectoral fins.  The fish uses the fingerlike spines at the front these fins, along with its pelvic fins, to scuttle around the bottom. If you look closely you can see a small part of the pelvic fin inside the front of the pectoral fin. We watched the fish use those pelvic fins to scratch around in the sand, presumably to dig up tiny prey.

These bizarre-looking fish are sometimes called helmet gurnards. The species ranges widely throughout the Indo-Pacific.

Hai got this photo of the gurnard with its wings spread. The fish swims on these spread pectoral fins when mildly alarmed. When fully alarmed it’s capable of swimming off with surprising speed.