Tag Archives: blacktail wrasse

Summer juveniles at Kahalu’u

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Kahalu’u Beach Park, a few miles south of Kailua Kona, seems an unlikely spot for fishwatching.  It’s usually teaming with sunburned tourists on the beach and snorkeling close to shore, packed so densely that they’re running into one another.  Partly due to the crowds, the near-shore water tends to be rather cloudy, but holds a surprising number of fish swimming among the people’s legs.  If you snorkel further out into the large, shallow bay the water clears up and it becomes obvious why this beach is listed in all the guides as one of the best fishwatching spots on the Island.  Fish here are plentiful, diverse, and quite tame, the last due to the fact that spearfishing is prohibited in the Park.

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The bright green juvenile old woman wrasse is a real eye-catcher.  No other Hawaiian reef fish is this green.  This one is about an inch and a half long.

Summer is the season of juvenile fish on the reefs.  Many years (especially 2014—see the 7/4/14 post, the first on this blog) surgeonfish dominate the young-of-the-year crop.  This year juvenile wrasses seem to dominate.  We saw a couple of rather unusual young wrasses at Kahalu’u the other day.  The first, spotted by Marla in a recess in the coral, was an old woman (or blacktail) wrasse.  These endemics are rather uncommon and spotting a juvenile is a treat.  The second, also spotted by Marla, but this time on an open flat, was a juvenile rockmover wrasse.  Rockmovers are more common than blacktails, but the juveniles of this species are particularly interesting:

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Juvenile rockmover wrasses swim in a flaccid, desultory manner, gently waving their elongated fins.  The result is a fairly good imitation of a drifting piece of seaweed—presumably a protective ploy to avoid predation.  This individual is fairly old—maybe three inches in length—and is already beginning to take on the looks of the adult.  The seaweed effect is even more dramatic in younger fish.

If you look closely at the above photo of the old  woman wrasse (click on it) you’ll see odd looking white marks on the dead coral in the upper right.  These are fish teethmarks.  I’m not sure what made them, probably a parrotfish of some sort or maybe a barred filefish.  As the coral was dead, the fish that made these marks was not trying to eat coral, but rather the algae growing on the dead substrate.  Maybe this stareye parrot, photographed on the same day at Kahalu’u, made the marks:

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This stareye parrot may have made the bite marks in the top photo.

Makaiwa again

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Makaiwa Bay at the Mauna Lani resort is a fairly long drive for us, so we often go months without visiting this excellent site.  Conditions here are rather unpredictable, with onshore winds often ruining the visibility, but when conditions are good they can be very good.  Fish are abundant and tamer than at, say, Mahukona.  Species diversity is very good, with some species present that are rarely or never seen at Mahukona.  We’ve snorkeled at Makaiwa three times in the last couple of weeks, with conditions varying from good to excellent.  (For directions to this spot, see the 6/11/15 post.)  Here’s some of what we saw:

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We’ve seen one or two old woman wrasses on each of our recent visits to Makaiwa. (These fish are also called blacktail wrasses, I think in part because old woman wrasse can be considered politically incorrect. Old woman is a direct translation of the old Hawaiian name though.) Hoover states that these rather uncommon endemics are unafraid of divers, but when we’ve seen them, either at Makaiwa or Mahukona, they’ve been quite skittish. Maybe the difference is that we see them while snorkeling in shallow water, while Hoover encounters them at scuba depths.

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I saw this solitary lagoon triggerfish on just one of our Makaiwa snorkels. We’ve never seen them at Mahukona, but they are fairly common at Pauoa Bay, a mile or so north of Makaiwa. As their name suggests, these fish, much less common than the similar picasso or wedgetail triggerfish, prefer relatively sheltered waters.

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The wedgetail (or picasso or reef) triggerfish is common pretty much everywhere. Both this and the lagoon triggerfish go by the Hawaiian name humuhumu-nukunuku-a-puaa.

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The beautiful, bizarre looking moorish idol—common and easy to approach. It is the only member of its family.

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I think that the eyestripe (or Dussumeir’s) surgeonfish is among the handsomest of Hawaiian reef fishes. Mahukona has lots of these, but lacks the large, relatively approachable schools seen at Makaiwa.

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This juvenile Hawaiian dascyllus was very close to shore in about three feet of water. These endemic damselfish are usually found in groups clustered in and around branching coral, and usually in water deeper than three feet. This one was alone, and seemed rather nervous. I think he’d rather have been elsewhere. He was nonetheless bold and curious—typical of this species.  (Can you be both nervous and bold?)