One of the very best things about diving in the same area for years is learning about the lives of the individual animals who live there. To make this possible, the animal must have features or markings that make it identifiable as an individual, so that it can be recognized over and over again over time. These features can include …
Coral Bleaching Report on a 500-year-old lobe coral colony
This summer’s and fall’s high ocean temperatures and sunlight intensity have taken the lives of thousands of coral colonies in Hawaii. Some places have lost large amounts of colorful, vibrant coral reefs and in their place is a covering of dark brown algal turf. It has brought some people to tears. Last Saturday morning DLNR held an event called Bleachapalooza which …
Coral Bleaching – Is that white coral dead?
As scientists so accurately predicted, we are experiencing a historically high amount of coral bleaching this summer/fall in Hawaii. One of the questions that we are frequently asked is, “Is that white coral dead?” Living corals in their healthiest state are shades of tan, yellow, brown, and green, among other colors. The color they exhibit comes mostly from microscopic single-celled algae …
“Birth” announcement from a Maui Reef
Spring is here! Spring on Maui means that whale season comes to a close, the water starts to warm up, corals begin releasing their eggs and sperm into the water during their annual spawning events, and new baby fish begin to settle out of the plankton onto the reef. The spring and summer months are prime months for baby fish …
The Life and Times of a Humpback Whale Barnacle
Last week we were treated to an unusual find during one of our dives off of Maui. There on the sand was a strange, black, partially-circular object composed of radially symmetrical segments. Was it plastic? Metal? With that symmetry, surely it was man-made. But no, we’d seen something like this a few years before – it was part of a …
Coralline Algae Target Phenomena
This being National Archery Day (in addition to the much more significant Martin Luther King Day), I decided to finally look into and try to understand something that we see regularly underwater, but that has puzzled me my whole diving career. That is: patterns that look like archery targets which grow on shaded vertical rock walls underwater. I guess I …
Transparent Moorish Idol recruit
How long does it take to become opaque? As Hawaii’s divers and fish-watchers are well aware, this summer will go on record as the largest settlement of juvenile fishes (recruits) recorded in historic times. Estimated millions of Blacklip Butterflyfish, thousands of Yellow Tangs, and hundreds or thousands of individuals of numerous other species settled out of the plankton on reefs …
Part Two – Juvenile Blacklip Butterflyfish (Chaetodon kleinii)
Swarming divers and turtles in competition for food Strength in numbers is not a phrase that applies to the recent settlement of estimated millions of Blacklip Butterflyfish (Chaetodon kleinii) at Molokini and off the south coast of Maui. This many fish compete mightily for the limited amount of available food. We didn’t realize how serious the competition was until we had …
Part One – Massive numbers of juvenile Blacklip Butterflyfish
Have your eyes ever beheld so many individual things that they felt full? That is the way my eyes felt three weeks ago while diving off of Molokini and south Maui. They felt so full that I actually had the sensation they were itching. This is because on July 8 thousands of juvenile Blacklip Butterflyfish (Chaetodon kleinii) appeared overnight on …
Dr. Jack Randall – Hawaii’s Renowned Fish Scientist Scuba Dives on his 90th Birthday
This past week, as you may have heard, former President George H.W. Bush celebrated his 90th birthday by jumping out of a plane, performing his 8th skydive. But did you know that here in Hawaii, another well-known septuagenarian marked his 90th by scuba diving? Dr. John E. Randall, former Curator of Fishes of the Bishop Museum and member of the Graduate …