Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Marine Life”
July 8, 2025: “Hey, give us a couple minutes,” the free diving instructor called over from his yellow kayak. “We just shot the fish you guys like.” And by “like” he didn’t mean the-kind-of-fish-you-like-to-eat. He was referring to a particular individual fish – a longfin batfish – that the Maui dive community had ‘liked’ for over two decades. We knew …
In Hawai‘i we have a funny name for one of our largest crabs – it’s called a Seven-Eleven crab. Unrelated to the eponymus convenience store, the name comes instead from the number of spots – and their location – on the crab’s carapace (shell). If you look at the crab from the top-front (as in the photo above) it appears …
Divers have so many questions about the other-worldly things we see underwater, but “How long can a Triton’s trumpet live without eating?” was a question that I had never asked myself. A few days ago, however, we were given an “at least this long” answer without even asking. The Triton’s trumpet (Charonia tritonis) is one of the largest sea snails …
With only TWO sightings of a Yellow Boxfish (Ostracion cubicus) ever previously recorded in Hawai‘i, last week’s sighting off of Makena, Maui makes it one of the rarest fish a diver could see here. Experienced Maui dive guide Dave Fuller was diving on a WWII amphibious tank in 60 feet of water on Dec. 7, 2019 when something he’d never …
Ordinarily a conforming Sleepy Sponge Crab (Dromia dormia) would be expected to be carrying a sponge on its back. It’s what they do. In Hawai’i that sponge is usually a large, oval piece of yellow sponge, but they will carry other types of sponges too. Like most animals they exhibit individual preferences. Over the years we’ve also seen them carrying …
Kiwini Hall is one of Maui’s most experienced watermen, having body-surfed, dived, paddled and driven boats here his whole life. Kiwini has been a SNUBA instructor on the catamaran Lani Kai for many years. He is one of the luckiest people I know, having spent his entire life doing what he loves. Even so, twenty years ago when he told …
Divers, have you entered the Randall Zone? You might have without even knowing it. A Randall Zone is an area around – or next to – a reef or object where no sea grass or algae is growing. It can be around a small antler coral colony as pictured below, or it can be around a large object such as …
It is almost unheard of for a coral reef to have made it into the media a hundred years ago. So few people snorkeled or dived back then that the underwater world, especially corals, was not often in the news. That a Hawai‘i reef did show up in the media so long ago shows just how special that reef was …
The other day we stumbled upon two Banded Spiny Lobsters (Panulirus marginatus) walking around in broad daylight. Lobsters of all kinds are mostly active at night, so it’s kind of exciting for us to see them out in the open during the day. One of the lobsters was walking out front and the following lobster was gently grasping at it with …
One of the best things about diving in one area for years is that we get to know a few of the fish as individuals. That’s not as easy as it sounds. In most cases, one yellow tang looks just like the next yellow tang, one Picasso triggerfish looks like every other Picasso triggerfish – each fish resembles others of …
