Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse (Labroides phthirophagus)

Here's a shot of a Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse. This particular colorful little fish is endemic to Hawaii, not found in other parts of the world. Other species of cleaner wrasses can be found throughout the tropical Indo/Pacific, I'm not sure about the Red Sea but I suspect there's a similar species there. They are not found in the Caribbean, although there is a neon goby with similar markings and feeding habits.

Cleaner wrasses perform a valuable service to the reef community. Their diet consists primarily of parasites. Fish will solicit a "cleaning" from the wrasse, and the wrasse will work the fish over, removing anything that shouldn't belong there. You'll see even larger predator fish such as eels and groupers willingly let the cleaner wrasses enter their mouths and gills to pick at parasites.

I first learned about these guys back in my aquarium days... they're poor aquarium inhabitants. Their diet is primarily parasites and they typically starve to death in aquariums. This is a fish definitely best left on the reef.

I snapped this one on the spur of the moment as a damsel was begging for a cleaning. The new Olympus Pen was able to lock focus (well, close anyway) in a flash. I haven't been able to get a shot of these guys within several feet in the past as they dart practically every split second when you get close. I'm hoping some afternoon when I have time to really focus on getting a crisp clear shot of these.

Water temp is still hovering in that 78 degree range. We were hoping for a little higher by now, but apparently there's talk of a la Nina current coming in this year that'll keep things cooler.

Busy week this next week, day charters and a couple of night charters. We had 15 mantas on the night charter last week, heard it was around 20 last night... the manta dive is really hot right now. Things are starting to slow down, tail end of the summer tourist season... it's been a madhouse the last 3-4 weeks on that dive.

Later,

Steve

Hawaiian Flame Wrasse

Here's my first shot of a Flame Wrasse (Cirrhilabrus jordani) that has come out really at all. This is a male. They're tough to get a shot at as they tend to dart away at the last minute and you can't really get all that close to them. I took this one from probably 5-6 feet away and luckily I was shooting in RAW and could bump the exposure up enough after the fact to get a recognizable image... awfully dark otherwise.

They're endemic (live only in Hawaii) and pretty hard to spot, so not that many visitors are aware of them. You need to be able to tell the difference between them and a female pencil wrasse, and there's lots of pencil wrasses where these guys tend to hang out. The males can look spectacular when they are flashing and in full display. Take a look in the blog's sidebar at the Amazon ad for "Hawaii's fishes"... a male in full display is on the cover of that book. One of these days I may have to break out my strobe and see if I can get enough light on one to do it justice.

It's still quite flat, but brrrr is it cold for here in the water. Call it 71/72. I'm packing extra shorties on the boat for the next bit in case the divers aren't staying warm enough with their full suits... layering usually does the trick.

Yesterday's dives were fun. Cathy did a dive in Pawai Bay with our customers and the highlight of the dive was a couple of 8-10 foot hammerheads that joined in on the dive for a few moments..... WAY COOL! I did the second dive, off at Kaloko Canyons and while we didn't have any awesome shark action, we still saw some neat things. We pulled a double yesterday. Bob's under the weather for the next week or two it seems, so old friend Rich, an instructor and state research diver I've worked with off and on for several years, filled in for the evening dives. The manta dive was sort of strange... Rich saw 5 mantas on the evening dive, but the night dive was a bust for much of the dive 'til one showed up towards the end.

There were very few boats on the water yesterday morning. We only saw 4 other companies out and we were the only 6 pack boat that we noticed. Things ought to pick up for everyone the next couple of weeks with spring breaks... hopefully. Things are pretty slow in Hawaii in general. I heard rumors of 30-35% hotel occupancies the other day, not good.

Later,

Steve

Manta ray cleaning station...

The water's finally warming up and getting to more summer-time like conditions. We've been seeing mostly 77 degrees off Kona with the occasional 79 the last couple of weeks.

Today I'm cleaning the vacation rental for our next renters who come in tomorrow, then I have a night dive tonight with day trips the next several days. I thought I was going to have more time off than I wanted, but suddenly I booked an extra 12 or so charters... that's nice, but I'm still hoping for more divers to add on to those days... gotta keep busy!

I'm stealing a couple of photos from Bob for this post. He was leading a dive the other week when a manta ray came by for a cleaning. The mantas will come to the reef and look for a cleaner wrasse. When one comes in to pick parasites off them they typically will circle around in slightly larger concentric circles in an effort to find more cleaner wrasses. Sometimes you'll see mantas with numerous wrasses working them over. If you look real hard, you can see a small wrasse just below the manta in the second photo. I belive Bob's group had the manta hang out for several minutes during this dive.

Aloha,

Steve