Thursday, May 24, 2012
Ocean Watch Premium
One of the things I love about marine biology is discovering how little I know.
I have on my desk several new items of interest for marine animal fans. One is made of paper, and the others swim among the colorful reefs of my iPad.
I wasn't going to write about the recent Hawaiian monk seal killing, because it seemed futile.
On an early morning beach walk last week, I found on the North Shore a faded pink toy washed ashore. The 4 1/2-inch-long plastic figure, pictured at right, had big rodent teeth hanging from a smiling mouth.
While walking my dog last week, I saw a male kolea prance across our path. The bird was at the top of its game, so fat and fabulous in its spring breeding outfit that I had to stop and stare.
In my recent column on jacks and goatfish hunting together, I wrote that papio is the name for young jacks under 12 inches long.
While snorkeling off the Kaneohe Bay sandbar, reader Shannon Garcia took several photos of a striking moray eel. When she got home and couldn't find the species in books or online, Shannon asked me via email whether she could send the picture for identification.
I spent the recent long weekend with two new friends, a couple I liked but didn't know that well.
As I was examining the new book “Certainly More Than You Wanted to Know About the Fishes of the Pacific Coast, a Postmodern Experience,” it fell open to a photo of a fish I don’t know and a passage that caught my eye: “Scandinavians report that oarfish flesh sucks big time and even dogs won’t eat it. However, I imagine dogs would roll in it, big time.”
Did you see a lot of bioluminescence?" a friend asked me last week after I returned home from my Mexico voyaging.
During a voyage last week off Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, the wind grew light, and Honu's speed dropped to 3 mph.
My sailing trip along Mexico's Pacific coast is nearing its end.
I kissed a frigate bird. This isn't something I've been dying to do. I've seen these seabirds' hooked beaks and sharp claws in action during their aerial attacks on booby birds.
For a seabird fan like me, a little splash of guano is no big deal. But last week, during a nighttime voyage from La Paz to Mazatlan, Mexico, a booby and a frigatebird tested my limits.
Afew years ago in winter, I sailed my boat down the west coast of Mexico's Baja Peninsula, from Ensenada to Cabo San Lucas.
Singapore reader Ben Nottle sent me a 41-second eel video, goo.gl/fOJ6E, so entertaining I watched it half a dozen times. Ben's circumstances while filming were not ideal for cheering — he's scuba diving — yet you can hear his whoops of joy.
My column last week about my fine day on the North Shore prompted several emails from readers asking if I would please share the location of my newly discovered sea horse pasture.
I spend a lot time working on, sailing to and marveling over wildlife and scenery on Pacific islands.
Last year, after I gave a slide show about Midway's albatrosses to a Honolulu seniors group, a woman raised her hand.
Afilm I saw recently, Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris," and a book I'm enjoying, Stephen King's "9/22/63," are stories about people who visit the past.
For Christmas my husband gave me five dead animals and two shark teeth topped with several tumors from tortured oysters.
My columns bring back good memories. Last week, though, while scanning my 2011 headlines, I made a shocking discovery. I had not written about one of the year's best fish experiences.
One of the highlights of my recent voyage in Mexico's waters was an unexpected face-to-face encounter with a whale shark, which I described in this column as a giant, harmless, plankton-eating fish.
One of my greatest joys is sharing my boat with awesome animals. Dolphins play in Honu's bow wave, seabirds perch in the rigging, and at night, light-making organisms reveal twinkling trails of fish on the go.
It's enough to worry about stepping on one of the bazillion stingrays that inhabit the bays here in the Sea of Cortez, but I need to worry about getting electrocuted, too?
My sailboat has a new cylindrical light atop its main mast. This is not your grandmother's mast light. It's an energy-efficient, exceptionally bright LED, red on the left side, green on the right and white at the back.
I did it off western Australia years ago on an organized tour. Last year I did it by myself in the northern Sea of Cortez. A week ago I did it in the southern Sea of Cortez with my husband, Craig.
I have had some memorable experiences swimming with California sea lions here in the Sea of Cortez, but none as thrilling as two incidents last week.
Loreto, Baja Sur, Mexico » This week I'm sailing along the coast of Mexico's Baja Peninsula, my boat's location for the last two years.
While snorkeling in four feet of water recently, I startled an invisible flatfish. The fish shot forward in a cloud of sand, undulating to a new spot like a fringed flying carpet.
Stony seaweeds are hard in more ways than one. My visiting niece recently collected a handful of warty, purple-and-white spheres on a North Shore beach. She though they were coral.
I recently wrote about an armchair-size coral head I named Fuller Brush Rock after the dozens of bristly shrimps I found clinging to its top. The striped, 2- to 3-inch-long shrimp in fur coats hung there for weeks. One day they were gone and I never saw them again.
Our humpback whales are back. Well, at least three are back, one spotted Sept. 26 off the Kona Coast and two more seen last week near Lanai. The rest of their cohorts will arrive from Alaska within the next month or two.
When I saw a new book called “Lonely Planet’s 1000 Ultimate Sights,” my first move was to check the index for Hawaii entries. If Hawaii wasn’t listed often for awesomeness, I thought, the book missed the boat.
Stony corals rank high on my please-don't-ask-me-to-name-it list. I understand the basics of how these reef-builders eat, secrete, breed and build, but there are so many species and so many forms, colors, shapes and textures of each of those species, I've given up trying to identify them. I enjoy them nameless.
In June a reader sent me a photo of a rarely seen creature she found in Hanauma Bay.
I'm revisiting the subject of seahorses because they've been revisiting me.
The tradewinds have been blowing steadily this week, bringing to our shores the good, the bad and the ugly. Good first. Joren of Laie emailed that he found near the shoreline some blue floating creatures that look like they have wings or legs.
Earlier this month, a news release from the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument office stopped me in my tracks.
Last weekend I swam to my favorite underwater massage parlor, where I counted nine turtles, a record there for me.
If a science-fiction writer invented a fish with a horse head, monkey tail and kangaroo pouch, made the males get pregnant and called the thing a sea monster ("campus" in Greek), well, it would be easier to believe in dragons.
When an adult male orca dives beneath your kayak, is it reasonable to feel a tinge of fear? The question crossed my mind last week as I sat, barely breathing, listening to the whale's whistles and wondering where the big guy would surface.
While I was reading a newspaper in a mainland airport several weeks ago, a two-sentence news story caught my eye.
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