I spent the recent long weekend with two new friends, a couple I liked but didn’t know that well. How will it be, I wondered, sharing an apartment for three days with people so, well, so young?
Jake is 25 and a local surfer who grew up loving the ocean and knowing Hawaii’s marine animals. He doesn’t fish anymore, he told me, because now he prefers watching fish over killing them. Jake’s partner, Laura, is a 24-year-old Midwestern transplant who enjoys snorkeling and learning about marine life but is a bit leery of the ocean.
And then there’s me, at 63, a blend of the two. Having also grown up in the Midwest, I can relate to Laura’s fears. But my University of Hawaii schooling, plus 30 years of snorkeling, diving and sailing in Hawaii, allows me to share Jake’s point of view as well.
"Did you see those papio swimming with the weke?" he said as we emerged from a morning snorkel. "I wonder what they were doing?"
Laura and I stared at Jake. She didn’t know the terms "weke" or "papio," and I’m so used to seeing this buddy behavior, called "mutualism," among fish that I hadn’t even noticed them. Clearly, the three of us needed each other.
Papio are baby jacks, usually less than 12 inches long, Jake and I told Laura.
The name for grown-up jacks is ulua, in general, but at least 14 other Hawaiian names exist among Hawaii’s 23 species. There are 140 jacks worldwide. These strong, fast-swimming predators don’t live on Hawaii’s coral reefs as much as raid them. Big ulua, prized by anglers as game fish, are now rare on main island reefs, but in protected areas, such as Hawaii’s northwest chain, ulua 3 to 4 feet long cruise through water as shallow as 3 feet in search of prey.
The smaller jacks, though, the papio, often venture inshore here on Oahu to hunt with their goatfish buddies.
Weke (pronounced VEH-kay) is the Hawaiian name for several kinds of goatfish. Other goatfish have other names — kumu, munu, moelua — and one is significant to Jake’s observation. The Hawaiian term for blue goatfish, "moano ukali ulua," means "goatfish with jack following."
Goatfish get their name from two feelers covered with taste buds that protrude from the bottom of the chin like a goat’s beard. The fish uses these sensory sticks to stir the sand and poke in holes as a means of flushing out fish and invertebrates. As goatfish move along the bottom, papio tag along, hoping to snatch a fish disturbed by the whisked-up sand.
Each species enjoys some advantage from mutualism. I don’t know what goatfish get from their papio camp followers. Protection perhaps, since jacks are bold hunters whose appearance often sends other fish fleeing. Or maybe, like me, they just enjoy the company.
My concern about the age difference between my new friends and me disappeared as the weekend progressed, and by Monday we were not only a great snorkeling trio, but also food, movie and book friends as well. Friendship, it seems, is mutualism at its finest.
To follow John Lennon’s advice, from now on I’m going to count my age in friends rather than years.
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Reach Susan Scott at www.susanscott.net.
