Pupukea tide pool contains feeble shrimp full of charm

When my 12-year-old friend Naia said she wanted to show me some shrimp she found, I didn’t know I had to suffer to see them. But the cut on my toe, the scrape on my knee and the crick in my back turned out to be a small price to pay. When we arrived, Naia’s shrimp not only crawled from beneath their rock homes to greet us, they also walked onto our fingers and posed for pictures.

The little charmers are called feeble shrimp after their species name "debilis," meaning "weak" (full scientific name: Palaemon debilis). Their Hawaiian name is opae huna.

Opae huna live along Hawaii’s shorelines in areas protected from the open ocean, such as the pool where Naia found them at the Shark’s Cove end of Pupu­kea Beach Park. A lot of us remember this area as loaded with spearfishers, but since 2002 this underwater park has been fully protected from all fishing.

That made a huge difference, and now this teeming marine life conservation district is as wonderful as Hanauma Bay. With a caveat: Sharp lava rocks line many of the pools, and the underwater rocks are slippery.

Nimble Naia hopped over and around the submerged and semisubmerged obstacle course with no problem. I had so much trouble, though, that I decided to get in the water and snorkel there. But some areas were too shallow to float over or swim around. Back I went to stumbling and flailing.

When I finally arrived at the site, Naia kindly offered me her "sitting rock" to watch the shrimp, but the small boulder was more suited to Naia’s bottom than mine. I crouched in the pool, sure that no marine animal would show itself with my two big feet planted in the middle of its home.

"They’ll come," Naia said, and she was right. After a minute or so, several 2-inch-long, see-through shrimp began to emerge from their hiding places. Soon the place was crawling with the creatures, and when we held our hands in the water, the friendly shrimp climbed on.

Feeble shrimp are beauties to behold, their nearly transparent bodies decorated with a visual Morse code of white dots and black dashes. Stalked eyes protrude from the sides of their heads like blue lollipops.

You can find feeble shrimp in anchialine ponds, terrestrial freshwater pools with underground connections to the ocean. In these brackish seeps, feeble shrimp live with their cousins, the red pond shrimp known as opae ula. Feeble shrimp also live in Ala Moana Beach Park pools.

I highly recommend a visit to Shark’s Cove before the winter surf starts in September and stirs the place up. Bring booties.

This 2- to 3-foot-deep crossing was one of the more challenging marine excursions I’ve had in a long time. It was also one of the most fun. Thanks, Naia. I will follow you anywhere.

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Reach Susan Scott at www.susanscott.net.