Diving the Kona Coast: moray eel

Showing posts with label moray eel. Show all posts

Saturday, March 22, 2014

No Cavities!

whitemouth moray eel Gymnothorax meleagris

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Just wanted to share a couple of photos I took at the beginning of the month when we had the coral spawning. These photos of a whitemouth moray (Gymnothorax meleagris) were taken about two hours after the spawning.

You can see that the water's surface still looks a little blurry from all the organic material remaining in the water column. I don't know if whitemouths are the most common morays in Hawai'i but they are definitely the species I see most often.

In the photo above I changed the angle a little bit to get more of a side profile. It wasn't until I got home and started going through the photos that I noticed the other eel in the background on the left side. Kewl!

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

One of the Regulars

As big as the ocean is, there are some creatures that stay in a very small area for their entire lives. Moray eels spend most of the daytime cloistered in holes in the reef. Occasionally, you see one out free swimming in the day but they usually come out to hunt at night. When daylight comes, they return to the safety of another hole in the reef.

This particular undulated moray eel ( Gymnothorax undulatus) is an exception. It lives in a coral head around 80' down and has been there every time I looked for the past several years.

No doubt it roams about at night searching for prey. But it seems that it always returns to it's specific, special place on the reef when the sun comes up. Truly a creature of habit,

Friday, June 1, 2012

Night Dive 4/27/12

Aloha, everybody! As you can see, I am woefully behind on posts and am probably too busy with my family, gardening, job and diving to be anything resembling a competent and dedicated blogger. My apologies.

Anyway, I wanted to share with you some sights from a (not so) recent night dive I took down in Honaunau Bay. Lots of neat stuff comes out at night that daytime snorkelers and divers seldom get to see!

We'll start out with crustaceans, specifically lobsters. Above is a robust example of a tufted spiny lobster (Panulirus peniciliatus). I occasionally see these crammed way back in lava tubes during the day, but at night they come out to wander the reef. As soon as light hits them they retreat back into the reef. They are big and, like their Maine brethren, quite edible. As you can see they lack large claws and rely on their spiny carapaces for defense.

The strange looking creature above is a sculptured slipper lobster (Parribacus antarcticus). Slipper lobsters have antennae that are reduced to thin plates, giving them the additional moniker of shovel-nosed lobsters. Sculptured slipper lobsters are flat and wide. When stationary, their legs are covered by the carapace and the creature blends into the reef quite well. There is something about them that puts me in mind of a military tank.

Vibrant by comparison, the regal slipper lobster (Arctides regalis) is hard to overlook. Its blue-grey base color is contrasted by generous amounts of bright red and orange. This photo was recently published on the "Island Life" page of our local newspaper West Hawai'i Today".

Tucked securely in it's nook, this convex crab (Carpilius convexus) appears to be weighing it's options before heading out onto the reef. It's caution is justified as, even in the darkness, highly effective hunters are lurking like the undulated moray eel (Gymnothorax undulatus) pictured below.

The two photos directly above are of different types of small scorpionfish that come out at night to feed. Diurnal scorpionfish are medium-sized and extravagantly camouflaged to blend with their surrounding. By comparison, their nocturnal cousins are small and brightly decorated. Uppermost photo is a dwarf scorpionfish (Scorpaenopsis fowleri) and the bottom one is a lowfin scorpionfish (Scorpaenodes parvipinnis).

We end this post as it began, with a crustacean. This Hiatt's hinge-beak shrimp (Cinetorhynchus hiatti) emerges at night with legions of its species to forage the reef. It has kinda crazy-looking eyes!

Well, that's it for this time! Hope to post again soon!

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

New Links

Recently, two organizations have approached me asking if they could use my photographs on their sites. Both are not-for-profit, conservation/educational entities and I was happy to help and, frankly, quite flattered by the nice treatment they gave to my material.

I have added links to both their sites. The first is a Polish site, Nyskie Towarzystwo Ochrony Zweirzat used a few of my moray eel photos for an article. The site has a built-in translator for those of you not fluent in Polish. The name of the organization in English is Animal Protection Society Nyskie and they are involved in animal rescue work.

The second site is MarineBio which is building an ambitious marine species database. The link leads to their site but they also publish a very interesting blog. The organization looks fascinating and makes me wish I could go back in time and follow that career in marine biology I dreamed about when I was a kid watching Jacques Cousteau on TV.

Anyway, give the sites a look! You'll be glad you did.

Diving the Kona Coast