While lacking such striking beauty, for an every-day dive it was hard to complain about Onekāhakaha. The sky would often gray and spit rain, dimming the visibility and color of the fish and corals. But sometimes the waves would lie down and the sun would turn reef fingers reaching off Kēōkea point into sparkling aquaria. One of these bright mornings, I had an amazing dive with a friend from the Marshall Islands.
We arrived before dawn, quietly drinking Kona coffee and eating fresh pineapple at a picnic table. Hilo sunrises are every bit as phenomenal as Kona sunsets, escorted in with the damp, fresh scent of tropical flowers. A few locals slept on the beach amidst beer cans and a still-smoldering campfire. It was a cool, crisp fall morning on the Big Island (i.e., it was 70 degrees and hadn’t rained in 12 hours). A gentle breeze nudged curiously off the island, urging us into the still water.
We finished our breakfast and checked our minimal gear; I had a bathing suit, fins, a mask, rash guard, enough weight to stay slightly negatively buoyant, a backpack tank, and a breathing regulator. With no 7mm wetsuit, hood, buoyancy control vest, or elaborate safety plan, it was truly a different experience than diving frigid northern California. The tide was up which, though a difference of just a foot or two, made it easier to get in with scuba gear on. This was the given justification for our getting up so early to dive.
The more compelling reason was the sensual pleasure of being in the water as pink streaks graced the sky. There is too much beauty in the world, too many gifts, to sit by idly sleeping, drinking, working, or pretending to witness life through a monitor. You have to engage it where it calls you – water, forest, mountain, or sky – as often as you can, force frenetic distractions aside, see the world, and bring the passion.
I pushed off from a jagged ledge into the rising sun. The cool morning water momentarily took my breath away as I clawed over near-shore rocks through two feet of murky water. Settling into the scene, I found my way into a channel of light sand leading out between two long, dark fingers. I rode the slight surge out with each wave that forged up each side and sucked back down the soft middle. Outside the wave-break, the bottom sloped gradually. Rounded black lava rocks poked through the shifting pale-tan sand like desert tortoises.
There is more life to see than it might seem in this transient zone. A fat, nine-inch sea cucumber (called a “loli”) rolled around in a little basin with some leaves and other detritus. If sufficiently stressed, these tightly rolled sausage-like animals (which look like plump worms, but are actually closely related to sea stars and urchins) will literally spill their guts. “Evisceration” is a defense mechanism to placate a harassing predator with something to eat other than the entire animal. Amazingly, sea cucumbers can recover from spilling their stomach contents and portions of their innards, much like other echinoderms can regenerate an appendage. Children sometimes forcibly eviscerate them at one another in a macabre, juvenile game certainly not enjoyed by the animals.
I lifted this one gently. It was black, but with subtle, fluorescent blue streaks lining each of its five distinct sections. Tiny tube feet along its length moved particles around, directing them to the mouth at the forward end, which was difficult to distinguish from the rear. The little cuke squirmed in my hand before scrunching into a defensive position. These nocturnal animals are important to many near-shore environments, consuming and transforming organic matter. I picked a cigarette butt out of the swirling aggregation of leaves and twigs and laid the rounded animal back down. After a few seconds it relaxed, stretching out like a collapsed straw wrapper hit by a drop of water.
Tiny bubbles dribbled up from the sand, hinting at submerged life beneath. Bandtailed goatfish, burrowing gobies, and blennies skimmed the bottom cryptically, popping about but darting for cover. I noticed a pair of light brown fish with pointed snouts and subtle blue speckles shoot away from me in tandem. They were whitespotted tobies, finger-length bottom feeders endemic to Hawai’i, but uncommon. I never saw another pair except for that brief, early morning encounter.
The coloration of most life on these shallow flats is pale, matching the uniform soft-beige of the shifting sand. These animals do not have the luxury of being one of many targets among a colorful crowd like their nearby relatives on coral heads. They must evade the occasional tang, puffer, or trigger cruising by, looking for an easy target against the stark backdrop with nowhere to hide. Cryptic coloration and behavior, as well as small body size, are their adaptations to survive in this challenging environment. There is much more to the seemingly barren sandy areas inside reefs than initially meets the eye, whether on the windward side of the Big Island, the Florida Keys, or Bahamian shoals and flats.
I drifted further out between massive rock extrusions, effluent lava tubes that Mauna Kea emptied to the sea before humans arrived. Reef sounds surrounded me; snapping shrimp, glumping groupers, and the omniscient crunching parrotfish formed the natural symphony, blissfully pulsing in an offbeat manner occasionally synched with steady waves.
Tortoise-shell rocks increased in size and frequency as I approached the reef. So too did the prevalence of black sand and the number of easily visible fish. The sergeant majors appeared first, followed by “convict” tangs (named for the vertical jail-like bars on their sides), and several spotted puffers. Puffers aren’t the most hydrodynamic fish in the sea, having roughly the dimensions of a shoe box. But look at an “o’opu” against a background of peppered sand and you’ll appreciate one reason why they persist.
A school of small triggerfish glided toward me as I reached the first cauliflower coral heads and algae-covered boulders of the shallow reef zone. They were jet black, with iridescent white trim running down the co-joined dorsal and anal fins on the top and bottom of their bodies. They use these long fins to propel themselves with seemingly awkward yet remarkably effective “ballistiform” propulsion rather than thrusting with the tail. When in danger, these feisty fish deploy a small, powerful spine on top of their head (the “trigger”) to powerfully anchor themselves into crevices of the reef.
A ridiculously skinny, cigar-shaped, yellow trumpet fish (called a “nünü”) cruised past me without seeming to move a fin. I almost didn’t notice it an inch below the surface, hugging the wavering mirrored ceiling. From the side it looked like a drifting two-foot stick – from the front it was nearly invisible. These are one of those species, like flying squirrels, aye-ayes, or komodo dragons that seem more like cartoons than real animals. But nature finds unique, sometimes extreme solutions to the varied challenges of a harsh and changing world.
It was a little murky, so I headed down the reef. A loosely organized group of gray unicorn tangs scooted away. Their namesake forehead nubs seemed almost as humorous as their wide-eyed frowns and puffed-out lower lips as they flicked their tiny pectoral fins. A straggler grabbed a last bite of leafy brown algae before grumpily crossing my path, flashing a blue bar on the narrow caudal peduncle connecting his tail and body.
Moving from just five to ten feet of water, the character of the reef changed dramatically. Green and yellow cauliflower corals became broader, forming hemispherical colonies with symmetrical folded branches. Beige and green lobe corals anchored to the spine of the ridge grew in expansive plates and mounded lobes. This “reef bench” zone was where the highest densities of corals grew, though slowly even in this optimal regime. Chaotic interactions of biologic, geologic, and hydrodynamic forces transformed transient arches, crevices, and walls into ecosystems for countless fish, invertebrates, and plants.
Red slate pencil urchins with broad, rounded spines poked out conspicuously like flat sidewalk chalk. Related but distinct, black and purple spiny boring urchins were tucked into holes they had scoured from the reef. At first glance, they seemed static armored vestibules. But on closer inspection their many appendages moved freely, with a complex purpose remarkable for such seemingly simple animals.
A long-nosed butterflyfish cautiously poked its needled snout between two fat coral lobes. I hovered, finger tips on exposed rock to avoid damaging the reef, or my own flesh. The fish soon ignored me and resumed probing the living reef for tiny worms and fish eggs. It’s long, slender mouth, perfectly engineered by eons of natural selection, fit neatly into nooks and crannies among the tangle of reef and porous lava rock.