Flatworm Night Dive

 Last night Heidi and I decided to try out some new scuba equipment by tackling a night dive at Makena Landing. Things started out a little hairy as a purge valve on Heidi's BC popped off and started leaking air plummeting her to the bottom (about 3ft down.) But it turned out to be an easy fix...even in the dark, so the dive continued.
  The water was so filled with plankton that it was looked like warp speed on Star Trek. All kinds of small drifting organisms sped past us in the current. I managed to snap a shot of this wild looking jelly as it drifted by that couldn't have been bigger than my thumbnail!
Finding this Hawaiian Starry Octopus was a huge payoff early on in the dive. I always love finding octos and this is one that is quite rare, endemic to the Hawaiian Islands, and nocturnal. You can see the mass of plankton above it in the picture on the right. 


 We checked out a few caves on our dive and not surprisingly they were filled with resting turtles. Some fresh water could also be seen trickling through the lava to mix in with denser sea water. Looking around for any kind of unusal cave dweller I came across this longnose butterflyfish resting the night away upside down on the ceiling of the cave. It is very fun to see these fish at night when they spike up their dorsal fin like a mohawk.


 But the real star of this night dive were all the flatworms that we found. Four different species, two of which Heidi and I had never seen before.
 A white stripe flatworm continues on its collision course with a fuchsia flatworm in the picture top left. One of our new finds an orange rim flatworm, Psuedobiceros sp.4, is top right. And a beautiful black, orange, and blue flatworm called a Hyman's Flatworm,  Psuedobiceros hymanae, was our last big find and a great way to end the dive. (pictured below)

This yellow head moray eel comes out to hunt at night. He didn't seem to scared by my light. At night and in the water I can understand why he feels so confident, he is in his element as a top predator on the reef.




Location: Makena Rd, Wailea-Makena, HI 96753, USA

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