Harbor Wildlife

 Some times cool wildlife can be easily overlooked because it is so close. I wonder how many people walk through Ma'alaea Harbor and never both to look into the water. On some days the visibility clears up and you get more than the typical 8 inches of viz from all the turbulence. While cleaning the boats with scuba gear I've seen nudibranchs, octopus, feather duster worms, and lots of fish. Spotted eagle rays come into the harbor to mate, and the shallows act as a nursery for baby butterflyfish, convict tangs, and even great barracudas!

On this day we spotted a few wild things in the unusually clear harbor water. A few slips down someone spotted some 'cuttlefish' which turned out to be the Bigfin Squid in the picture above. It was the first time I had seen them here in Hawaii!

Then another rare site, a fish so rarely seen that a local dive shop owner didn't even know the name when I told her I had seen it. This yellow and black, horizontally striped fish that looks so much like a butterflyfish is in fact a fish called a Stripey. I had only seen this fish in the aquarium and once, very near shore, on a night dive at Ukumehame. And here it was, hanging out in the harbor right under our boat! Will wonders never cease.

Something we all deal with here on Maui is the constant burning of sugar cane fields. The fields cover thousands of acres in the valley between the two large volcanoes and every once in a while they will burn the field. They do this to burn off all the dried leaves accumulated over a 12-24month growing period before harvesting the rest for processing into sugar. This field just happened to be right behind our harbor as we left, dumping ash onto our boat as we watched some bottlenose dolphins playing in the calm waters.