Spanish Dancer in Flight: Hawaii Night Dive

It was a beautiful day on the South shore of Maui and the visibility reports were coming in positive all day so Heidi and I came up with the plan for a night dive at Makena Landing. It turned out to be more than we could imagine, with photo opportunities around every turn.
   Our first big find was my first adult Spanish dancer nudibranch. Our underwater lights lit up so many shades of red, orange, and pink along its sinuous body. I had seen juvenile spanish dancers in shallow tidepools at night before but never this giant. Spanish dancers can grow to a foot in length, making it the largest nudibranch in the world. Usually I have to strain my eyes to focus on tiny nudibranchs much smaller than a finger. Often we come across spanish dancer egg cases which look like velvet roses attached to the rock.
   These nudibranchs have something in common with spanish shawl nudibranchs which I often found in the waters off California. They are able to swim and cover vast areas by undulating their body like a dancer from Spain whipping her shawl around her. It is a sight to behold and something I have been waiting for for a very long time. If you really want to see this you will have to get over your fear of the dark because they are nocturnal.

    Lots of other nocturnal creatures were seen this night at Makena Landing. This jeweled anemone crab has a rainbow of colors and big beautiful anemones which can always be found attached to its shell. It comes out at night to forage for organic materials in the sand. Its eyes, way high up on stalks, are very useful for watching out for nighttime predators like this barred moray eel. Although luckily for the crab, the eel's razor sharp teeth are more for hooking into octopus than crushing through a crabs hard shell.

   The last two big sightings were both fish. Heidi spotted this scorpion fish perfectly camouflaging into the sand. There are hundreds of different species of scorpion fish but when it moved and flashed the bright underside of its pectoral fins I knew immediately that it was a devil scorpion fish. Beautiful, and deadly, it has poison in its many spines.
  Dangerous in its own way, this huge eyed porcupine fish put on a rare performance as it slowly swam with its mouth wide open. With teeth made for crushing, unwary divers have been known to lose a finger to the cute and seemingly harmless porcupine fish.