Capturing the Moment

  No matter how many times I come here, Africa always has a way of surprising. We got a big surprise on our morning game drive in Tsavo West National Park. We were lucky enough to have a chance encounter with one of the rarest mammals you can see in the world, African wild dogs. There are only an estimated 5,000 wild dogs left in the wild. I didn't even know that seeing wild dogs in Tsavo West was a possibility, and there is a good reason for that.      For many years people tried their best to eradicate these beautiful animals, also known as painted dogs. They were considered vermin. In fact, wild dogs were absent from Tsavo West for the past 20 years because of this cultural attitude. However, recently two small groups of these pack hunters have been seen ranging through the park. Normal pack numbers can range in the 30-40+ for these dogs, however here in Tsavo both groups seen recently are under 10 animals. Africa Photos for sale   We had just wra...

 We came across this rarely seen dolphin in deep water off the coast of the Big Island. We noticed some dorsal fins breaking the surface near one of the 'FAD's, or fish aggregating devices off Hawaii's Kona coast. I hadn't seen this species of dolphins in several years.    The rough-toothed dolphins are easy to identify if you know what you are looking for. They have an enlarged melon and relatively short beak which gives them a uniquely sloped forehead. It is rarely seen and poorly known. They live in very deep warm tropical waters around the world.  I sent these pictures in to our local odontocete research group so I'll report back with any updated news on this pod. There were about 12 individuals, one of which had a very easy to identify dorsal fin. You just never know what you are going to come across in the deep waters of the ocean.

Pygmy Killer Whale Encounter Written By Jessika Pacinich Photos by Dai Mar Tamarack   We were on the hunt. All eyes fixed on the rolling swell, everyone’s attention bent to a singular end: to find the pod of short finned pilot whales rumored to be hanging out in our location in the deep water off the Big Island of Hawaii. Short finned pilot whales are a rare sight and it’s a special moment when we spot them. A radio call comes through, “Dai Mar, something’s out there.” The Safari Explorer slows and turns. We all rush out on deck. “What is it? What is it?” Guests and crew peer into the water but we’re dumbfounded. Ahead of the ship, basking in the sun bob roughly 15 cetaceans. I have no idea what they are. I’ve never seen anything that looks like these animals. Highly curved dorsal fins slice through the waves and a blunt head glistens in the sunlight as they surface to breathe. We all stare at them in wonder. Then an individual lifts its head out of the water to...

Vestiaria coccinea Scarlet Honeycreeper, "I'iwi"    The I'iwi, or scarlet honeycreeper is one of the  best known species of Hawaiian endemic finch species. Usually it is just seen as a red flash as it disappears into the native forest, however with a little (or a lot) of patience you may be lucky enough to see an I'iwi land and feed on a colorful tree.   The honeycreepers here in Hawaii are all descendants of one finch ancestor. Think about Darwin sailing to the Galapagos islands and finding a dozen or so different finch species there, all filling different niches, eventually leading Darwin to his theory of evolution. If he would have come to the Hawaiian islands instead, Darwin would have found 54 different species of finch, and most likely would have come to his conclusion of evolution years earlier!   Not all species have survived as well as our I'iwi, and even those are regulated to the high elevation patches of native forest. Thanks to the in...

Smooth Seahorse in Maui   It finally happened! When we first moved to Maui, Heidi and I bought a fish ID book to learn all the local fish and try to find them all. There are only a few very rare ones that I haven't seen. And until now the seahorse was one of them! I was starting to believe that I would never see one in Maui. But thanks to Heidi's sharp eye as we were finishing up a nudibranch dive and were on our way back in we stumbled upon this little yellow guy! Backlit Underwater treasure hunt success!     Known as the Smooth Seahorse, or Hippocampus Kuda , this is one of our rarest finds. I have always looked for them as we swim over beds of halimedes grass but never really expected to find one. If you ask people who have hundreds of dives in Hawaii if they have ever seen a seahorse their answer will most likely be 'never.' That will be my answer no more!    We found this smooth seahorse in about 10ft of water with his tail wrapped aro...

  Finding the Mythical Sable Antelope    The sable antelope ( hippotragus niger ), is one of the rarest, and hardest to find antelope in Africa. Until this past trip into Kruger National Park in South Africa I had only spotted 2 in all of my Africa travels; one in the desolate Katavi National Park in Tanzania and one in the heavily wooded region of Pretoriaskop in Kruger National Park.  Regal Sable Antelope When I was growing up my family spent all of our free time on a privately owned island off the coast of Georgia which the Bronx Zoo used as an off-site breeding area for incredibly rare and endangered animals. Some of these breeding programs went so well that animals were moved from here back into the wild all over Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Surrounded by exotic animals like lemurs, zebra, and Arabian oryx was a magical experience for a young future biologist like me. But of all of these wonderful creatures there was always one that capture my...

  Woah! The nocturnal delights keep on coming. So excited after our last night muck dive Heidi and I decided to try it again. We saw octopus out on the hunt, its cute cousin, the bobtail squid trying to eat a shrimp almost as big as it was. Then it was a nudibranch bonanza after that with sightings of imperial nudibranch, trembling, white bump, white margin, kangaroo, gloomy, black dendrodoris, snow goddess, lilac spotted, orange gumdrop, tiled pleurobranch, and a couple of rare nudibranch spottings like the Carminodoris bifurcata, Aldisa pikokai, and the Tambja amakusana . These last three don't have common names since they are seen so rarely. This bobtail squid was about the same size as my thumb. The shrimp he is trying to chomp down was slightly smaller than my pinky. They both held this pose for awhile until the squid finally spit out the empty shell of the shrimp. Shortly after the squid buried itself into the sand, leaving only its eyes above to relax and digest its ha...

Unidentified Discodorid #9    I talk to other scuba divers here on Maui and they've seen a couple different kinds of nudibranchs, maybe a dozen. Dive masters leading trips every day may have seen twenty or so over their years here. Heidi, Felipe, and I just found twenty nudibranch species...in one dive! Who says you have to go to Indonesia or the Philippines to go muck diving for the strange and rare? Aldisa pikoko Some of the more common species of nudibranchs made appearances like the trembling, imperial, snow goddess and spanish dancer. We had a couple of new species spotted on this dive as well. It is easy to see from the pictures why we search out these sea slugs. There is just nothing else out there quite like them. Catriona sp.1 And I feel like despite their best efforts at being brightly colored and wildly patterned they still are not seen by many divers due to their small size, lack of fast motion, and the brightly colored sponges and coral that a...