Some Hawaii Sea Creatures!

[Randy]

I got a Olympus underwater point-and-shoot (Tough series) at Christmas and tried it out in Hawaii last month. My 10 year old was excited to try snorkeling so we spent a fair amount of time snorkeling just off the beach at our resort. It was quite good snorkeling actually!

I need to do some work with the settings to figure out optimal settings. Definitely not great pictures but some cool fish nonetheless! I used iNaturalist to help with my IDs.

Devil Scorpionfish - the spines on these guys are venomous!


Green Sea Turtle:



Orangeblotch Surgeonfish:



Wedgetail Triggerfish (state fish of Hawaii) - this is its Hawaiian name: humuhumunukunukuapua'a


Barred Filefish:



Moorish Idol:



Pacific Sailfin Tang:


Spotted Boxfish:





We saw 6 species of butterflyfish including:
Saddle Butterflyfish:


Fourspot Butterflyfish:


Threadfin Butterflyfish:



Pacific Orange-spine Unicornfish:


Dark Surgeonfish:


Bluespotted Cornetfish (this was about 2' long):


Pacific White-spotted Sea Cucumber:



Hawaiian Dascyllus (these young ones hide in the coral):



Achilles Tang:


Saddle Wrasse:



Blackspot Sargeant:


Redlip Parrotfish and Christmas Wrasse:


Bluespine Unicornfish:

[Dave]

That’s awesome, Randy! I really like that Moorish Idol. Thanks for sharing.

[Randy]

Apr 15, 2024 20:43:32 GMT -8 Dave said:

That’s awesome, Randy! I really like that Moorish Idol. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks Dave, I thought they were pretty cool fish too. They were quite common and there were some surprisingly big ones up to probably 20 cm in diameter.

[expiallyd]

A good assortment of fish! I sometimes think snorkelling is a lot like birding except that the fish are not as easily spooked as the birds are. Thanks for posting.

[Randy]

Apr 16, 2024 13:37:05 GMT -8 expiallyd said:

A good assortment of fish! I sometimes think snorkelling is a lot like birding except that the fish are not as easily spooked as the birds are. Thanks for posting.

Agreed! It's really fun learning about identifying the different species. However, it would have been exceptionally difficult without iNaturalist!