CHUBS IN PARADISE

I made my acquaintance with a most unusually colored fish today. It looked like a cartoon fish colored by a kindergartner with a box of 500 crayon colors. The fish is as brightly adorned as one of those jungle parrots which is probably why it’s called a parrotfish – but since it’s a Hawaiian parrotfish its way more complicated but colorful name is Uhu Bullethead Parrotfish.

The parrotfish, which I named Matey, was one of many circling my sister and me as we snorkeled off Poi’pu Beach in Kaua’i. We were cheating just a bit. The young Hawaiian cashier sold us a tube of fish food (the tube itself biodegradable and edible for the fish) to dribble out around us to attract the colorful reef fish as we snorkeled. Good idea, right?

Yeah. Matey and his buddies were hard to woo any closer than the near ocean floor while a group of more burly fish, called Enenue Lowfin Chub, muscled right up to the bag to nibble on either it or our fingers depending on which was easiest. The chubs circled us like hungry sharks, almost touching our bodies with their lightly striped yellow and gray bodies. Nudging us, pushing us. Kind of disconcerting. You’d think since they didn’t mind pushing us around a bit, they wouldn’t mind if I reached out to touch them. But no, I’m pretty sure they do not grasp the idea of reciprocity.

All this togetherness was going on at the same time the swell was pushing us back and forth in the water. I don’t snorkel that often and it always takes me a bit of time to relax and trust my diving mask and snorkel. Living with asthma adds a layer of discomfort at the idea of breathing through a skinny tube that could be swamped by salt water while swimming above an ocean floor which is too deep for me to stand to recover myself.

However, when one is in Kaua’i, trust me, you really should snorkel off one of the beaches. Renting a snorkeling package means you get the mask, the snorkel and the fins (if you want them the fins really help when you are swimming against the wave action). Surf and snorkel shops are ubiquitous; every beach will have one or more nearby.

The fish food is optional – you might see lots of brightly colored fish anyway but the fish food is like crack to the reef fish. In just seconds you can be surrounded by a crowd of brightly colored reef creatures that include Matey and Chubby’s chums as well as Manini Convict Tangs wearing their black prison stripes over their yellow bodies, the Nunu Pekes (Coronetfish) looking as anorexic as haute couture models, the tiny Pennant Butterflyfish with its long spikey dorsal fin emerging from its back. These colorful creatures are just the showiest of the native species. Many other perhaps less colorful but no less interesting fish also circle with their show-off buddies.

Once we were tired of defending our honor among the gluttonous chub, we swam back toward the beach over the submerged rock to find not one but two endangered Hawaiian monk seals taking a break on Poi’pu Beach. Monk seals are treasured in the Islands and lifeguards are equipped with yellow caution tape to encourage us humans to leave them alone while they nap right next to sun-screened sunbathers before returning to the water.

All in all, quite an adventurous two hours on a Hawaiian beach. I’m glad we had a chance to practice snorkeling; we are headed for the world-famous Na Pali Coast on Sunday. Here we will snorkel over living coral reefs from a comfortable catamaran.  Kaua’I is called Hawaii’s Garden Island which is obvious even before your airplane touches down at Kauai’s Lihue airport. Between the colorful fish and the tunnel of trees we drove through to get to our resort, we truly feel like we are in a Garden as beautiful as Eden. And the most snake-like thing we’ve seen so far are tiny spiney lizards doing pushups on the sidwalks before disappearing into the bushes at our resort.

ALOHA!