Mike in the Wild

Riding the first wave of tourism back to Hawaii when the state started allowing COVID-screened visitors in October, I was starved for the type of travel that had been on hold for most of the year.  Part of that hunger was a drive to swim in the water off Maui and to reacquaint myself with the many denizens of the sea.  I was especially heartened when I quickly stumbled upon a relatively uncommon fish for me, the pink-tailed triggerfish. It's in a family with the reef triggerfish, a fish that epitomizes snorkeling on Hawaii's reefs like no other.    It's impossible not  to spot this animated, striped resident of the coral reef every time you enter the water; no wonder it's the state fish of Hawaii. The triggerfish is called as such because it can erect and lock its dorsal spine to hold itself tightly in a rocky crevice as a means of protection.  It can only unlock this bone by the 'trigger' of a second dorsal spine that holds the first in place. I regularly ...

When a tour tells you to expect some of the most spectacular scenery on Earth and up-close encounters with marine wildlife, all along accompanied by expert local guides, two meals and a mai tai bar, you have to wonder how are they going to guarantee all that in a five hour trip.  Well of course weather, seasons and luck are an important factor in any outdoor adventure, so nothing can be promised except for a bottle of rum.  But on the mid-September day I joined Kaui Sea Tours on their deluxe 60 foot catamaran, the Lucky Lady, out of Port Allen, I was destined to experience the thrills of a lifetime. Kaui is the oldest and in some ways the remotest of the main Hawaiian Islands because it lies so far west of the others.  Another distinction is that it was the first island to be settled by the ancient Polynesians.  It's also the wettest of the islands, if not of all Earth's locations, where one spot gets over 460 inches of rain a year.  As a result, the verdant i...

No fish epitomizes snorkeling on Hawaii's reefs more than the reef triggerfish.  Both tenacious and colorful, it's an easily recognizable sea dweller that every swimmer and explorer encounters within moments of entering the surf and shallows.  It's also the official state fish of the Aloha State, with a Hawaiian name sometimes acknowledged as the longest word in the language.  Even if actually not so, the word is indeed longer than the fish! The family of fish is called humuhumu  in Hawaiian, and the reef triggerfish is specifically the humuhumunukunukuapua'a .  It's a fun word to learn to say, an easy act when you break it down into its simple and repeated parts:  hoo - moo - hoo - moo, noo - koo - noo - koo,  ah - poo - ah - ah .  It literally means, "triggerfish with a nose like a pig." The triggerfish is called as such because it can erect and lock its dorsal spine to hold itself tightly in a rocky crevice as a means of protection.  I...