Honolulu Star-Advertiser © Susan Scott
May 12, 1997
I’ll never understand some people’s aversion to Waikiki. Its wide walkways make for pleasant strolls, people-watching is great there, and those ocean sunsets are the picture of Pacific romance. Also, although most people don’t realize it, some of Hawaii’s best wildlife appears in Waikiki.
Last week, I had a meeting at the Diamond Head end of Waikiki and decided to walk there from the Ala Wai Boat Harbor. Before my feet even touched sand, I was stopped by a flash of brilliant orange and blue among the rocks near a boat.
I stopped and waited. Soon a tiny orange fish face peered from its hiding place. Then a second bright fish darted from one hole to another. The fish didn’t give me much time to identify them, but I know these beauties: They’re Potter’s angelfish, one of Hawaii’s six “pygmy angel” species.
Angelfish in other parts of the world are often big and bold, providing divers with memorable close encounters. Not Hawaii’s pygmy angels. Ours are shy little things, spending most of their time close to cover, venturing out only to graze warily on nearby algae.
My presence spooked these angels of the Ala Wai, and they remained mostly hidden while I stood there. That was OK, though. I now had their address.
I moved on. As I rounded the lagoon of the Hawaiian Hilton Village, I was stopped by the sight of a sea bird diving for fish just feet offshore, near the breakwater. The big bird would fly in a wide circle around the area inside the reef, then tuck its wings and drop like a sleek torpedo head first into the water. A second later, the bird would pop up, swallow its fish meal, then take off and do it again.
I walked to the edge of the water and squinted at the soaring bird, noting its brown body and its white breast, beak and feet: It was a brown booby, one of three booby bird species found in Hawaii. (The others are masked and red-footed boobies.)
Brown boobies love to sit on navigation buoys. I often see them from my kayak sitting like sentinels on the big red and green seaward markers of the Ala Wai channel. And just yesterday, a friend told me that several of these birds were balancing on the buoy off the Haleiwa Boat Harbor.
It was hard to leave this bird during its fishing frenzy, but I had places to go. I stayed as long as I dared, then continued down the beach.
When I reached my destination at Kuhio Beach, I found Rob Miller, the lifeguard I was meeting, showing a captured box jellyfish to a crowd of beach-goers. He held the creature by its bell, the safe part to touch, and explained the dangers of the trailing tentacles.
Visitors were fascinated. We all talked at length about how these animals sting people by accident when the creatures get caught inshore. Also, that the sting is not lethal, as it is with some species of box jellyfish in Australia.
After my meeting with Miller, I hurried back to the boat to get some writing done. But back at the Hilton, I was stopped yet again. The brown booby, more than an hour later, was still fishing up a storm.
OK, I had to see what the bird found so delicious this close to shore amid all these people. I ran to my boat, changed into my swimsuit and hurried back with mask and snorkel.
The bird was gone. But what the heck. I went snorkeling anyway. And there I saw something new to me: A goatfish, so large I first mistook it for a mullet, was excavating an enormous hole in the sand, its chin whiskers (called barbels) digging like mad. Apparently, the fish sensed some goody deep in the sand and was determined to get it.
I watched for a while, then visited a school of needlefish I know. By the time I got back to the boat, my workday was pretty much shot.
People come from all over the world to while away time in Waikiki. I have only to walk to a meeting.