Honolulu Star-Advertiser © Susan Scott
March 30, 2019
Humans aren’t the only ones to get tumbled ashore by breaking waves.
Last week a 6-inch-long sea slug called a Spanish dancer ran aground, a common occurrence on Lanikai Beach. You can view our video at youtu.be/NeNxPkIgG7E. (Our dog, Pixel, briefly photo-bombed us.)
We beach walkers always want to rescue the frilly nudibranchs, but they’re too fragile to simply toss past the break. In those cases, whoever is wearing a swimsuit gets elected to wade in and release the graceful dancer in deep water.
Brooks, left, Charlotte and Esme Madin wait for a pufferfish to deflate.
The children and their father, University of Hawaii coral reef biologist
Joshua Madin, found the fish afloat near the shorebreak at Lanikai Beach.
Courtesy Joshua Madin
In recent weeks several porcupine pufferfish, all dead except one, proved to be throw-back challenges. The fish, 1 to 2 feet long, are heavy, have needle-sharp spines and contain one of the most potent nerve poisons, called tetrodotoxin, known to nature.
Beached pufferfish are a hazard because dogs love to nose around dead fish. But even a tiny bite of pufferfish flesh could be the dog’s last. The dangerous dish that the Japanese call fugu is made of pufferfish.
I don’t know what’s ailing our pufferfish this spring, but die-offs have happened here before, and the cause was never discovered.
Craig picked up one of the dead pufferfish by the tail and heaved it into the water, where it sank. Because I worried about a swimmer accidentally stepping on the dead fish, we left the next dead one on the beach where people could see it, pull their dogs’ leashes up short and walk around it.
The next day, we found a live pufferfish in a beached trash bucket filled with seawater. Two charming little girls bent over the fish, which looked like a bristly white soccer ball, its mouth huffing and puffing.
Besides being poisonous, pufferfish also have two knifelike teeth, sharp as razor blades. But we didn’t need to warn the kids. Their dad, Josh, sitting nearby with their baby brother, is a marine biologist and had explained pufferfish to the girls. The family found the fish inflated near the break, lifted it into the bucket with a toy shovel and were waiting for it to deflate.
As if body spikes, a lethal toxin and guillotine-style teeth aren’t enough defense, these fish can also fill their bodies with air and/or water when threatened. For most fish predators, a blown-up puffer is too big to swallow.
After some discussion Josh decided to drive the swollen pufferfish to a leeward shore, a fine lesson in biology (and compassion) for his fascinated children. He fetched a bucket with a lid from his nearby home. When he poured the puffer into it, however, the fish released its air in a balloon-style whoosh and once again looked like a fish.
And swam like a fish, too. We spectators, young and old, stood on the beach smiling as we watched Puff slowly disappear.
Some days the best part of finding marine animals on a beach is throwing them back.