Honolulu Star-Advertiser © Susan Scott
December 26, 2011
My columns bring back good memories. Last week, though, while scanning my 2011 headlines, I made a shocking discovery. I had not written about one of the year’s best fish experiences.
The extraordinary event occurred at the end of a long day of strong-wind, rough-water sailing in the Sea of Cortez. The sun was near setting by the time Craig and I anchored in the clear water of a sandy anchorage. Sweaty and tired, we grabbed masks and snorkels and jumped in for a swim.
And the earth moved. Well, it wiggled. We had dropped anchor in the middle of an enormous community of garden eels.
I had been dazzled by these delightful fish once before, during a scuba dive off Kona years earlier. Hawaii’s only garden eel is an endemic species, meaning found only here. Like all other garden eels, the Hawaiian eel lives in groups of thousands, usually in water 60 feet and deeper.
Off Puako on the Big Island, researchers in the 1980s discovered a colony about 130 feet deep that covered over 14,000 square yards. Estimates of the number of eels there were in the 30,000 range. The community, however, continued downslope beyond scuba limits, so the true number remained unknown.
Garden eels are as big around as a pencil and about 2 feet long. Each eel lives in its own wavy, self-dug hole, a little longer than the body. The fish keeps its hard-tipped digging tail inside its hole while holding the rest of its flexible body upright to face the current. When tiny animals drift past, the eels turn their heads to suck them into their big, downturned mouths.
Those thousands of eels weaving together against a white sand floor created such a beautiful water ballet that I was moved to tears. Moments later another of the eels’ behaviors had me chuckling into my snorkel. (Warning: Laughing and crying while free-diving may be hazardous to your health.)
Because the brownish garden eels beneath my boat were in only about 20 feet of water, we could easily swim down to visit them. Getting a good look at the adorable eels, though, is nearly impossible because they play a natural game of whack-a-mole.
When people or predators approach them, they duck deep into their holes. They soon peek out with their big round eyes, and moments after the danger passes, up they pop to their full height.
Swimming over that patch of garden eels made me feel like Wile E. Coyote in pursuit of the Road Runner. I knew the eels would never let me catch them standing tall, but I couldn’t stop trying.
Because garden eels are rooted to one spot, and their food must come to them, they live in areas of strong current. They looked like a field of stems, minus their flowers, blowing the wind.
It was too dark to take photos, but videos of these charmers abound. Go to www.youtube.com, type in garden eels and prepare for a holiday treat.
One of the pluses of writing about my marine adventures each week is that the columns serve as journal entries that I would not otherwise make. But, oh, so many fish, so few column inches. A year just doesn’t have enough Mondays.