Day 2: Update

After our visit to the Waikiki Aquarium we came back to the hotel and got our gear to head out snorkeling.  Our first spot was at a pier on the south-east side of the island, Makai Pier.  We snorkeled around for at least an hour.  This was my first time in tropical Pacific waters and it was pretty awesome!  I didn't even wear a wetsuit :) And even though I was still freezing by the end it was worth it to say I didn't have to wear a 9/8 wetsuit.  We saw all sorts of fish out there, the fish I see in Splash Zone but had never seen in the wild:

• Moorish Idols
• Moray eels
• Yellow tangs
• Convict tangs
• Picasso triggers
• Hawaiian Dacyllus
• Several spp of butterflies, wrasses
• Trumpetfish
• Goatfish
• Spiny lobster
• Urchins
• HUGE sea cucumbers
• Many more that I'm not familiar with

As you may notice there are no cephalopods listed here.  We didn't find any octos even though we probably swam over 100 of them in the incredible corals below us, we just couldn't find them.  So we decided to move on.

We drove northeast to Kaneohe Bay's Chinaman's Hat to see if the conditions were a bit better. The previous spot was a bit cloudy, maybe 15-20ft visibility, but not outwards, downwards. When we pulled up to this spot we immediately noticed the milky coloration of the water and had to make the decision to move on.  We went just a few miles north and found a spot at Swanzy Beach Park to jump in.

After about 20-25 minutes, as my snorkel buddy and I were swimming parallel to the beach searching through large porites coral heads, I saw a large sea turtle swim off in the distance.  As I was turning to let my buddy know about the turtle I heard the other dive team yelling our way to come over.  They had found an octo!  We cruised on over to find this day octopus hunkered down in a very small hole in the rockwork below us.  The hole was maybe 6" wide and 3" open at 6-8' deep; so it wasn't going to be easy.  Oh and the current was rippin'!

Our tools included mesh bags for collection, a dive knife, a very long "tickle stick/spear" and muscle.  The first move was to try and break away so of the rockwork to have a better shot at extracting it from its current house.  This entire process would have been 1000x easier had we been on SCUBA but after a while snorkeling became quite exhausting.  We were able to work away some of the rocks, started trying to "tickle" them out with the gigantic metal spear...ok we were using the blunt end but it's WAY more dramatic the other way.

After 10 minutes we had a mesh bag stuffed in the hole, were using the knife as our new tickler, and were all exhausted.  But we kept going.  We were giving the octo a good 30 seconds or so of rest to see if it would start to come out.  Every now and then we'd swim down and reach our hand in to see if it'd start to grab on.  At one point it grabbed my hand and started pulling!!! 15 minutes had gone by and we were on the verge of having to call it.  At that time, with all 3 of us watching from the surface it started to crawl out.  I immediately dove down as fast as I could and grabbed onto it before it could bolt.  It latched on to my arm/hand and then started inking like crazy!  All I could see was black ink and a very pissed off, red/brown octopus.  I fought to keep it in my hands, catching it mid-water as it tried to swim off, and eventually was able to get it into our small mesh bag.  We did it.  We found an octopus on our first dive day and now all we had to do was bring it back to the Waikiki Aquarium.

90 minutes later the octopus got put into the holding tank, healthy, probably not happy but alive and well.  There was a TON of traffic and we were on the opposite side of the island so it took way longer than expected.  But we have one on board and we are all stoked about it.  The animal is maybe a pound or so which is perfect for transport and exhibit.  Tomorrow we are going to take a stab at diving and with any luck we'll find octo #2!

Wish us luck :)

Chinaman's Hat

Swanzy Beach Park