North Shore swim

It is hard to write when a fly is buzzing around, but I'll give it a shot. We got up too early yesterday and drove up to the North shore. So beautiful! A very different place to swim. Deep enough to need scuba. So we didn't venture very deep.  But there were so many operculum! WOW! I picked up 220 of the things.

This is the pile of operculum, bits of shells and sand. I truly could have spent all day picking up operculum and probably left lots behind on the beach.
Not sure why there were so many. And I do need to determine if finding one means a dead turban shell. That would def take the joy out of it.
I looked for octopuses and didn't find any.  There was a place where rocks looked as if they had been placed, underwater, in a particular way that made me think an octopus could have been there, but I can't count coulda, woulda, shoulda!
It did rain on us a bit, on the walk back to the car. But just a light drizzle: I held my camera up to it, so it could be washed off a little until we got to the showers.
I wish I had taken a photo of the cars parked when we were finished: there's a place where you can park for Tunnels beach that is a narrow street. Cars park along the wall.  We were there early enough that we would have been first in line to get out (hard to turn around!), but we opted to go to the Haena State Beach Park instead where there was real parking and showers.
I did see some of my "regular" fish: the hawk fish and damsel:

The Hawk was usual...the damsel or chromis, not sure which, was an unusual one...yellow with blue along its back. Pretty. Some of the coral was in better shape than on the south shore. An unusual find, at least for me on the South shore, was the Picasso Trigger:

You can see the water vis wasn't great. But I was glad to see this pretty fish. I do think they are prettier than the regular humu.  They are all cool, though. My hubby said the King Tide is the cause of the visibility: it moves the sand around more than a usual incoming and outgoing tide.


We also saw some 3 spot damsel fish. In this case, a lot more of them than I'm used to:

They are protecting the coral head.  I have never charged at them, so I'm not sure what they would do to protect it. Or perhaps they are just hiding in the coral.
I should show you some of the lovely scenery in that area:

I do love rain out at sea. Maybe because it's not raining on me? 

Oh so pretty! Loving that light on the cliffs. NTBG's garden, Limahuli, is up here. I have yet to visit it! 









I also spotted two of what I think are razor fish:

They are cute fish that have a razor on top of their heads.  Usually solitary, these two were about 2 feet from each other...perhaps from the same batch of eggs?
Here's the photo that I caught where I said: "That's the reason we came here!"

Yes, a little crab hiding inside the shell. Note the eyes (at the bottom..he was upside down) and the two feisty legs in the middle, bracketed by the 2 other sets of two legs at the edges of the hole. Electric Blue Crab. So I had to put the shell back down. Drat.





There were clouds, of course:

Very beautiful when reflected on the water. Which was pretty flat, by the way. My fave kind.  That's why we ventured up north...even with an  hour and a half drive, it was worth it. Although we did decide we wouldn't do it very often. We were able to evade the traffic in Kapaa, which made each of us very happy.

To quote an old hymn: Praise God from whom all blessings flow! The moon was just a small sliver. These cloud pix were taken near our house. 
As were the flower pictures:

You may remember these pink beauties from an earlier post. I never get tired of their colors and shapes and patterns. Ah.




A friend had told me about Kilt Lifter beer, when we were discussing the wedding where hubby wore a Kilt. So we stopped for some. Not my fave, but sweetheart liked it:

The name is just so cute! And of course, I do love kilts. My sweetie looked quite manly and amazing in his. 
From the glorious to the awful:

That hook I found on the sandy bottom was abhorrent! And the lead was big, too. Not sure what the fisherman thought he/she was going to catch with that big thing. Upon Alex's idea, I placed the hook in a wine cork to throw it away. The fishing line was thick too.  They must have been hoping for a huge fish to catch!

And as seems to be a regular thing, there were mysteries.  These were attached to the sand.  They seemed to be empty, so I'm not sure what they were, but I saw quite a few poked into the sandy bottom:

Really, no idea what there were. Perhaps it would be boring without at least one mystery.

So we were happy with our visit to the North shore, but we also decided we wouldn't do it very often. When we lived in Texas, driving for 3 hours was nothing. Now, we're spoiled...