Kauai anew!: Swimming with a friend helps!

Yay, and I will give full credit to God and to my pal, Julie, but I saw an octopus today! Very happy to report that. (And this happened on the day I once again thought to use fewer exclamation marks in my posts.....)

Pencils that I always look for, in between 2 rocks. I'm calling it Pencils with Moustache.

And the amazing porcupine puffer. It paddled away from us as fast as it could go, so I wasn't able to get very close.

Julie is one of the amazing seal ladies who volunteers her time while she's here to mark off and protect our seals.

She surprised me by showing up to swim with me. Of course, it wouldn't have been a surprise had I listened to my voicemails. LOL. In any case, it was nice to swim with someone else. She said she was glad to swim with me, because I go as slowly as she does. We agreed there is just too much to see. If you go fast, you'd miss some of it.

By the time I'd taken the photos above, Julie was getting cold. So she headed in and I continued on, having no lack of subcutaneous fat to keep me warm. Oh and my shorty wetsuit helped too.

And I saw the octopus a while after she left. Darn the luck.

This one shows the eye and siphon and a bit of the body. It was very well hidden in an area I peek at often; I thought: "That looks like a construct of rocks!" And indeed it was.

Octopuses can move rocks and things around and this one had built (I can only assume) a little protective grouping of rocks. You can see my initial view in the photo above. The eye is in the middle. Very clever, I thought. I was very happy to see my first octopus in a few days and more so, I may be able to spot it again if this is truly its den, because I know where these rocks are located. Here's hoping!

These 2 pencils of a pencil urchin that hides in a hole out near the wave break came home with me. By the time I got home, after visiting a friend, they had lost most of their color. This occurred within 2 and a half hours.

There they are as I initially saw them. The hole where the rest of the urchin stayed is up and to the right. Since it's dark in there, I didn't catch a photo.

Ambon Puffer. I think it's interesting that the top side of their body doesn't have spots. The rest of the body does.

Barred Filefish not showing its bars in this photo. It is showing the sock monkey eyes, though.

While looking up photos of a porcupine puffer, I found a photo of a lemon shark that had caught a puffer fish and tried to swallow it. Bad news for both: they were both found dead on the beach in the Maldives! The shark had apparently been suffocated by the puffer as it puffed up to protect itself. The puffer died too, as it couldn't escape the sharks jaws.

Black lined Wrasse. Like the Christmas Wrasse, these are very fast and it's hard to get a great shot.

Cone shell, Hairy Triton and electric blue hermit crab.

I'm calling this a Cucumber wall, as there are 3 stuck to the sides.

And a little drupe shell. Hiding in a rock with a boring urchin.

I have often thought of this rock and its hole as a good place for octopus to hide. It is hard to see inside, so I was never sure exactly what was in there. But today, I discovered Mr. Whitemouth Moray eel was hanging out in there. Octopuses, please stay away.

And above, a Black Side hawk fish.

Today's leaf fish. They do waggle with the waves, so it's a constant battle to stay where they want to be. Note the side "leg" fins resting on the bottom.

And for my sweetie, a Lizard fish. This one might have been 2 inches long. If you try to measure them, they resist the procedure and dart away.

Also for my sweetie, the Male Box or Trunk Fish.

And Moorish Idol. I think they are the most pretty and graceful fish in the water.

Needle Fish near the surface.

This Picasso Trigger was chasing fish away, so I'm thinking it had eggs somewhere. Or it just woke up cranky. It is so hard to get them to tell you their motivation.