 | Old Favorites - To start, I harassed the puffer and trunk fish extensively to get nice pictures of them. Ok, I didn't really harass them, but they fled under rocks repeatedly. I never got the puffers to puff though. The top left picture is a spotted pufferfish and the lower left picture is a spotted trunkfish. I really like these guys. They almost seem grumpy. |
 | There were plenty of sargent majors and parrot fish. I didn't see many eels, just 2 within the first 2 minutes and 5 feet from shore the first day. |
 | Hawaii Specials - To the left you can see a bit of a larger school of yellow tangs. They were pretty much at every beach. They're kind of a sign of Hawaii I think. These were new for me. There's also a gray parrot fish flying by. They're so skittish. |
 | Next, I got a shot of a cleaner wrase cleaning an orange-spine unicorn fish. Two-for-one deal. The colors are really vibrant. These two fish were new to me. |
 | This yellow fish to the left is a racoon butterfly fish. There was a small school of them at one beach that were so tame that they basically swam into the camera. I have some cool videos of this. Again, this was a new fish for me. |
 | Hawaii Natives - Ok, now for two of my absolute favorite new fish, fish I've never seen before. First and foremost is the humuhumunukunuku apu a'a or Picaso trigger fish. If you've seen my Google away message or picture recently, this is the guy. The long name is the Hawaiian name for it. I have another picute of one that's almost all golden yellow. The colors seem to vary widely from fish to fish. I'm not sure if they're all the same species though. The blue stripes on this one were extremely beautiful when they caught the sunlight. |
 | Now, this one needs no introduction. There were sea turtles regularly. Yih-Chun took this shot. I only got some of one that was in about 1 foot of water. The Hawaiian for sea turtle is honu. |
Snorkeling is such a fun activity and it's really cheap once you get the gear, which all in all isn't so expensive considering the hours of enjoyment you can get out of it. The Big Island is a great place to snorkel I think. It's pretty accessible too. We had a guide book to point out good snorkels for us. It also helped us avoid some of the more dangerous beaches where the current was strong.
I think there were more people at the beaches than in Curacao, but if you get away from the places where people get in, then it isn't quite as crowded. I believe all of these pictures were taken at two beaches, both of which we snorkeled twice. One was right near downtown Kailua-Kona and the other was farther south and was called two-step or A-bay (I think).
