photo by Vladimir Kasho

Beautiful
Hawaiian
Marine life
brought to you by
LET'S GO
SHORE DIVE'N'
on the
Kona Coast

Holey-Moley, Long-Nose Butterflyfish (Forcipiger longirostris)  This is a very special Kona fish. The Lau-wili-wili-nuku-nuku-oi'oi (as we call it in Hawaiian) is one beautiful fish and we love finding it, usually in pairs for they, too, mate for life. This particular one we found in 1986 and it was an adult then. We visited it regularly as it was territorial to the max and always found in the same general area. Holey-Moley, as we called it because of the hole through its body, watched for us and when we entered the water would rush to say "Hello" as it peered directly into our mask, inches away. It had no fear of us and would stick around to see what we were up to. It's mate would join us and look for a 'hand-out'. We would feed the pair from our hand with bits and pieces of sea urchin we'd scooped from the sea bottom. We fed this pair for years, when, to our dismay, Holey-Moley disappeared - probably scooped by a tropical fish collector. The mate hung around for a few weeks, then he was not seen again. This marine-life phenomenon was reported on our Statewide TV network - and I wrote several articles describing our encounters. A local aquarium supplier was asked how long Lua-wili-wili's survive in aquariums. He replied, "Oh, sometimes as long as two years!" Well, we enjoyed Holey-Moley until late 1992 - six years after discovering it in the wild.