by any chance did you manage to see some melanistic longnose butterflies?
I did not. I don't know my butterflies too well. I saw the species in the photo above as well as raccoons and another species, maybe "Saddleback"? No longnose.
Just for fun, I thought I'd try to remember all the fish I saw. Should have written them down. I'm sure I'm missing plenty. Let's see.
The 3 species of Butterfly.
Tangs:
Yellow
Achilles
Vlamingi
Sailfin
Naso
Kole
Convict
another bristletooth species
Orange Shoulder (beautiful and HUGE!!!)
Triggers:
The black species photographed above with the light blue lines running along the doral and anal fins.
Humu humu
Wrasses:
Hawaiin cleaner pair
the Thalassoma sp. pictured above
some little green species in many sizes
both juvi and adult Coris gaimard
both juvi and adult Green bird wrasse
3 stages of Parrot fishes
Damsels:
Just a couple of Dascylus spp.
The yellow trumpet fish pictured above. It was about 3' long!
A male Whitley's boxfish. I followed it for some time. So beautiful.
Some kind of little toby puffer.
Moorish Idol
A moray eel of some kind.
Some kind of filefish. About 5 inches long.
A 2' octopus which I was go from coral head to coral head. While swimming, it was red. When is would perch by the coral, it would totally camouflage, also changing its skin texture dramatically. I followed it for about 5 minutes and saw this camouflaging about 5 times. So neat!
Urchins:
Pencil
Long spine
another small species
Mostly just Pocillopora spp. coral.
And green sea turtles.
No gobies, anthias, chromis. There wasn't much cover in the terrain. Mostly just bigger fish and the damsels that would dash into the Poci.
I only took the point and shoot out for one swim. Next time, I'll do more as it's very fun to see the photos now.
Cheers.