Rarotonga Cook Islands 1st Immersion

[@mariashaffer-gordon3561]

Another superb, incredible video of beautiful fish and invertebrates! These are the fish I saw, more or less in order of appearance: peacock grouper reticulated butterflyfish Achilles tang sailfin tang Moorish idol zebra moray lagoon triggerfish with sunset, surge, and bluestreak cleaner wrasses emperor angelfish black butterflyfish snowflake moray nebulous wrasses? lagoon triggerfish, threadfin butterflyfish, & wrasses (sunset?, bird, & sixbar) threespot wrasse Pacific surge damsel? longnose butterflyfish goatfish getting its gills cleaned by bluestreak cleaner wrasses ornate & teardrop butterflyfish and sunset wrasse suinset wrasse yellow boxfish pair of very aggressive damselfish whitemouth moray eel Solander's tobies? somthing slender & very spiny - a sea cucumber? lagoon triggerfish & sunset wrasses fringelip mullets?

[@nezmoproductions]

Rarotonga in the Cook Islands is another place that is special to us. The snorkeling is completely different from Fiji, but it is very easy. There aren't the massive reefs , but spotty patches of coral bommies with a lot of sand everywhere else. There is a barrier reef surrounding the whole island, so basically you are snorkeling inside the lagoon. Certain species are abundant here, especially the sunset and 3 spot wrasses so you see plenty of them in a lot of my shots from there. There are a lot of beautiful clams of every color. One of the most abundant items there is definitely various species of sea cucumbers.The sand is littered with them. There are a lot of eels there also. The best thing about Raro though is that the island is like going back in time. The huge commercial things you see in resort places are not here, it is a very relaxing trip. We rent a beach front house and self-cater most of the time, again, the reef is only steps away. Your list is once again very impressive! The fish that threw me when I first saw it was the black butterfly. I never saw one before and it's resemblance in part to a raccoon butterfly made me think it was some kind of mutation, then I saw more pairs swimming around and was delighted to find it was a new-to-me species. There's always at least one of those on each trip, but this one was profound for me at the time.

[@mariashaffer-gordon3561]

Unlike your Fiji videos, where almost everything you saw was new to me, I recognized many of the species as fish I'd seen in the Hawaiian islands. I was impressed by how many lagoon triggerfish you saw. In Hawaii, they aren't as common as many of the other kinds of triggerfish. Of course there were some spectacular fish in your video that I'd never seen in real life, such as the emperor angelfish, yellow boxfish, and what I thought were nebulous wrasses and Solander's tobies. I loved the giant clams, too. The coloration on that black butterflyfish is quite unusual. I love those, "What the heck is that?!" sightings that send me leafing through the fish ID book and websites. Seeing a new or rarely seen before species is always a thrill. That's one of the things I enjoy about snorkeling - there's almost always something new every time you get in the water, even when it's an island or a specific site that you've been to before. I consider those to be my "catch of the day" . Sometimes you get lucky and there's more than one in a day.

[@mariashaffer-gordon3561]

Another thing I've found about snorkeling is that once you've seen a new species, sometimes you start seeing it other places. This happened to me with red-spotted hawkfish in the Caribbean and arc-eye hawkfish in Hawaii. I wondered how many times I'd missed them in the past.

[@daver23456]

Beautiful. i wonder what kind of butterflyfish are at the five minute mark and damsel at the seven minute mark?

[@nezmoproductions]

That's what I thought when they swam by while I was shooting. I thought I'd seen about every type of butterfly fish there was, but this pair had me scratching my head. I had to look them up, and they are called the Black-Sided Butterfly, or just the Black Butterfly. I have only seen them in Rarotonga. The adults were always in pairs, and had a hump-head like some Bannerfish. I'll be showing more of them in the next Cook Island Immersion video, as well as the juvenile of the species. The damsel is especially interesting because of the blue neon stripe that wraps around the front of his head. I'm not sure about that one, but I believe it might be a surge damsel. I've seen them in Bali, and Fiji as well as in the Cook Islands.

[@daver23456]

great videos. i found you on reef2reef. Keep up the great work!

[@nezmoproductions]

Thanks for subscribing, plenty more to come!

[@mariashaffer-gordon3561]

I'm not a marine biologist, but I agree with the Nesmiths about the identification of both of those fish.