We were having a pretty regular day of scuba diving at Koloa Landing the other day. In other words, it was spectacular!!! Looking at the picture below you might think we were in a less interesting area of the reef. You’d be wrong. The rubble flats are home to some of the wildest creatures you will ever see.
That picture was taken just seconds after finding a huge Commersons Frog Fish. Easily the largest I’ve seen. Commersons Frog Fish are ambush predators. They sit patiently for long periods of time just waiting for some unsuspecting little fish to come swimming by. Then, in just hundredths of a second, they open their giant mouth so fast that the victim gets sucked into the frog fish’s mouth and swallowed whole. It happens so fast it’s like watching a magic trick: Now you see it, now you don’t. It’s as if the fish simply blinks out of existence.
Within minutes of finding the frog fish we had also found 2 Leaf Scorpionfish, a Devil Scorpionfish and 7 species of eel including a Dragon Moray. So yeah, a regular day of scuba diving on Kauai’s coral reef.