Do you know that honu, our Hawaiian green sea turtle goes on a regular basis to a “turtle cleaning station” just like we may go to a car wash! These turtle cleaning stations are just magical to watch as often there will be two to eight large sea turtles just laying motionless in the water column with their flippers out stretched. This odd looking sea turtle behavior signals the local reef fish that they want to be cleaned. Just like us pulling up to the car wash!
Green sea turtles here in Hawaii tend to have a lot of algae that grows on their shell and also on the underside of their flippers and neck. They also can have small parasites attached to the skin in between their scales so they developed a mutually beneficial relationship with certain species of reef fish that will feed on the algae and parasites attached to the turtle.
When the sea turtle approaches the cleaning station they slow down and extend out their flippers. This lets the fish know they are ready to be cleaned. The honu seem to enjoy the cleaning so much that they often shut their eyes and fall asleep for up to 30 minutes to get a good cleaning!
Many of these cleaning stations have been around for hundreds of years or longer at the exact same place on the reef. Usually they are near giant mound coral heads that the small cleaner fish can hide in if a predator comes by. The turtles will often lay on top of the corals to rest while being cleaned and some of these giant corals have been rubbed smooth by the turtles shells over the years giving them a polished appearance.
At some of the local Kauai cleaning stations I see the same resident honu there every week enjoying a good cleaning but I also see honu visitors to Kauai that stop by for an out of town cleaning. I have seen some of the sea turtles that have tags on them and have documented turtles that were tagged in the NW Hawaiian Islands over 2,000 miles away!
As a biologist I always like to get right out with the sea creatures and live with them for a period of time so I can better understand their world, so I got the bright idea one day with some of my college grad students to see if we could get cleaned at the cleaning station? Seemed like a reasonable thought at the time but it did not work out to well.
Since I can hold my breath for five minutes or so I dove down to the cleaning station, put my arms out and just hung out with the turtles that were being cleaned. Sure enough some of the fish came right over to me and started cleaning my arm pits. Pretty cool but not really! I did not realize the cleaner fish have very sharp teeth and they bit a chunk of hair right out of my armpit probably thinking it was algae! My grad students thought it was just hilarious and I learned the hard way that sea turtles have much thicker skin then us humans have!
You can see the honu in action up on my underwater educational web page at www.underwater2web.com in my movie Ka Honu The Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle and also on one of the Kauai at bit.ly/2R70C9
Aloha from under the waves.
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Terry Lilley, marine biologist, Hanalei, underwater2web.com, gofundme.com/5urrm4zw, all photographs © 2016 Terry Lilly
