My last grasp at youth....

I should've taken my camera to the hair salon for today's photo...

So a couple months back I was feeling kind of crummy, I'd put on nearly 30 pounds in the last year and a half and was sitting at 240 lbs, torn the hamstring, was having the blood pressure creep up and was having heel problems and feeling old in general. About early March I realized it's going to be a long summer if I don't do something about it, so it's on with the shoes full time, more excercise, dietary restraint and seeing the doc for a change in BP meds. I figured I need to be down to around 220 by mid-June when biz picks up... well I've already done that, down to 216 this morning and I figure I might as well get down to 210 or under in the next month... Kinda stoked, don't notice the hamstring anymore, the heels are much better, the BP is in the range where it should be and I'm thinking maybe I can get down to around 185/190 (which I haven't been since I was 27 or 28) by the time I'm 50 this fall, then I can shave off my largely white beard, put on the contacts and maybe pass for 35/40 again...

...then I went and had a haircut today....

AAAAAaaaaaaggggghhhh (and I don't mean in an excited Howard Dean kinda way) Where'd all that gray come from? I'm looking at the clippings on the smock and practically half the hairs are white, substantially more white hairs in the clippings this time than in previous cuts. Guess I'll have to let my hair grow out long for my 50th, when it gets long the remaining brown bleaches out from the sun and you can't see the gray (at least at this point). It still blends in OK now but it definitely shows when it's short.

My wife is quite tickled that I'm getting gray.

Oh well, it is what it is, can't change the hair but I can still keep working on the other stuff and get myself in a more youthful condition.

Here's a shot of a male Whitley's Boxfish (Ostracion whitleyi) that Pat (the wife that is so tickled that I'm going gray) took a week or two back. They're rarely seen here. I've got some pictures posted earlier but they aren't as nice as this one.

Aloha,

Steve

Tonight was possibly the best manta ray night dive ever

Hawaii fish video from Steve on Vimeo.
Here's a few minutes snippet I took with my Canon G9. I hadn't been diving it much the last year, but back when I dove it a lot I'd been down on nights when 15-17 mantas showed up quite a number of times. Tonight there were many more, I figured 25 would be extremely conservative, and 30-32 more likely. I talked to the videographer afterwards and she said she saw 26 she knew (the video people typically take a slate down and list the ones they recognise, they all have different spot patterns) and said there were several others she didn't know... figured there were 30 minimum. We'll see how many there were in a day or so when all the videographers compare notes. Last night they had 28, which tied the previous record showing, but there seems to be a secret manta network... these fish must somehow communicate to each other when and where the feeding's good and there was a very good amount of plankton in the water tonight.

Happy, happy, happy,

Steve

Wetsuits and atom bombs have much more in common than most people realize...

Hugh Bradner, physicist and scuba pioneer passed away earlier this month. He was the inventor of the neoprene wetsuit, as well as one of the founding scientists of Los Alamos and worked on the Manhattan Project. His obituary is a facinating read. He had a big impact on the scuba world.

The pic above is of a smallish whitemouth moray and was taken with the new Inon UCL-165 closeup lens I picked up.

Aloha,

Steve

Time's running down for this year's Kona Classic Underwater photo competion and seminars...

This year's Classic is starting at the end of this week. There's still spots avaialble. The official sponsors are Jack's Diving Locker, Kona Honu Divers and Bottomtime Hawaii. You can book through them, I also have space on my boat and I will be personally participating as it's supposed to (my first year, but I hear good things) be a good time. If you happen to be diving here that week you might want to join in on the fun. Packages are avaialable for the week (I'm honoring the diving package if anyone's interested). Seminar and events only packages or individual seminars available for a reasonable price for those who don't intend to "compete". If you are coming to Kona for diving and interested in the photography end of diving you should check it out.

Here's a juvenile Yellow Tail Coris Wrasse. This pic is a bit blurry, between movement and image quality) but it'll give you an idea of the great color these guys have.

Aloha,

Steve

Hawaiian Dragon Moray (Enchelycore pardalis)

We've been seeing more of these guys around lately. The other evening we found two of them, this one and a smaller one I'll post a pic of later.

Dragon morays are probably our most colorful moray (although there apparently is a rare tidepool moray that is bright red that I've heard about) that we see on occasion. They're generally pretty shy and you tend to see the tails first if you see them at all.

Pawai Bay, Kona Hawaii....

Pawai Bay from Steve on Vimeo.
This video is actually a hair outdated as I took it a couple of months ago when the whales were still here... and the water's generally flatter now. Pawai Bay is one of our many great dive sites. There are 6 moorings in the area, with two more at a site just to the south. It was one of the first marine preserves over here, and being protected there are a lot of fish in the area. Features of the sites are nice rocky walls, some caves and archways, nice reef, and a great dropoff into deep water where seeing something big can happen on occasion.

Currently the diving conditions are GREAT!!! I've had double charters the last several days so I stayed out of the water on my day off today... but it was hard to do as the water is sooooo nice right now. The water temperature is still sitting at 75-77, but it's flat as all get-out during the mornings with a bit of a chop in the evenings the last few nights but just fine underwater.

We've had some really nice dives the last few days... saw 2 dragon morays on a single dive a couple days back, Cathy and her group saw THREE frogfish on a single dive yesterday, and we had 3 eagle rays the other day. Fun, fun, fun.

Later,

Steve

I picked up a new Inon UCL -165 closeup lens for my camera...

This is one of the early shots with the new closeup lens. I did crop some of the image, but not a whole lot. Inon, as well as other manufacturers, makes "wet" attachment lenses that you can add to the exterior of your underwater housing to acheive closeup or wide angle shots the camera can't normally do. The Canon G9 housing needs a special adapter (the one I found was manufactured by a french company, but only available through Japanese mailorder companies) to accept the lens, and with the adapter the wide angle lens apparently does little, but the closeup lens can do great things.

The lens allows you to get closer to the subject while in maximum zoom, so in my case instead of being 19 or more inches away from the subject in full zoom, I can shoot from roughly 6 inches instead while still fully zoomed in. Many animals can tolerate you being 6 inches away, but to do that normally you wouldn't be able to zoom in and still focus.

I'll do a more thorough review later, including where to find the adapters for the G9 housing and similar housings.

Crown of Thorns Starfish...

This is a Crown of Thorns star. These guys are NOT a favorite critter of ours as they eat coral, and the spines are venemnous to boot. You can see this particular star has just finished off eating the cauliflower coral behind it and is moving on to it's next meal. Corals are a colonial critter, growing on top of the skeleton of previous polyps. The COT starfish will eat the live outer layer, and the coral may or may not ever recover.

As far as the poison content of the spines of this star... it is not to be messed with. I've run into a lot of people who have tried touching it "just to see" if it's sharp or hurts.... It is sharp, will poke through gloves and skin easily, and will mess the contact site up for months, I know people who have visible damage years later - it's not a simple bee sting, it's nasty.

We're in the midst of a busy spell (what a difference a year makes, last year we were taking the boat out of service for the rebuild and had 4 or 5 charters in May, this year I already have 21 charters lined up for the month) so I won't be posting much 'til mid-week as I have charters day and night 'til then. Pat joined the charter today, as we only took out 2 passengers, and took lots of photos (they saw 2 frogfish, devil and titan scorpions, male and female whitley's boxfish, flatworms, an eagle ray and lots of other neat stuff) while I stayed on dry land to get fingerprinted by the Coast Guard for my Captain's license renewal. Bob and Cathy are both Captains and dive instructors so they ran the boat today - they were probably thrilled to have "the boss"/me off the boat.

Later,

Steve

Frogfish everywhere....

Perhaps it's just me, but it seems as though we're seeing a lot more frogfish these days... yahoo. There was a period a couple years back where it seemed as though I hadn't seen a frogfish in 2-3 years. So far this year we've been seeing them a lot (by lot, I mean several times a month). You never know why some fish seem to disappear for a while, I'm hoping seeing frogfish regularly is a trend that continues.

I found this little guy at a divesite right outside the harbor. It was on a non-descript coral head, so there's little chance I'd find it again if I tried, at least not in the same spot. This one was probabaly about an inch and a half long, smaller than a golfball anyway. They can get huge and tend to pick up colors to blend into the scenery as they grow.

One thing I didn't notice as I took the photo that I noticed after I looked at it later.... you can see it's little "fishing rod"!!!! Take a look at the center of it's forhead, above the mouth and between the eyes, and you'll see a little bump with what looks like a hair with a feather on the end coming out of it. Frogfish are a member of the angler family and have a lure they use to attract victims to in front of them. They'll hang out motionless, wiggle their lure, and when a small fish approaches to investigate they'll inhale it in a single gulp... sorta like me and Burger King Whoppers.

Later,

Steve