Thursday, February 16, 2006

West Hawaii Artificial Reef Foundation


I was doing some work on the boat amongst my errands today, and ran into Rick from WHARF. He notified me of a community meeting at the Sheraton that's coming up on the 3rd of next month.

This group has been making an effort to build an artifical reef in Kona by sinking a large vessel. It's fairly common practice in many dive destinations, having passed governmental muster in San Diego, Florida, British Columbia, even Oahu and Maui. Apparently there is some local opposition, as there is to virtually everything. This is definitely a winner for Kona divers, dive operators, fishermen and all tourist related businesses here.

You can click on the headline to this blog article or go here: http://www.wharfpacific.org to find out more information on their efforts. The outreach link has a powerpoint presentation that pretty much outlines everything.

The picture above is not a rock. It's not the best pic, but it's about the only one I've got of this fish. This is a large Titan Scorpionfish (Scorpaenopsis cacopsis), they're related to the "stone fish" you hear about. They have venomous spines, so they aren't one to mess with. They are pretty difficult to spot, since they blend in with the reef so well, hopefully I can get a better picture at some later date.

Steve

2 comments:

xianfu said...

the pictures in your blog are lovely... Great to see someone cares about the coral reef... By the way, there are 2 videos loading while I opened your website.. I just want to say that, they slow down my surfing speed.. other than that.. NICe blog!!! And, the roasted chicken...got any leftover?? lol..

Steve said...

Thanks for the comments. I've yet to figure out how to keep the video from auto-streaming.

Aloha,

Steve