Sunday, April 16, 2006

Going out on another Kona manta ray night dive tonight.


I've been having manta ray charters quite a bit the last couple of weeks. We went out on Friday night and had mobs of mantas for the evening. Between the 3 videographers that report, they've identified as many as 27 mantas at the site that evening.

Yesterday we went out and finished the Open Water certification dives for a student. My ears are killing me right now... one of the hazards of the profession is trying to do multiple ups and downs when you are coming off a cold. This stuff I've had for coming up on a month now has my ears a bit sensitive. I made it down a couple of times and then had my other Instructor/Captain finish things up. In a couple of days I should be OK again. I'm doing another night charter on Tuesday, I'll stay up top both tonight and then.

The picture above is the best one I've taken thus far of a cleaner shrimp. These are neat little critters that generally pick a spot to live and then fish will come to visit them and have parasites cleaned off of them. They are often associated with eels and will climb all over them, even in their mouths, to clean. If you find these, you can present your fingers and they will climb up on them and start tweaking at your cuticles... just watch out that there isn't an eel in the same hole - you don't want to be making the Hawaiian "shaka" sign permanently.

later,

Steve

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow!!! cool photos and blog. Imvoting for you. ;)

I've been to Hawaii and Kona is the best! i didnt have the chance to learn scbua or try it at least... bu i would love to go back visit hawaii again ;)

Steve said...

Thanks for the comments. Do come over, hopefully you were at least able to get in the water and do some snorkeling - scuba isn't something everyone thnks of trying.

Aloha,

Steve