Big numbers of rays are apparently at the Kona manta ray night dive again....

This morning's e-mail said there with something like 18 rays on the dive last night. I haven't been out on the night dive this week, do have a trip or two scheduled for next week though, hope it holds up.

We've had a couple of days off, so it was time to do some important maintenance work. I had the carburetor overhauled and gave the engine a tuneup, as well as the more frequent stuff (oil changes, etc). Everything runs great right now.. then again, it's a boat, I should be good for another good length of time though.

Here's a little video of yellow Longnose Butterflyfish (Forcipiger longirostris), along with a few yellow tangs and such, on the reef. They spend much of thier lives poking their beaks into coral heads looking for tidbits to eat. This particular species is quite common here, but apparently they don't see it much on Oahu - they consider it to be "rare", they more often see Forcipiger flavissimus which is considered to be the common longnose butterfly. In this video you will also see the black phase, which is pretty much only found in Kona. I'm not sure that they've figured out why they turn black at times.

Later,

Steve