Saturday, July 01, 2006

Lots of great weather and great diving....


Been pretty busy the last couple of days, with back to back charters day and night on Thursday and Friday, and a night trip tonight.

The mantas disappeared for about 5 days a couple weeks back, but have been present the last 5-7 days. On Thursday we had a quite pregnant "Bertha", one of our largest and best known mantas, for the entire evening. Last night we had two rays at the site.

The day dives have been quite nice. I've been seeing a bunch of dwarf morays, 5 total on my last 3 daytime dives. I don't know if there are a lot of them right now or if I have just started seeing them. These are a very small moray, roughly the size of a pencil, sometimes a bit larger.

This is a picture of a Redbarred Hawkfish (Cirrhitops fasciatus). They're fairly common but we generally don't pay all that much attention to them. Hawkfish either don't have, or don't use (I'm not certain which), a swim bladder. They spend thier lives perching on coral heads waiting for dinner. If you approach them slow and quietly enough you can get a pretty close shot. This one came out exceptionally clear, I really like the tassels on the spines of the dorsal.

Aloha,

Steve

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