Thursday, February 05, 2009

Lots of whales off Kona right now....

Here's a great shot of a real attractive nudibranch that Pat took some time back. It's of a Trembling Nudibranch (Chromodoris vibrata). We don't see these critters nearly often enough, I think I have one picture from several years ago posted a couple years back on the blog somewhere.

We had a bit of a slow spell at the end of January but we're back out on the water for at least 5-6 days straight right now. It gets sporadic during the slow season, March is looking to be hopping though as I've already got nearly 20 days partially booked already.

Tuesday we went out with just a single diver. It's not something we're crazy about, but when someone books well in advance I can usually get other people on and I'm not going to cancel on them at the last minute just because I'm out of luck on a day. That single diver turns into the 2nd, 3rd or 4th diver on the boat more often than not, so it's very worth keeping them even if we have to risk going out solo every now and then. When we do have just a single diver, it does give us an opportunity to cater to them though. We did a nice one way drift dive off the airport and then went to Bob's favorite dive site (spaceship/pyramid pinnacle/pinetrees pinnacle/harlequin or whatever it's called) for the second. They were hearing whales on the dive underwater while I was seeing them topside while I was captaining (aka "sitting on the boat"). I saw about 9 different whales that day.

Yesterday we had more passengers and dove off Pawai Bay for the first dive and then popped into Crescent beach for the second dive.... lots of good stuff for the divers, at one point they had 20 or so dolphins hanging around them during the dive. It's always a thrill to see dolphins under the water.

Tonight it's a manta trip and then back to day charters the next few days. It's good to be back out there for a spell.

Later,

Steve

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