A Kona Hawaii Scuba Diver blabbers on

Shore diving Kona Hawaii...Some of the best shore diving in the State...

2012-01-23T14:16:00.005-10:00

Kona has a number of very decent shore dives. Unlike the other islands in the chain, we're mostly a rocky shoreline and there are no rivers or streams on our side of the island. That makes for very good water clarity on most days.

This was an OK day, nothing special. My guess is I took this video maybe 70 feet from shore. The Place of Refuge is neat in that you can step off the entry rock and be in 6 feet of reef from the get-go. Yellow tangs are often literally eating at your fin tips as you step in. There's a good expanse of 9-30 foot deep reef out front and then it drops to deeper than recreational diving depths in just a short swim.

As much as I like running dive charters, there's good diving to be had for those who are in to shorediving.

Aloha,

Steve

the Big Island of Hawaii and live coral reef... lots of it here...

2012-01-21T10:14:00.007-10:00

I was cruising the web and ran across this page I've linked before on NOAA's study of Hawaiian coral reefs. It reminded me of a story from this last fall.

We went to DEMA, the big dive industry show, in Orlando in November and my wife and I went to Miller's Alehouse, a bar/restaurant near where we were staying that impressed us favorably. While sitting at the counter waiting on food, Pat noticed a couple across the way and said "they're divers". I'm wondering how she figured that and she mentioned she could see the necklace the gal was wearing was one we sell out of the office, and the guy had a dive computer on his wrist... maybe Pat should be a cop, I apparently don't notice these things. We started up a conversation with them and by and by Pat says to the guy that he's familiar, we must have met before. I'm doubting it because they're from the east coast, then suddenly she says she thinks we talked to him on the monorail in Vegas on the way back from DEMA the year before. He said "that's quite possible".

Towards the end of the meal he mentioned he had 30 some odd dives in Hawaii, then said too bad Hawaii doesn't have any coral. Well, that's a hot button topic with me because it's simply not true. We've got no soft corals or sponges, but we've got loads of hard corals in Kona. He didn't believe me, but he'd never been to Kona yet, his diving was mostly Maui and some Oahu. Now I've been to both, and Maui has some decent corals in spots, but not like in Kona from my experience as well. Anyway, I disagreed with him and later realized he was definitely the guy from the monorail the year earlier because the exact same topic came up. I've now had two big Vegas monorail coincidences over the years (first one was spoken of on one of my very first posts in this blog, check the history if you're into a lot of reading) and I find it amazing that it can be such a small world at times.

So... if you think Hawaii doesn't have coral, or you think you've seen it all on trips to the other islands, you might want to come to Kona for a visit and check out what healthy Hawaiian hard coral reefs can look like. We've got several types of dive sites here, and most of the dive operators try to vary the dives, so over the course of a couple of days you should run across some of our nicer spots for coral structure. Hurricane Iniki did pull a number on much of the coastline a couple decades back, but there's still plenty of old growth coral to be had. Reef areas that were really trashed from the hurricane nearly 20 years back are starting to come back quite nicely - I wish I'd taken photos of the north side of Honaunau bay when I moved here, it looked like a boulder avalanche, now it's tough to see the boulders and there's an 8-10 inch coating of finger corals over the whole thing, and plate corals are starting to take up residence on that side of the bay as well... that was the one weak part of that bay as a dive spot, now everything's pretty much a tremendous dive.

Later,

Steve

We've had lots of mantas over the holidays and to start 2012

2012-01-17T07:48:00.003-10:00

I took this brief video on the 23rd of December. I think there were 14 mantas that evening. It's been running anywhere from 5 to up to 25 mantas a night pretty much since then. Hoppefully it'll keep up.

Yesterday we had a blast. I had a friend that wanted to take friends out for a whale/dolphin watch. We headed up north and ran into mantas on the surface at Garden Eel Cove, then a huge school of dolphins off Makalewena. After watching the dolphins we decided to head out to sea and look for whales, about a half mile out we ran into 6-7 false killer whales (possibly pigmy killers, I can't really tell them apart at this point) and continued out to sea because we could see some splashing in the distance. turned out there was the largest school of pacific bottlenose dolphins I've ever seen out there. Usually we see 2-6 in small groups, this was dozens spread out over a good sized area. There were humpbacks whales in the mix as well. After watching that for a while we headed in to Garden Eel Cove to watch dolphins again.

We've had some gorgeous skies lately. If you check out my facebook page I've got a shot or two of the skies I took with my cell phone, it's been gorgeous.

Later,

Steve

Do you suck air? How to improve your air consumption while scuba diving....

2012-01-13T08:40:00.007-10:00

Aloha,

I thought I'd start the new year with a helpful hint. We often get people on the boat who are divers that get only 35-40 minutes a dive and always have. When that happens, we try to give them some hints on how to dive to get longer dives. A few months back we had a customer on the boat that commented "you're the first dive company we've been with that actually helped us stay down longer" or something to that effect. Apparently when the question of breathing came up, most dive crews they have had just said something along the lines of "dive more and it'll get better" and not given actual hints at how to change it right away.

So here we go... there's no guaranteeing this will improve your bottom time, but we've found that most divers can have a great deal of improvement over just a couple days time by working on these. I've had divers go from a history of 35 minute dives, to staying down 50-60 minutes or more just within a couple days of trying these "tricks".

- Slow down. Slow down your breathing (more on that later) and slow down your diving. People who zip around tend to burn up their air faster, tend to see less stuff, and actually tend to cover less ground because they're using up their air at a much faster rate than they would if they went at a relaxed pace.

- Don't swim with your arms. One, every time you swing your arms forward, it practically acts like a bellows to your lungs, making you take a breath. Two, for as much pull as you get using your arms to swim, you are creating almost as much resistance, so the net gain is negligible. Arm swimming is pretty much a new diver's problem, but I know I was guilty of it for quite a while in my early diving days. I finally got to where I wanted to stop it and I actually clasped my hands behind my back while diving to stop it. I'd already improved my bottom time at the time quite a bit, but when I started doing that, I just about immediately added 5-10 minutes to my bottom time. Every now and then a diver's likely to have to use their arms to make a turn, back up and such, and that's OK (although those that dive a lot can often find a way to kick that stops that need), but constant arm swimming really burns the air.

- Slow down your breathing!!! That one's the big one. As a boat captain, I watch a lot of bubbles. I can pretty much tell who's coming up first as soon as my divers are three feet underwater. There are divers who's bubbles are literally hitting the surface every second or two, then there are divers who's bubbles are hitting the surface every 7-8 seconds or longer. Guess which one's are going to be down for a long time.

From the get-go, you are told "deep and slow" when it comes to breathing on scuba. It really does work. Implementing it is another thing altogether. Diving is very exciting, and very foreign, at first. Breathing underwater isn't all that natural, and the tendency is to breath quite rapidly for a lot of people. Even once they get over the initial discomfort there's a tendency to breath somewhat shallow and rapidly for lots of divers.

There's a couple of tricks for breathing slow. Some instructors will say, pretend there a long straw down to the bottom of the tank and you want to slowly sip it as you inhale. That works for some people. I've heard others say that you should inhale for 7 seconds, then exhale for 7 seconds. That works for a lot of divers, but it's kind of tough for many to go from 1-2 seconds each direction immediately to 7 seconds each direction. An instructor once told me to count the duration of my inhale, then count the duration of my exhale (set a counting rhythm and then do it a few times while breathing in and out), then try to extend it by a second each direction for a few counts. He told me to not spend the entire dive counting, but just to check my breathing rhythm and then try to extend it by a second or so maybe every ten to fifteen minutes during the dive. Over the course of a couple dives I found myself lasting a lot longer.... this method worked the best for me.

Nowadays I pretty much ignore my breathing rate, but every now and then I'll have a customer who's a very good breather (it's embarrassing to be out breathed, but it does happen on occasion) and I'll have to slow down my breathing. I find that if I set a slow rate at the start of the dive as soon as I hit the bottom, I'll maintain that slow rate throughout the dive and last longer than if I wasn't paying attention to it at all.

Over the years I've seen divers go from "hoovers" to being able to last 75/85/90 minutes or more just on improvements in technique. Once they are there, they need to look for dive companies that actully allow those kinds of bottom times (we do unless deco status or other circumstances affecting dive length exist, hint hint) on their charters, but at least they can maximize their tanks even if the dive companies they are with have earlier cut off times.

Diving is one of those "sports" where even relatively out of shape divers can breath with the athletic ones once they find their rhythm. Good luck and happy diving!

Steve

Moorish Idol video from Kona today....

2011-11-29T18:24:00.003-10:00

OK, the earthquake was a 3.8 down near South Point...

2011-11-23T19:45:00.003-10:00

Not as strong or close as the 4 pointer up the mountain from us on Sunday. Pat felt it, I was on the boat at the time.

Small earthquakes are common here. I haven't felt one in ages though. Here's a link: Hawaii earthquakes

Later,

Steve

Ah, felt that earthquake a minute ago...

2011-11-23T18:16:00.004-10:00

Thought I was losing my touch, there'd been reports of relatively local quakes the last week I hadn't felt at all. This on felt like someone jumped up and down real hard behind me. Over in a fraction of a second. I'll post later what strenght and where it was located.

Fare alert. JFK to HNL $212 each way. Hawaiian announces new New York City to Honolulu flight....

2011-11-17T15:09:00.005-10:00

Just saw this. Through the 20th of November Hawaiian is offering this price on their newly announced air service, good for travel June 4th through June 30th of 2012. Leave NYC at 10 am, sipping Maitais in Honolulu at 3pm (Hawaii time)... Kona and it's great scuba diving is just a 45 minute flight away! Here's a link

Back from the mainland....

2011-11-11T08:53:00.004-10:00

Whew, the last half of October was crazy busy, charters every day with some days running double charters. On the 30th I took off to Florida for a rondevous with my wife, who'd been visiting friends and family earlier in the month, and a visit to the dive industry show put on by DEMA.

Florida is a couple of loooong flights from here. Not sure if I'm hot to do that one for the dive show for a while. We went this year largely to get away, and I also needed to take some repair technician classes that I can't get locally as well as go to several other seminars that I was interested in.

The show seemed pretty well atteneded. Pat and I thought it was one of the more crowded first days of the show that we've seen in several years. Hopefully things are picking up in the industry. Many of the "big" companies had smaller booths the last couple years in comparison to say 3-5 years back, and dive travel seemed to take up a larger portion of the show than a few years back.

The single busiest company kiosk I can recall was the GoPro camera booth. They had introduced a new HD camera called the Hero2, with a wider angle of view, faster frame rate, brighter color and higher megapixel still camera, and were selling them like hotcakes. They sold out in the first 2 days and then sold out their remaining older HD model in the next day. It looks like an interesting little camera. They're introducing an underwater specific housing early next year. Current models are waterproof, but the optics are more for above water use and apparenlty have some focusing issues. The new housing will have a flat oversized port that will allow for focusing without vignetting.

After the show we took an airboat ride (have wanted to do that since watching Gentle Ben as a kid) and spent a couple of long days at the Disney parks. We tried to hit all of the major rides. Rides there are fairly tame compared to many coasters at other theme parks. Expedition Everest does a pretty good job, largely because there's a backwards portion. I do have a fear of heights issue that popped up out of nowhere when I was 28 years old (still can't figure out where that came from) and the only ride that really got me uncomfortable was "Soaring" at Epcot... where you're essentially riding a glider through California. You are strapped into a seat which they raise up into a concave screen that more or less surrounds you with the film. You're probably 15-20 feet off the floor, but that was enough to get me white-knuckled for the first 2-3 minutes of the video. It was a cool ride/show, and I'm glad I did it, ONCE - I wasn't up for a return flight.

Yesterday was a good day of diving. I'm lightly loaded for the next little bit so I'll try and take the camera down and start catching up with photos and videos for the blog while I can.

Aloha,

Steve

Argus groupers, what a pest...

2011-10-10T12:51:00.003-10:00

Back in the mid to late 50's fish and wildlife (or some official branch along those lines) thought it would be a clever idea to introduce 10 or so species of fish to the Hawaiian Islands. Well, three have survived and two are pests. Our grouper is now found all over the reefs, quite thick in many places.

In theory they're good eatin', however they do carry ciguaterra toxin. Ciguaterra toxin isn't something you'd really want to deal with. It's sort of like lyme disease light, and apparently is occasionally mis-diagnosed as multiple sclerosis. Not something you want to deal with.

I haven't done a "getting old" post in a long time...

2011-10-10T11:21:00.008-10:00

...and I'd been thinking of posting one about the diet I've been on. Recent events make for a jucier post.

I'd been semi-serious about my diet over the course of September, and managed to lose about 10-12 lbs. My wife has been swimming in the ocean with a friend for a few months and I asked if I could join in. Now both of them are very good swimmers, they're swimming a couple miles at a time now, and I've found I need to use fins to keep up with them. After several trips to Honaunau with them I'm considering ditching the fins... but then again I don't want to invite a heart attack down there right off the bat... so I decided I'd try some swimming in the pool and other cardio work before going for it. Well, the pool swimming has been eye opening, it's tougher than when I was young - but it's coming along.

Friday morning last week I had a blood test scheduled, so I did the fast thing from Thursday evening 'til the morning blood test. Drank a lot of water, both that evening and that morning. I've been pretty good about checking my blood pressure routinely since the swimming started, I'm trying to see if it's changing anything. So far no. The pic above is the history reading from that morning. Later on it would change....

After the blood draw, I'm heading home and feeling fine, and I see the trailhead to the Captain Cook Monument. Heck, I'll skip swimming and walk it! Genious idea Steve.

It's 10 am and I start walking. Well, the trail is pretty overgrown right now with the rains we've been having lately, and it's a little slick and the horse poops are a bit damper than in the part of the year when I've walked it in the past (irrelevant to the story, but thought I'd let people know about the current shape of the trail). 35 minutes later I'm at my usual turn around spot (I'm a little reluctant to do the last third to half mile that's so steep 'til I know I'm ready for it). Now I'm lighter, and arguably better conditioned than in the past when I've walked the trail, so I head up. I'm making good progress and after 14 minutes (I was watching the watch) I'm almost back to the trees/shrub area and decide to take a breather....

Shut down time. After a couple minutes I head off and get about 50 feet and can't continue. I rest a couple more minutes, feel OK and manage to make it about 20 feet and can't continue. At that point I'm worried. I felt no "event", so I rested a couple minutes longer then stood up, got dizzy and then at that point my vision went to black, green and bright white. Very trippy. I made it maybe 10 feet and had to sit again. At that point I'm thinking I had a stroke. I spent a couple minutes checking my motor skills, all digits worked, facial muscles worked, vision was ok when sitting down, I even juggled some rocks to make sure my hand/eye coordination was kinda OK. I felt pretty good, except when standing.

At that point I'm pretty scared. It's 11 am and I'm a bit over a mile down a hill from the road. So, I start stumbling my way up the trail the best I can all things considered (might have been stupid to do so). I couldn't take it any more and laid down for a coule minutes, then sat 'til a couple walked up the hill behind me about 5 minutes later. They asked if I was OK, my answer was "I'm OK, I guess, well, maybe not". I had some new friends for the better part of the next hour and a half. This whole event gave me a new found appreciation for strangers. A couple different groups offered me water along the way. I'd actually taken water and had run out shortly after the couple caught up with me.

Well, to shorten the story, we made it to the top of the hill finally at 12:30 and the couple drove me to the gas station to get water and some trail mix in case it was a blood sugar/dehydration thing, then dropped me off at the car and said they'd check back on me in an hour. I made a call to crew who was working with me that evening to tell them to get to the harbor and meet the customers and tell them that I was in the hospital so there wouldn't be a charter. I hated cancelling the charter on short notice, but there was no real choice at that point. Luckily, he (the crew memeber) happened to be in Captain Cook to drop something off at a friend's place and he got me to the hospital.

I wandered into the ER and saw the triage nurse... "What's going on?" "Well, I may have had a stroke, or a blood sugar event, I' don't know, I just failed the Captain Cook trail" So she sat me down, started asking the typical questions - what is your name, what is your birthday, what day is it, where are you, etc - repeatedly, had me squeeze her hands, hooked up the the BP cuff and asked what my normal BP was. At this point she's on the phone with someone inside. I was asked to stand for a BP reading, that lasted all of about 4 seconds when I started to black out. At that point I'm moved to a wheelchair and I can hear her on the phone saying 78/37 and syncope or something like that. I'm in the ER and they're hooking me up to IVs, EKGs, the little ET light finger O2 analyzer thingy and such in two minutes. They had a BP cuff on me and after the saline started flowing for a few minutes it read 82/43, then went slowly up over the next few hours.

Apparently I was quite dehydrated. By 5pm or so I was to a more normal BP level. They released me, told me to take it easy for a day or two, and drink lots of water, especially when I exercise. Well, I suspect I'll never exercise on an empty stomach again. As it stands, I'll be exercising near someone who's current on their CPR/first aid for quite some time. I don't want to take the chance there's something going on that predisposes me to this. I'm pretty sure it was the combination of 16 hours without food, the blood drawing (although it was a relatively trivial amount, 4-5 vials) and exercise in the sun.

In a wierd way, it was an interesting experience. One I hope I don't go through again. The scariest thing was the vision thing - I couldn't even tell what stuff was on the shelves at the mini-mart, it was just a bunch of glaring white packages to me, had to have help finding the trail mix. It never dawned on me that some basic functions, like vision, could shut down rapidly like that over a simple thing like not enough water.

I'm off to the pool....

Steve

First humpback whale of the season spotted in Kona Hawaii a couple days back!!!

2011-09-29T16:48:00.003-10:00

Wow, this is early. I usually hear of early sightings in mid-October.

Decisions, decisions....

2011-09-23T14:36:00.004-10:00

Aloha,

We opened up the retail shop this spring and ran it 9 am to 5 pm all summer and have taken a look at the numbers coming into fall. Reluctantly, after realizing keeping the shop open adds about 3000 bucks to the payroll each month, which means the combined boat/shop needs to do about 5000 bucks more each month than it's already been doing without the shop, we've decided to stop manning the "store" all day, everyday.

Happily, the boat business is as strong or stronger than ever coming into the fall, and we'll be keeping the "office" location for morning meets, classes, and sales after the charters. I'll be manning the shop for an hour or two after day charters, and by appointment. Coming into our "slow" season, this move will give us the ability to continue servicing our charter customers and give me the ability to take an occasional day off (woohoo!) when I don't have dive charters going out.

It was a very busy summer for us, just not quite the numbers needed to justify keeping the shop open full time coming in to the leaner months. Hopefully we can revisit the whole retail thing at a later date.

Diving!!!!!!!! I've got a manta dive tonight, intros tomorrow, three manta dives next week and day dives the rest of the time, so my month is pretty much filled out. It'll be exciting to see what October brings.

Here's a picture of a diver taking photos of a group of Bluestripe Snappers that hangs out at a spot we dive. These fish are one of 10-12 species imported back in the 50s with the idea that they'd be a great addition to our reefs... now, along with the Bluespot Grouper, they're a pest. I think only 3 of the introduced species survived through to today.

Later,

Steve

Turtle!!!

2011-09-12T12:12:00.003-10:00

I can't get enough of this guy.

Wanna Dive's dive shop is now open 10am-5pm daily...

2011-09-12T11:54:00.005-10:00

OK, the picture's not flattering, but it shows fairly well where our dive shop is. We're just up above the Tesoro station on the highway across from Honokohau Harbor (that's the shop top center of the photo).

Just thought I'd post our hours. We've been bouncing around a bit since opening up late this spring, but with everyone's schedules we can man it 10-5 daily. Come on in and visit! 1-877-DIVE KONA

Aloha,

Steve

Lots of great diving in Kona the last couple of weeks...

2011-09-12T11:22:00.003-10:00

Aloha,

I've been quite busy since about the 18th doing charters, have a day in the shop today so I thought I'd catch up on diving conditions. The water temp has bumped up, we're seeing 79/80 on the dives right now. We've had a couple pretty big south swells swing through the last 3-4 weeks, they tend to stir up the south facing sites a bit so we tend to do north facing sites on those days.

Mantas mantas mantas. We've been going out two evenings a week this summer for the most part, were skunked 3 times in the last month or so.... bummer, but Friday night was really quite the show. There were 14 mantas at the light circle when I got my divers down, and then it started to get crowded. A total of 21 mantas showed up for the evening. It's almost overwhelming when we get that many mantas, but it was nice to see that many as it was kind of sporadic the previous 3 weeks. An additional highlight of that dive was on the roundabout tour back to the boat at the end when we came across a pretty good sized Bigfin Reef Squid (sorry no photo, but if you search the blog using the search function in the upper left I've got several squid photos that will show up).

Here's a local cerianthus anemone. In the aquarium trade we called them pacific long tentacle anomone. These guys are found down deep in the sand. I took a picture of this one at about 110' several years ago, I generally don't get down that deep often so we don't see them on tours all that often.

Later,

Steve

Sam Choy's is returning to Kona Hawaii... Yay!!

2011-08-16T16:04:00.009-10:00

...OK, I'd only eaten there once back in the day when it was out in the Kaloko warehouse district, but it was interesting. A friend of mine said I needed to go there for breakfast (same guy that recommended the double meat hot pastrami at Bianelli's the other month). I went there and it was really pretty good, a bit unusual by mainland standards (this was back in '99 when I was still relatively new to the island) as it was a plate lunch place. I had some kind of stew filled omlette if I recall correctly, quite tasty. The only reason I never went back was because I live way south, and I don't do breakfast or plate lunch all that often. At any rate, they closed their Kaloko restaurant several years ago.

Sam's an accomplished chef and has gained a bit of celebrity over the years, came out with some cook books, I think he's had a cooking show or two, was picked to design the food for an airline's in-flight meals, etc. Along the way he'd openend a restaurant in Honolulu that I hear good comments about. I believe all of the plate lunch places are closed and his new Sam Choy's Kona restaurant looks as though it will be more upscale.

It's moving into the old Wendy's Keauhou location. It was a Wendy's for years, but closed down several years ago. It arguably had one of the best views of any restaurant on the west side of the Big Island (others being the Coffee Shack Deli down in Captain Cook, and a couple of oceanside places). It's a prime location and there was lots of speculation/hopes over the years that some place nice would come in. Apparently this new venture has been in the works for quite some time, a couple of years maybe, but it's just started to really get up to speed in the last few months. They've expanded the old building and enclosed the patio. I thought I saw some type of sattelite dish on the roof, so they probably are putting in a bar section if I guess right (edit a half day later: Duh, if I'd actually looked through the website I'd linked earlier I'd have noticed the mention of the bar).

Kona's ripe for another nice restaurant to come in. Sam Choy the person is kind of a local institution, everyone knows who is. Hopefully it'll be another nice place to try after a great day of scuba diving in Kona Hawaii. I'm looking forward to it's opening.

Later,

Steve

Panorama photo of Wanna Dive, one of Kona's newest dive shops...

2011-08-14T12:39:00.009-10:00

I'm in the shop today. I thought I'd play with Photoshop CS5 a little bit and try a panorama. It worked. This is 6 photos stitched together in photoshop. I haven't scrutinized it yet, just looked at it in small, but it seems to do a better job than the last time I tried a panorama in a much earlier version of photoshop. On the blog, you may have to click on the image to get it to full size and get a decent view. I'm not sure what'll happen on my Wanna Dive Kona facebook feed, hopefully it'll act like the typical photos and be clickable, video doesn't seem to play well.

Now I gotta try it in RAW and see if photoshop will merge RAW files and keep them in RAW, or If I have to edit them to jpeg and hope I got the white balance the same on each photo file edit... Underwater panoramas might be interesting to try. One of these days that I take a day off it might be fun to take a tank down to the reef and give it a try.

Anyways, you can kind of get an idea of what I'm putting together at the dive shop.

Aloha,

Steve

It's gorgeous in Kona, both topside and in the water, right now...

2011-08-13T12:19:00.005-10:00

I'm in the dive shop for the day right now. We went out for the manta dive last night and got skunked for one of the few times this year. There was a manta around when snorkelers were first put in, but it took off, so none, or very few, of the divers got to see it as far as I know. It turned into a night dive for everone.

Business has been pretty steady throughout the summer, although right now I've got a 7 day mystery stretch of no charters for some reason. Starting the 19th, which is about when I suspected it to slow down, I've got charters lined up through the next 3 weeks or so, with plenty of other charters through the rest of September at this point.

So diving has been really nice the last little bit. We did see about a degree temperature bump in the last week, so the water's seemingly warming up. We've had some minimal swell, not enough to really affect anything. We're into the start of my favorite time of year to dive Kona. Late summer and fall are really great times to dive here... warmest and calmest water conditions usually, and once school's start up it typically isn't quite as busy for the resorts.

We were diving the other day out at Kaloko, and one of our customers was taking the Advanced Open Water course and used my camera for the photography dive, he managed to get several decent shots. Here's a shot of a pretty good sized ulua (aka trevally) he shot a picture of that was following our divers through the canyons for a while. The picture really doesn't do justice for the size of this fish, everyone diving said it was in the 36 inch long range.

Later,

Steve

Ho'okena Beach Kona Hawaii snorkeling video...

2011-08-08T12:43:00.005-10:00

I had the morning off, kind of a lucky thing as there was an accident last night in Kealakekua that knocked over a telephone pole and the drive into town is taking forever. I took the liberty to drive a bit down the road to Ho'okena Beach Park for a bit of snorkeling, figured I'd try the camera.

I shot about 8 minutes of video while I in just for the heck of it. It's not spectacular, but it'll give you an idea of what the place is like. The color is much nicer through eyeballs, the video doesn't do it justice. I shot this video starting about 30 feet off the beach in 30 inches of water then swam to the right around the old pier. There's lots to look at right in close there.

Ho'okena is a small beach park in south Kona. It's got fairly nice facilities, camping by permit, some concessions run by a non-profit, and even handicap access to the facilities. The parking lot is sand, so be careful where you park it, AWD or 4WD might be handy if you're not watching where the tires are.

The beach is exposed to high surf in the stormy months, so the reef isn't as nice as some other places, but there's still lots of fish so there's plenty of decent snorkeling. There's some pretty nice shorediving there as well, but you'll probably need to do several dives there 'til you figure it out. My first shore dive there with my wife, Pat, was kind of lame. I decided to continue to explore it and found some pretty interesting diving over time.

I'm headed into the dive shop shortly. We have a manta dive going out with a couple of divers and snorkelers tonight.

Aloha,

Steve

Ghost shrimp and current Kona Hawaii scuba diving conditions...

2011-08-03T13:46:00.007-10:00

Yay!

Finally, I've got Adobe CS5 on my computer at the shop, and after an update download my camera I bought last year has RAW support... this means, maybe I'll start taking my camera back in the water. I realized the other day that after a year without the camera in the water, I forgot how it works. I didn't even have the zoom/focus ring in the housing so I was pretty much stuck with wide angle, couldn't remember how to change the camera into macro, all sorts of photo mishaps ensued. I did manage to get this ghost shrimp photo though. It was down at 92 feet and this was taken without any type of flash and no zoom control. If you'd see the original photo, it'd be very blue and lacking in detail or color, the nice thing with RAW and underwater photography is that you can set the white balance after the fact and there's a real decent chance in getting the orginal colors back.

Ghost shrimp are also known as Fountain Shrimp in many parts of the world, named after the foutainous spray of their antennae I guess. They're a pretty decent sized reef shrimp, not eatin' size, but big compared to what we usually see.

We've had a pretty good south swell lately, with a fair amount of west in it on occasion. South we can deal with, west can be a problem if it's big enough. From the dive shop I can see things are kind of washed out near Honokohau Harbor (yesterday they were just fine). Tomorrow we have 3 intro divers and a couple of certified divers on the boat, hopefully it'll settle down by then. One of the very nice things about Kona diving is that because of the lack of soil at water's edge, it can be stirred up one day and cleared up the next if the surf settles down. Sand, the limited amount that there is on the reefs here, settles out very fast and we can have 100+ foot viz the day after having poor viz.

Yesterday's diving gave me the first 79 degree reading for an entire dive that I've had this year. Things are finally starting to warm up. It never got "cold" here (by our standards) this winter, but it has yet to really start getting warmer either. Last year it maxed out at about 79 degrees, I'm hoping we see 80/82 later this summer and into the fall. The warmer water temperatures often will hold out through November and early December.

Hanging out at Garden Eel Cove in Kona...

2011-08-03T11:19:00.004-10:00

I hadn't had the camera underwater in ages and thought I'd do a short Captain's dive between dives up at Garden Eel Cove. We've had a pretty good south swell the last little bit, and this day it was huge and the bay off the airport and right outside the harbor were the best bets that day, we were training students so we opted for good conditions and did both dives up north off the airport.

Garden Eel Cove is a very good example of Hawaiian hard coral reef. It was protected by Keahole point back when Hurricane Iniki came through a decade or so ago and it still has lots of old growth coral. You can see all the hard corals on the dropoff in the video. Unfortunately the video doesn't do it justice... largely blue, when you're actually diving it you get to see all of the browns and golds of the corals and the color of the fish.

Later,

Steve

Drove to Hilo on Friday for the first time in ages... forgot how interesting the Big Island is...

2011-07-31T09:31:00.005-10:00

I drove to Hilo to have the tailgate of my truck linexed, insurance paid for it since I was rear-ended a month ago, and Pat and I decided to make a day of it. For the most part we had a sunny trip over to the east side of the island, man is the Big Island gorgeous when it's sunny. I haven't been to Hilo in the sun all that often.

Downtown Hilo seems to be a little busier than I last remembered it. It's got a bunch of shops on the main drag to check out. We stopped in at Sun and Sea Hawaii, a nice little dive shop that's been in Hilo for about 3 years or so. From what I can see, Nautilus and them are about the only game in town for dive shops there. Pat and I stopped at Cronies bar and grill for a couple of beers and to try out their "broke the mouth" size "works" burger. Twice the meat (1# total) and twice the toppings... lot's of cheese, bacon, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, sprouts... that's a lot of stuff. I had to resort to a knife and fork. Pat and I split it since we'd just eaten a couple hours earlier but I wanted to try it, it was good.

The big yellow blob at the top of the post is a Siphopteron Quadrispinosum. It's one of our local nudibranchs. Back 10 years or so, when I was first made aware of them, I used to spot these guys from 8-10 feet away. The last few years I haven't been so lucky... they max out at about 3 millimeters in length, and my middle aged eyes are having a tough time focusing on something that small anymore. My guess is that a portion of the people I've pointed them out to over the years thought I was just pointing at sand and was a little bit crazy to be fixated on nothing. I've tended to notice them in the late spring and early summer, so if you're diving along over a sandy area and see a hot yellow grain of sand, you might want to look a little closer to see if it's one of these.

Later,

Steve

Want a light weight compact full featured BCD to travel with? Cressi Travelight BCD may fit the bill...

2011-07-28T11:10:00.003-10:00

I thought I'd give a try at a video review of a product we're carrying at the dive shop. When I went to DEMA last year I saw the Cressi Travelight BCDs and was favorably impressed, figured when I started to carry BCDs in the shop it'd be something I want to stock.

The Cressi Travelight BCD folds up nicely into a smallish bag, small enough that you can probably fit it in most carryon bags. Nowadays with how the airlines are charging for that extra suitcase, it's nice to see dive manufacturers putting out some lighter more compact gear without sacrificing features. The Travelight comes in the standard sizes, has large zippered pockets, integrated locking weight pouches, trim pockets, rear and right shoulder dumps, a large padded spine pad for comfort, plenty of D rings to hook things on, etc... all the features most people look for in a BCD. Weight-wise you're looking at about 5-6 lbs all told. It also has a decent lift capacity for warm water diving, not huge but not bad.

I was surprised once I looked up some reviews of the product. It fares quite well as a BCD. Scuba Diving magazine's scuba lab gave it "Editor's Choice" and "Best Buy" designations. I've seen other good recommendations as well. It's well worth looking into if you're looking at a new BCD to travel with.

Aloha,

Steve

Another reason why I like Hawaii Scuba Diving...

2011-07-24T09:32:00.006-10:00

Went scuba diving... dolphins swam by from Steve on Vimeo.

Whoohoo!!! Hawaiian Spinner Dolphins!!! When you are scuba diving in Hawaii it's a real treat to see these guys underwater. It doesn't happen all that often, but we get lucky often enough to say it's not that unusual. We do see them on the surface on a quite regular basis, often several times a week, when we're out diving in Kona.

This was a particularly good day for us, I happened to have the camera along at the time. You can clearly hear the dolphins in the video and if you listen, you'll hear the whales singing in the background. It was February when I took this, that's just coming into the height of the whale season off Kona. We hear humpback whales quite often on our dives that time of year.

Later,

Steve

Reserve your activities early for best scheduling options....

2011-07-23T13:45:00.004-10:00

It's about time to make this post again. It's that time of the year where it's busy in Kona and elsewhere. I've been getting lots of phone calls the last few days from people that I just can't help out because they've either been beaten to the punch and I'm full, or they're calling so late I don't have the ability to set up charters or add on enough passengers to make a charter worthwhile.

I got a couple of interesting phone calls this week:

One was from a person who flew over to this island, for one night, specifically to do the manta dive. Unfortunately for tehm, they waited 'til they arrived to try to arrange for the manta dive. From the list of operators that had turned them away, it appears everyone was either full or not going out. I gave them the list of every one I knew of that might possibly be going out that night, hopefully the found a ride and weren't disappointed. I had a similar call the next day, but at least they had one extra day available to go and I was able to take them.

I received another phone call from someone who had seen that I'm one of the few, if only, charters here that goes out with only two divers, problem is they wanted it in a time frame that made it very unlikely for me to even break even (not to mention they said they were open to either of two days, until they found out I already had someone on board the other day). I'm happy to guarantee charters for two divers if they can give me at least a week to try to book on top of it... when that happens, more often than not I'll get an extra body or more on board to make it worthwhile, so it's worth guaranteeing the dive. When people are looking at booking within a week, hopefully they have a flexible schedule and can join in when there are existing charters. I even guarantee charters for singles from time to time (most are long time customers I consider to be friends, or it's during a busy time for me and I'm quite sure I've got a good shot at booking on top) Historically, 90% of my business is booked a week to months in advance...It's July and I had two inquiries yesterday for February and April (didn't book yet, but I bet by November I'll have a couple of firm bookings for late winter or spring)... I've historically been getting very few short notice bookings, as the new shop starts to generate more traffic, that'll change and the issue may never come up again.

From what I've seen over the years, many companies on occasion do a last minute scramble to cancel or reschedule charters with people who've already booked because there weren't enough to make the charter a go at a profit. I try not to go there by either guaranteeing my bookings, or not taking them if it's what I'd consider to be realistically too short of a time period to book enough to make it worthwhile. Luckily most of my weeks have enough charters already going out that last minute couples or singles with flexible schedules can get out with me.

Anyway, from what I've seen, there are lots of people scrambling to find spots with local activities (not just scuba) on short notice right now. I've been there myself when I've travelled, but my recommendation is to try to arrange the activities you really want to do at least a week in advance, it'll likely save you some phone calls and frustrations.

The photo above is of an Imperial Shrimp that lives on a Spanish Dancer Nudibranch. I was lucky to spot this one, we don't see either of them often enough.

Aloha,

Steve

Best night dive in the world? Best manta ray diving in the world? The Kona Manta Ray night dive is really hopping right now....

2011-07-23T12:05:00.005-10:00

Thought I'd mention the manta dive is going off again right now. We went out again last night and had umpty-ump mantas on the dive and are going out again with a full boat of divers tonight and Monday night. I've had a couple different companies call me to see if I have room the next few nights, they're running full too. Maybe the busy season has finally hit Kona.

I've probably posted this before, but the manta ray night dive never gets old. This video only has about 25-30% of the number of mantas that have been showing up the last couple of nights, but it gives you an idea of what it can be like.

Later,

Steve

Cheap, inexpensive underwater film cameras for snorkeling or scuba diving in Kona Hawaii.

2011-07-23T11:36:00.008-10:00

A lot of people tend to think of underwater photography as a thing they're going to have to spend hundreds of dollars just to get started and don't realize there are reltively cost effective cameras available for those who just want to take a few snapshots while they are snorkeling or diving.

We carry the Snap Sights Sports Utility Cam at our shop. It's a basic housed film point and shoot camera. You'll find "underwater" single use cameras that are good to 12/15/30 feet around at a lot of places. These cameras are a bit beefier... they're good to 100 foot depths, so they're great for snorkelers, kayakers, and scuba divers. These specific cameras are quite nice in that they come loaded with 27 shots and are refillable/reusable... you can put another roll of film in when you are done and take them back underwater again. They are also quite nice in that they come with a built in flash, you'll have a chance at taking a picture with good color. Water tends to absorb color, and without a flash the pictures can look dull and bluish. With a flash, you add light back so you get your color back. The flash is really only good to about arm's length or so but it really helps bring back the true color of what you're looking at if you're about 2-3 feet away or so.

These cameras are a fun and reltively inexpensive (we're selling them for $19.99 at our shop) way to try underwater photography and bring home some memories without breaking the bank.

Aloha,

Steve

Escaping the summer heat? Maybe Kona Hawaii is the place to be...

2011-07-17T11:44:00.006-10:00

We've been real busy lately with dive charters, and oddly enough there's been someone from Texas on the boat almost every charter the last 3-4 weeks. I figure they must be coming here to get out of the heat. Let's face it, Kona's a wonderful place to be when the mercury's hitting the century mark at home. We've been seeing 83 degrees, plus or minus 2 degrees, and quite pleasant pretty much every day the last couple of months.

Summer's been fairly busy for us. We're starting to get into a routine with the shop now, we're open from 8am to 5pm. We're trying to get our inventory set up electronically from here on out, Pat's been sitting at the computer inputting bar codes and descriptions. She looked at me the other day and said "you owe me bigtime, do you realize you've got almost a thousand different items in the shop already?" I"m not sure if we're up to a thousand items, but it's well into the hundreds when you start figuring in sizes and colors of shirts/fins and all the assorted accessory items we're starting to carry.

Update on current water conditions. Summer's here! We've had some wonderfully flat days lately. The water's still 78 on my computer, but it's feeling warmer than it was a few weeks back to me. Lately I've dove the manta dives a few times (always a fun dive) and several dives with students, otherwise I've been mostly playing boat captain. I need to hire one more part time boat captain, that can also lead dives, to round out our scheduling.

Here's a Moorish Idol photo I took some while back. They're one of our more "popular" fish, but they're kind of hard to get photos of... I can't tell you how many "fish butt" photos of these guys I have. They have a knack for turning at the last moment and the camera delay of most point and shoot cameras is enough to allow them to turn and give you a different photo than you expected.

Very busy week/month coming up for us... lots of scuba diving Kona ahead...

2011-06-26T15:06:00.004-10:00

Shop update:

I'm hanging out at the shop today, I'll be on the boat for the near forseeable future. Here's the most recent photo of part of our shop. I'm due for another accessory order to fill in some gaps in my offerings. We've got lots of masks, fins, snorkels, a few models of regulators, BCDs, wetsuits and such to go along with the t-shirts, lights, cameras and other goodies. It's coming along nicely.

Things are getting busy enough that I've hired on two additional employees and I'm looking at maybe hiring on another in the next couple of weeks. The boat's getting busy enough In may have to let the shop go unstaffed a day or two this next week. If I can get a new hire in in the next little bit our goal is to keep it open 8-5 seven days a week. We're pretty close to that now, but on days we're short handed the boat takes precedence.

Kona water conditions:

Summer's here. This was an odd winter in that it never really got cold. Typically we'll drop to 73-74 degrees, this year most of our customers dive computers (ours as well) were showing 76/77 degrees. That's warm for us in the winter. With that, I was expecting a bump up in April or May. Hasn't happened yet. We're still seeing 76/77 on pretty much everyone's computers. Viz has been good to excellent lately on most days.

Later,

Steve

Best sandwich in Kona? Bianelli's is back, and their grilled pastrami with double meat is pretty darned good...

2011-06-26T10:14:00.005-10:00

June's been real steady for diving this year. Between the shop and the boat I hadn't had a day off this month, so yesterday I closed up shop (can't afford to do that soon, busy season will be starting) and played hookey.

A couple weeks back, a boat captain friend from another company, Jim, told me I've gotta try Bianelli's pastrami sandwich and to be sure to ask for double meat. Bianelli's has been a spot for pizza in Kona, off and on, since before I moved here in early '99. Originally they were in the Pines in a small spot, then closed and reappeared in the old Kona Ranchhouse Restaurant spot, which got hit hard by construction on Kuakini Highway about 4-5 years ago or so and ended up closing down. In the last year or so they reopened at the natural foods store up by Safeway and now they're in the old Rocky's Pizza location at the Keauhou Shopping Center. I'm hoping this spot does well for them, as they've consistantly put out a good pizza. It was busy yesterday at 4pm when I visited, so hopefully it'll keep up.

Now to the sandwich... yum yum... I'd say the sandwich is on roughly a 9 inch bun, plus or minus. It's got grilled pastrami, lettuce, tomato, grilled onions, melted swiss cheese, a dab of mustard (not overwhelming) with a couple of peppercini's on the side for good measure. It's sufficiently moist and gooey (I'm not crazy about crusty dry pastrami) for my tastes... quite delicious. The sandwich runs in the $9.50-$10 range, with another $2-$2.50 for the double meat. Now Jim says ya gotta get double meat, but I suspect for lots of people the regular sandwich would be quite a decent meal. I appreciated the extra meat though, it's a good investement for anyone that fancies themselves as a big eater. I don't eat a lot of sandwiches around town (once I hit 250 lbs about 6 years ago I started watching my carb intake to some extent, it's helped to the tune of about 35 lbs) but it's definitely a pretty good sandwich.

If you decide to give it a try, tell 'em Steve from Wanna Dive told you you had to try it- they won't know who in the heck that is, but a little free advertising never hurt.

Aloha,

Steve

I'm such a meanie... I made Bob jump the same mooring twice...

2011-06-09T11:20:00.006-10:00

Two days ago the water settled down and was very nice. We went up to a dive site called "sand chute" up by the Kona airport. Bob jumped the mooring and as he was climbing up the ladder I noticed a lot of ruckus going on about a half mile out on the surface. I told Bob I was sorry to do this, but I think we needed to unhook and check it out.

As we approached the spot we could see it was what I expected... a baitball! There was a circle of white foamy water and small fish about 10 inches high off the surface of the ocean with a bunch of shark fins swirling through it.

We parked right next to it and you could see fish jumping and probably 6-8 five to six foot long sharks swimming through it. The sharks were probably Galapagos or Sandbar sharks, I'm not sure as I really don't know the difference right off hand.

Once our eyes adjusted to looking through the water, we could tell the mass of fish life was much larger than just the immediate foamy spot where the fish were jumping. It was all around us. After 8-10 minutes or so a dolphin watch operator pulled up about a hundred feet away and we could tell the whole area between us was quite busy. Looking down you could see tons of little 2-3 inch fish, with tons of 6-8 inch fish below them, which were being hit by tons of 12-15 inch fish below them and the occasional shark passing through.

I wish I had my camera, but then again I'm kinda glad I didn't as I would have had choices to make. I pretty much chickened out about going in to check it out... probably a good idea, but if I'd have had a camera and housing with me I might have been tempted to ease down the ladder with the camera. I know from experience with swimming with Ocenic Whitetip sharks years ago that it's not the most comfortable feeling (especially when you read up on how many deaths Oceanics are responsible for - apparently it's more than all other sharks combined) being in open water with predators and not being able to see in all directions at once. These weren't Oceanic Whitetips, but still I'm kinda conservative these days.

It was an exciting thing to watch for a few minutes before going back to sand chute for the dive.

Above is a shot of one of my favorite fish... a Yellowtail Coris Wrasse. These colorful guys change colors as they grow.

Here it's June 4th, and it's still snowing in Hawaii...

2011-06-04T18:42:00.004-10:00

Yep, it's still snowing up the mountain from some of the best scuba diving in the US right now. Here's a link to the webcams atop the Big Island: Manuna Kea webcams The best ones to check out are the time lapse videos from the webcams. The Keck ones are pretty good. If you're looking at this after TONIGHT you might not see snow unless you find a link that can get to a specific date and key in 6/4/11.

Aloha,

Steve

Time to give the boat a little touch up...

2011-06-04T16:30:00.006-10:00

Well, after 3 years of dings and scrapes it's time to give the boat a light touch up on the interior paint. One fo my newer hires, Brian, is pretty handy so we've been redoing the electrical to make sure everything's working right and now he's been playing with fiberglass touching up the cosmetic end a bit filling in the tank dings. Should be ready for painting shortly. We're going to try to do it on our own rather than pay thousounds for the local boat guys to do it. For the exterior, I spent an hour or two of hand buffing and it looks a lot better. We'll see if that can last us another year or two before having it professionally done.

We've had pretty nice weather in Kona lately, can't say the same with Oahu and Kauai. I've been running into people who've seen a lot of rain on the other islands the last several days. Kona is blessed in that it sits in the weather shadow of the other islands to the northwest, and behind a volcano which shields it from weather approaching from the east. We still get our occasional foul weather days, but it's nowhere near as bad as what some other areas see.

In honor of cleaning up the boat, here's a cleaner shrimp. I really think these critters are neat. They live in coral heads and set up shop, fish will visit them and the shrimp will crawl all over the fish picking parasites and other unwanted critters off and make a meal of them.

Later,

Steve

Hold the Mayo....

2011-06-03T13:09:00.005-10:00

I didn't post to my blog in May at all. The first half of the month I was so busy I didn't have time, the second half of the month was so slow I didn't have anything to say. That's how it goes sometimes in this business, especially in the "slower" months when things aren't necessarily steady.

We're coming into our "busy" season quite soon. Over the years I've pretty much figured things start picking up for the summer after the 2nd weekend of June. Somewhere I heard that diving's target market is the 35-55 year old crowd. A good share of people in that age group are dealing with kids when they plan their trips, so it makes sense that the summer months and our holiday periods see an uptick in traffic.

I haven't presonally been in the water in 2 weeks so I won't comment on water temps, that'll change quite soon though as my charters start up again in two days. The manta riy night dive has been hopping for about 6 weeks or so, seems to have slowed down the last couple of nights as plankton has been kind of low for some reason, and that dive is dependant on plankton for the most part. You never know from one day to the next if the plankton'll show up at times.

Here's a shot of an undulated moray eel that apparently got into a pretty good scrap with another eel.... quite injured, don't know if it survived or not.

Apolemichthys arcuatus - Bandit Angelfish of Hawaii...

2011-04-29T16:27:00.002-10:00

Here's a pair of Bandit Angelfish. These are the only "large" angelfish you'll likely see in the main Hawiian Islands, as most of our angelfish are dwarf species. They reach up to about 7 inches and are typically found only at depths of 60 feet and below in Kona. I've heard they're found shallower more frequently over on Kauai. They're endemic to the Hawaiian Islands as far as I know, you won't find them anywhere else.

We're always happy to see these guys.

The changing face of Wanna Dive....

2011-04-28T13:56:00.008-10:00

.
.

Wanna Dive started with me doing guided shore diving and instruction on the side while working for one of the larger companies here. By 2003 I was up to about half time doing my own thing and I decided to pick up the boat. Wow, what a learning experience... when I told my Oceanic rep (my rental gear at the time was from them) I was picking up a boat, he looked at me and said "ya know what BOAT stands for, bust out another thou". Boy was he right, in spades.

With very little actual boat business in '03 and '04 it's been a long slow growing experience. By 2005 I was starting to actually get a fair amount of boat business and it kept growing. In 2007 we decided to take the boat out for 6-8 weeks (our boat guy said it wold be 3) to completly rebuild the boat and change it over from and inboard/outboard to just outboards. After going thorugh 3 chevy 350s and a couple of lower leg units in 4 years it was time to get to outboards... it ended up taking 5 months (that's a lot of downtime, I ended up using the boat of a friend that was starting their own dive biz at the time)... the rebuild and extension of the boat gave us lots more room, a better ride and a lot more reliability and has be completely worth it.

The change in the boat was huge for the business. A couple of summers ago I rented out an office in hopes of eventually turning it into a shop. Well, eventually came last month. Along with the new shop came a new hire (I may be hiring one more part timer this month as well). Talking to the new employee, I found that the spouse was a graphic artist. Well, I've never had an actual logo ever, a couple of ideas but no real talent to do it myself. It was time. I just got the disk, so, I'd like to introduce our new logo we'll be using with printed materials.

Later

Steve

Snorkel and scuba diving gear rental in Kona Hawaii with Wanna Dive...

2011-04-28T10:20:00.010-10:00

Well, now that we have our shop up and running 9-5 every day it's time to put together a gear rental program.

Looking at masks... it looks like I'm gonna offer 5 different masks for rental: kids, a S-M that'll fit the bigger kids/smaller adult faces, a M-L that'll fit most faces, a large and an XL for the broader cheekbones and temples. I just can't see getting buy with just 2-3 mask choices, there's no such thing as one size fits all, and I want to be able to fit everyone coming in. I've still got to figure out how to do more than one size of prescription mask so I can offer a choice for larger faces.

Snorkels... I've got to bring in a bunch of decent dry snorkels next week to really be able to do this, both kids and adult sizes.

Fins... I've already brought these in. I'm going to try something differnt than many of the rental places by using adjustable fins with soft foot pockets made to take bare feet. Nice thing about 'em is the adjustability for fit and the ability to wear fin socks on all sizes and the ability to wear reef shoes on some of the sizes (gotta figure out to make it all sizes, but I'm gonna have to look for other fins to make that work with big feet). I've also brought in some decent full sized open heel adjustable scuba fins that'll fit over dive boots for rent. I won't be renting fin socks, reef shoes or booties though... lots of extra sanitization involved in that one to make me feel comfortable about it, I think I'll pass.

Wetsuits... we'll have both 3 mil shorties and 4/3 mil (3 mil in some sizes) full suits for rent. Shorties will do awesome for snorkelers wanting more thermal and sun protection, as well as helping keep you nice and floaty. The full suits are great for diving and 4/3 seems to be about the right thickness for most people much of the year here in Hawaii.

BCDs... we brought in a bunch of weight integrated BCs that have been working real well for us this year. In the past I had pouch problems with a couple of brands I used for rental on the boat, this one seems to have solved the lost pouch problem.

Regulators. I brought in several regs that have been holding up for us real well. They're a Cressi reg with a piston first stage and adjustable second stages, very nice. I need to bring in more for rent. All of our boat rental regs have computers, I'm not sure if I'll put computers in the ones for shore rental.

I still gotta deal with the who boogieboard/viewboard thing as well as a few other accessories. I'm gonna have fun coming up with package prices and rental policies the next few days. The goal is to roll it out over the course of May 2011 and be up to full speed by the start of summer. I'll have pricing on my Hawaii scuba diving business' website.

I'm hoping that being on the highway between town and the airport makes us a convenient place for people to do thier snorkel and dive gear rental business. Having a shop now on top of the dive charter business is getting interesting... more to deal with. Fun.

Here's a group of yellow tangs, whitespotted tangs and a few other fish grazing on the reef down at "Two Steps" outside the Place of Refuge. It's one of the state's top snorkel and shoredive spots.

Later,

Steve

EDIT September 23, 2011: We've decided to change strategies on the retail store and won't be manning it full time, please read the link for more information.

The manta ray night dive has been crazy nutzo in Kona Hawaii the last little bit...

2011-04-26T19:17:00.004-10:00

Howdy,

Just a heads up... the manta dive off the airport is going off bigtime right now. We had 9 on Wednsday of this last week, not bad, then on Saturday's dive we had 19 mantas (we were one of the last two boats to leave and it was boiling with mantas around our boat at the end of the dive, had to turn off all the lights and shine a beam off to the side just to start the engines and get out of there). Last night the report was 20 mantas at the site.

I won't be roped into picking a "season" for manta rays, however we've had some of our biggest number nights in May over the years. Hopefully it'll keep up for a while.

Here's a pic I took several years ago on the night dive. Imagine having bunches of these coming over you.

Later,

Steve

Busy April for me.. which brings up a subject... When to book your scuba diving and other activities in Kona Hawaii...

2011-04-23T12:37:00.006-10:00

Aloha,

I've been very busy this month between manning the shop and dive charters. Tomorrow's Easter and I'll take my second day off of the month since I've no charters and a decent excuse to be out of the store.

I'll try to touch on my opinion of when to book charters and other activities. This post will kind of ramble... People are so varied as to when they book activities, I used to wait 'til last minute and then do a lot of calling around myself, nowadays (since I'm in the biz) I lean towards booking things earlier for best selection.

The reality is, most of the time if you aren't interested in a specific operator and your schedule's somewhat flexible, you can wait 'ti the last couple of days and find a spot somewhere. At least among the dive businesses in Kona, most are pretty good about referring people elsewhere when they can't make your charter happen. Not sure if the other activities businesses in town are the same though. Once you have a specific operator, or a specific schedule in mind, then it probably behooves you to try to set something up in advance. We do have some really busy times here, Christmas, spring break and such, where it can be tough to find seats on short notice. Christmas week of '09 for instance, I had every charter fully booked by the first week of November... I remember it because that was right before I had my website crash (if you go back in the blog to that time you'll find my griping about it).

Every business is a bit different. I was talking to one operator a couple years back that does diving with more of a snorkel lean, and was told that about 90% of their business booked within 72 hours of the dive. For me, that'd scare me to death... I probably book 90% of my business at least 2-6 weeks in advance. It'll be interesting to see how that mix changes as the shop starts picking up. Currently I have a fair amount of biz booked in May, some in June and July, and 15 charters started in December. Late summer and fall are quiet for now. My goal is to more or less know my schedule well in advance, and then fill in the gaps with walkin customers.

Some people are surprised so many divers actually book in advance. The question I get from time to time is "what happens if it's just us on the boat 30 days from now, are you gonna cancel at the last moment?". Well, that can vary from operator to operator. In the past I have worked for operators that made the late afternoon or evening call the night before the dive to cancel on occasion because the boat wasn't full enough to run at a profit. I did it myself a couple times when I first started the boat charters, but frankly I felt bad about it and decided that's not the way I'd like to be treated as an early booking so I decided to honor all early bookings (no matter how painfull financially). What I've found is that for the most part, if I book a diver or two a few weeks in advance, 80% of the time it works out that I end up booking on top of them and it's all worth it in the long run. I get my share of "private dive" days, but they're fewer and further between than early on. I was looking at Tripadvisor earlier today and noticed a new review from one of my advance booking customers that went out solo with us. Nice to see he had a good time.

So what happens on short notice bookings? Well, that can be another story altogether. I get my share of larger groups (4-6 divers) that call on short notice wanting to go out, but I've already got 2-3 passengers on board and can't fit them on... I end up referring them elsewhere. I wish I could help them out, but it's first come first served. Sometimes I'll get a single or couple that come in and want to go diving three days from now and I've got the day open... unfortunately, in my mind I'm under no obligation to book a money losing charter on short notice. Luckily most of the short notice divers have a flexible schedule and we can usually pick a day that works for both of us or I'll refer them elsewhere. We'll be coming into our busy season here in a few weeks, and with any luck the store will start picking up and the walkin traffic will improve to the point to where I'll be able to go out every day even on short notice.

Bottom line, every industry and operator is different, some are primarily last minute bookers, some book well in advance. It's well worth checking in advance to at least get a feel for any activity or operator you're interested in.

Here's a black phase Longnose Butterfly from Kona. Hawaii has an endemic species of longnose butterfly with a longer nose than those found elsewhere in the world. In Kona we sometimes see a black phase. Nobody's sure exactly why it occurs, but they can go from yellow to black and back.

Later,

Steve

So I brought in some Intova digital camera product...

2011-03-27T13:27:00.004-10:00

I want to carry some underwater cameras in the shop so I brought in some Intova digital cameras and assorted items (red filters, wide angle lens, strobes/trays/fiber optic connectors) to try, as well as the $20 reusable film cameras that are good to a hundred feet. The digital cameras I brought in are 12 megapixel cameras housed in a housing that's good to 180 feet. If they're any good, they're a heck of a deal for under $250.

Some time in the next week or so I'll try to get out diving with one to see what it can do. I'm looking at keeping at least one for rent on the boat. I figure $35 a charter is a decent rental price for a camera that you can take a lot of stills and video (it shoots 720P HD video too), and I'll apply the first day's rental towards purchase of the camera if anyone decides they want to pick one up within a week after trying it. I'm hoping they're relatively easy to work with, like with any camera there's always a learning curve. I'll report back after I give 'em a shot.

I do plan on carrying some other photographic equipment down the line. Gotta get a start somewhere...

Later,

Steve

2011-03-23T19:23:00.003-10:00

I'm testing the video from my phone on blogger

I picked up a new htc thunderbolt cellphone that I'm having fun with . it has voice recognition so I'm trying to do this without typing as much as possible .

Scuba diving the day after a tsunami in Kona....

2011-03-12T16:39:00.003-10:00

It was a great day of diving today. The customers were happy and Bob said the viz was in the 100-125 foot range. I'll do one of the dives tomorrow, I was up top for both today. Just thought I'd mention the conditions today... flat and clear... as some people might be curious as to how the tsunami affected the diving.

Youtube video from Big Island tsunami in Kona March 11th, 2011

2011-03-11T11:45:00.004-10:00

Frankly, this guy was taking chances. I'd have been out of there.

The main surge has supposedly passed, evacuation has been lifted on most of the Big Island except for north and south Kona...

2011-03-11T10:16:00.004-10:00

This tsunami did cause some damage to a couple of areas. We were thinking about going to Splashers for dinner tonight, not sure if that'll happen. You'll see what I mean if you can get on facebook and look around for tsunami pictures. I've taken the liberty of forwarding some shots others have taken on my Wanna Dive Kona facebook page. The road damage is right by the pier in town between the pier and Splashers. There are other pics out there showing the area to be a bit flooded. It also looks as though the King Kam beach took a hit. Facebook has turned out to be one of the best sources of information on this event when it comes to finding damage, lots of the pure informational stuff (closures and openings) isn't necessarily accurate though according to the radio I was listening to earlier.

They've got crews in assessing damage and cleaning up road debris on Alii Drive. Hopefully it'll all be clear at some point today. Apparently 2 homes in the Keauhou area were showing damage according to the radio, and 3 homes surrounding Manini beach, down the road from my house, were obliterated by a surge that happened around 5 or 6am. I heard through the grapevine that the surge was pushing 15 feet high down around Manini beach. Napo'opo'o road is closed down by the coffee company about two thirds the way down at this point.

The main highway into town was packed this morning at 8 (I was coming back from spending the night at the shop) with people waiting for the evacuation order to be lifted.

More later...

Steve

Moved the boat, hanging out at the shop for the duration...

2011-03-10T23:48:00.003-10:00

I made it down to the harbor at a few minutes after 11. All of the gas stations on the way in and out of town are quite busy. The harbor wasn't busy when I arrived, but by 11:15 it was getting real busy, with lots of trucks pulling in as I left.

They're predicting a 2 meter rise in sea level here in the Kailua-Kona area, which makes keeping your boat in the boat park kind of dicey. The shop is about a half mile inland and a bit uphill, maybe 40-50 foot elevation, and is out of the predicted tsunami inundation zone.

I'll probably move things further uphill about 2 o'clock. They just announced the latest predicted time to be around 3:45 to 3:50am.

Heading off to the harbor to take the boat to higher ground...

2011-03-10T22:11:00.003-10:00

I'll probably take me about 35-40 minutes to move the boat. I may check in from the shop to tell you about activity in town.

Steve

It's 9:45pm and the Hawaii tsunami watch has become an alert...

2011-03-10T21:44:00.003-10:00

The television is reporting that the Pacific Tsunami Center is saying the tsunami alarms will be going off at 9:59pm. Apparently they want to make sure people turn on the news at 10 (Hawaii tv hours are typically the same as central time).

The news reports they expect the hotels to be moving thier patrons upstairs in Waikiki if it looks as though a tsunami is coming rather than trying to evacuate the area.

Tsunami Watch Kona Hawaii March 9, 2011

2011-03-10T21:09:00.003-10:00

Apparently there's a tsunami watch after a very strong earthquake in Japan earlier this evening. I'd been watching a pay per view movie and heard via family on the mainland. I'll be watching the news this evening, I may need to drive down to the harbor and move the boat.

Later,

Steve

Praying mantis in Kona Hawaii.

2011-03-06T16:24:00.004-10:00

I'm down at the dive shop today. It's just about ready to open, I need to pick an official "open" date to start manning it full time. We've got a couple things to do that are easier done before we're open, and Bob gets back from Thailand this week, so it'll probably be between the 10th and the 15th. We'll finish everything up working around charters this week.

So one of the things about Hawaii, it's kind of buggy. Lately we've been getting these little green grasshoppers showing up at the house. They're kind of annoying, they like TVs, computer screens, and occasionally faces, which can be irritating when you're trying to sleep. Last night Pat had a praying mantis show up in her office, today while she was doing something on the computer one of the grasshoppers showed up and the mantis sprang into action.... that's one happy mantis.

Wow, an entire month without a post...

2011-03-02T13:17:00.004-10:00

February was kind of wierd. The first 8 days or so were terrifically busy, double charters, am charters and pm teaching... ect... Then it was about 5-6 days of miserably sick, with pretty much the same thing I had back in late November/early December, followed by two weeks of caughing and lack of motivation. I'm just now getting to where I can clear my ears most of the time. We've been running some charters, I hate it when it's slow, but it happened at the right time. Starting this weekend we're off to the races with spring break hitting.

Today is pricing day at the shop. Stickers are going on everything I've brought in the last couple of months. I may be hiring one more person in the next week or so, still gotta interview some people that responded to my ad that I put off because I couldn't even hold a conversation without going into a hacking fit. Sometime very soon the shop will be open 9-6 daily. I'll be making up for my lack of posting bigtime once we're open.

Later,

Steve

There's a new dive shop/scuba center coming to Kona Hawaii.....

2011-01-30T13:58:00.006-10:00

Aloha,

Well it looks as though I'm finally going to be able to get the retail side of Wanna Dive open soon. For a bit over a year I've had a space and set it up as an office and gear storage, along with a few shirts masks and a few scuba do-dads to sell on the side. It's looked like a dive shop is coming for quite some time... well, the time is getting to be oh so much nearer now.

During that time I've had lots of people ask why I'm not manning the shop, well unfortunately you need to have lots of product to sell to really justify spending a few thousand a month manning the shop, and I can't be in the shop and on the boat at the same time. It hasn't been in the cards just yet. This last November I went to DEMA, the big industry show, with the intent to find some lines for the shop and order it in.

Over the course of December and January the gear's been coming in. I was crazy busy with charters in December and the first 8-9 days of January, since then (unfortunately with the help of the arrival of scuba unfriendly surf) I've had some spare time to where I could spend time in the "shop" and get it put together. Along with the product, I've been bringing in extra fixtures, shelving, racks and such and have been setting it all up and getting the gear on the walls.

It's not yet where it will be down the line, but it's to where I can show it off and say the store's coming soon. This next week I place my help wanted ad. I'm hoping to be able to open the shop up full time come about 3 weeks from now so we'll be in the swing of things before the spring break rush hits. The February dive charter schedule is starting to shape up nicely, so I'm not sure how often we'll be around 'til the day I officially open (whenever that is) - once that happens it'll be 7 days a week, except major holidays, Ironman day (the highway out front is closed that day)... and maybe Superbowl Sunday.

We're located at 74-5035 Queen Ka'ahumanu Highway ste 1-b. It's super easy to find... it's across the Highway from Honokohau harbor, right next to the Tesoro gas station.

Later,

Steve

LOTS of whales in Kona right now... wish I hadn't forgot my camera the other evening...

2011-01-26T11:20:00.004-10:00

Hi,
The other evening we were out for a night dive and during the first dive (late afternoon) there were three whales milling around about a couple hundred yards off the dive site (Garden Eel Cove). About 5:30 ish the whales started coming in closer and suddenly a baby whale breached about 60 yards (it was closer to us than some of the other moored boats were), it breached again, then an adult breached, a few seconds later the other adult breached, then all three breached at the exact same time.... the whales kept breaching one or two at a time and went up to the north end of Garden Eel Cove, then turned around and made a pass back by all the moorings. They were pretty much 60-100 yards off the moorings at all times... very close. With the continuous breachings that close, it sounded as if fireworks were going off.

Quite spectacular! This went on for about 8-10 minutes. The baby whale seemed to have a little more energy. The first breaches were full body breaches by both the baby and the adults. The adults got to where they were breaching more like the photo above (taken a couple years back) much of the time, adding in a few pec slaps for a while.

Unfortunately our divers were under and unaware of what was going on above. Three other boats full of divers that had already come up witnessed it, the snorkel boats were rounding the corner to come into the bay just as it ended.

I'd left my camera at home, bummer. We were close enough that they'd have made great photos. I've never had whales breach that close that many times. No mantas, but the night was worth it just for the whale show.

later,

Steve

Been LOTS of big surf in Kona the mid part of this January....

2011-01-23T10:17:00.004-10:00

And hopefully its gonna wane. I was looking at the Magic Seaweed Hawaii swell chart (hopefully this link works) and it looks like it's coming down and we're going to be relatively clear here in Kona the next week. Usually when it's down to 6-7 feet, and a different direction than straight west, you can find a place to tuck in and dive. On the 7-8 and 8-9 foot days it can gets tricky at times, sometimes undiveable (is that a word?). When you see solid green hit the coastline, it's pretty much shot.

I've been down at the office on the days we haven't gone out trying to make it look like a store... it's really getting there. I'll be ready to post a photo or two soon.... still got a bit of a mess to take care of before it's really ready to start showing off.

We've been debating on when to go full time with the "shop". It's kind of dead as far as diving right now (a lot of that might be because of the surf and people are getting to town and seeing it and just not calling), historically for my business the last half of January and the first half of February are very slow. I'm looking to hire 1-2 crew members the first week or two of February and then we'll probably open it up for regular hours around mid-month so we've got the routine down by the time spring break business hits. It'll be interesting.

I'm off to the office....

Steve

Big surf, new computer, etc.....

2011-01-18T17:40:00.004-10:00

So the surf has been HUGE the last few days. Here's a shot of the mouth of Honokohau Harbor yesterday. The whole area was washed out. It's on it's way down right now and we're hoping it clears up enough to do some intros tomorrow.... we'll see.

My computer has been giving me problems for quite some time, and started making bleeping USB connecting sounds (literally bleeps, not that I'm trying to sneak in a blog friendly cuss word) at me last week, then yesterday it completely died. Luckily I had purchased a computer for the shop, so today was spent in part getting it set up.

I wanted to get this photo on it to post for the blog. There's no photo editing program on the computer so I downloaded Picasa... I'll tell you right now it comes off as soon as I have time to get Photoshop on the computer, can't stand it already.

Been working in the shop the last few days trying to put it together. It's an embarrassingly messy disaster area right now... that should end in two days, I almost have all the fixtures nailed in and then I can get it organized.

The surf's coming down, but a storm's supposed to hit tomorrow and dump a lot of rain on us. Rain does not actually affect the diving in Kona because there's little soil near most of our dive sites to cause runoff issues, tomorrow's diving will be more dependant on whether wind and thunderstorms come along with the storm. Hopefully it'll just be a bit of rain and relatively calm seas.

Later,

Steve

Huge surf yesterday... probably bigger today (haven't looked yet).. I try to take a photo or two today.

2011-01-17T08:32:00.002-10:00

A belated.... Happy New Year!!!!!

2011-01-13T21:35:00.005-10:00

Aloha,

I've been real busy this holiday season and put the blog on the back burner for a while. We're now back to the typical slow January so I've got some time to catch up on a few things.

So... diving's been really good up 'til the last week and a half or so. We had one or two gnarly days last week, then another couple bad days (real bad on Wednesday) that made for cancellations this week. Luckily, in Kona once the surf drops the viz can be back to pretty mcuh normal in a day at many of our dive sites. We're diving again tomorrow morning and in the evening we're going out for the manta dive, then it's a couple days off because I've got nothing booked, and then we'll see what early next week brings. According to Magicseaweed.com it looks like the biggest swell we've seen yet this winter hits on Monday. Hopefully it'll be a bit smaller than it currently looks to be once it gets here.

Now that we're coming into a slower time, I'm gonna get serious about getting the shop together so it's more than an office and storage spot for gear. We've been bringing in some product and extra fixtures and I'll be spending my "days off" from charters putting it all together. The goal is to get it all together, hire additional crew and get it open in the next 3 weeks or so.... lots of work to do! I'll have plenty of updates once we get open, odds are I'll be in the shop twiddling my thumbs a couple days a week so I'll have some computer time available.

Here's another shot by customer Jim from last month. I've been too busy to carry a camera on most of our dives so I've got nothing of my own for now, next week I'll make it a point to get a dive or two in with the camera. This is a nice small white phase Stout Moray. This eel comes in both a white/light phase and a darker (brown with speckles) phase. I consider the darker phase to be the more common one, but that's just my speculation as I seem to run into more of them.

Later,

Steve

Merry Christmas everyone... + always keep one eye into the blue when possible....

2010-12-25T21:11:00.008-10:00

Here's another shot forwarded by customer Jim. This one was taken on his second dive ever with a camera... keeps getting decent shots. Makes me want to get some add-ons for my camera. This particular shot gave all of us a kick. Bob was showing customers a pincushion star, and the small crab or shrimp that lived on it, and Jim took the picture. It was only later after he was looking at the photo that he noticed what was in the background.... DOLPHINS!!!!! Make sure to click on the pic for the enlarged view. Jim actually managed to get a couple shots off that had dolphins in the background that none of us knew were even there. It happens, you can't hear them if they're not making noise. It's easy to miss things going on around you.

Today was a wonderful Christmas diving day. We did a night dive last night (14-15 manta rays, what a nice Christmas Eve) and got back into the harbor before a thunderstorm hit us - man it hit hard, we were standing in running water while cleaning the boat. Today was sunny and calm. We did a couple very nice dives. Highlights were Flame angels, Flame wrasses, Divided flatworms, Nudibranchs, Curious Wormfish, Octopus, a Tiger moray, lots of eels and more. It was pretty quiet on the water today, I only saw two other dive companies out, along with a couple of dolphin watch/snorkel companies. Nice day for a boat ride.

Aloha,

Steve

Bi-color anthias Kona Hawaii...

2010-12-24T09:15:00.004-10:00

OK, I'll do something a little different. I'm posting a photo that customer Jim forwarded to me that I find interesting. It's of Bob (one of our guides) and a group of anthias.

Back in the day, there used to be a dive spot called "anthias rock" up in Garden Eel Cove that the dive charters used to go to. It was a rock in 102 or so feet of water that had maybe 4-6 anthias on it. We had a terrific high surf several winters ago that basically buried all but the top of the rock and the anthias site was no more... same surf episode moved the garden eels about 20 feet deeper than they had been prior to that. At some point, divers started visiting a rock out in the sand off one of our other sites to see the anthias that were living at it (anthias often will congregate around a rock out in the middle of nowhere). The last year or so this rock has really become well populated with anthias, tends also to have cleaner shrimp and eels hanging out at it too, so it's an interesting spot.

This particular photo was taken on our customer's very first dive with a housed camera... nice shot! It took me several dives with a camera to come up with something I consider to be a "keeper". He happpens to have the same camera I now own, but with a nice strobe and a wide angle lens with a domed port. The wide angle makes for an interesting perspective, and keeps pretty much all of the scene in focus as well. I'll probably move that direction with my gear at some point.

So I came down with a nasty chest cold for about a month after my trip. I'm pretty much over the caughing and back to diving again. Water conditions have been holding up pretty well, with a bit of a swell that really doesn't affect us much. Last couple nights we've had thunderstorms in the Kailua area - rare event here - we're doing a night dive tonight, hopefully that won't occur again.

Later,

Steve

Leaf Scorpion fish in Kona Hawaii...

2010-12-17T17:23:00.003-10:00

I just found this picture on a laptop I'm about ready to "retire" and thought I'd post it while it's on my mind. It's a nice "white" leaf scorpion. Leaf scorpions come in all variety of colors. I probably never posted this one because it's not exactly facing the direction I want.

Today's diving was good. The water's starting to get a slight chill on it... still around 78, but it's a cool 78 I guess. I managed to come home from vacation feeling fine, but 2 days later I had something attack my chest... lots of caughing for a couple of weeks, but I'm back to where I can lead dives again so I'll be trading off with the crew. I did the second dive today, there was a bit of a swell coming up so it was a bit murky, viz down to 70-80 feet or so. Nothing out of the ordinary today, we did see a few flame angelfish among other things, good dive.

Later,

Steve

Several manta rays on the Kona Manta Ray Night Dive last night...

2010-12-16T09:17:00.004-10:00

Manta rays visit scuba divers in Kona Hawaii from Steve on Vimeo.

We went north of Honokohau Harbor up to the Kona Airport site for the manta dive last night. Our divers saw one manta ray on the afternoon dive, that's always a good sing. On the night dive it was obvious there were several rays that had shown up - all the snorkelers from the other boats were squealing with delight.

There were 7 or 8 mantas hanging around and everyone had a teriffic time. Here's a short video from a while back on a night there were a few mantas at the dive. It looks like there were only 4 or so in this video, once the numbers get up a bit higher it can be a manta madhouse.

Hopefully it'll keep busy with mantas through the Christmas season. We're looking to be pretty darned busy... Ive got today off, then my next empty day is the 5th of January.

Aloha,

Steve

Back to the fishes....

2010-12-11T09:26:00.005-10:00

I kind of drifted away from posting about the diving. I'll get back to it now.

So far, with the exception of last night (ended up being a lot of rain and a lot of wind), the diving's been very good this month. We've had 78 degree water and it's been mostly flat, some days lake flat. We've had several days with sightings of dolphins underwater, the whales are starting to show up (although we're not hearing them yet), the mantas have still been around (although we had to go south last week one night to gind them) and we're keeping busy diving.

Here's a shot of a nice antler coral. We're always taking a peek into these as we pass, they attract a lot of critters and you never know what you'll find.

Aloha,

Steve

Lots of snow fell uphill last night, it's gorgeous today in Kona Hawaii....

2010-12-11T09:18:00.004-10:00

Yesterday the island had it's first major snowfall of the season. Here's a link to the webcams up on Mauna Kea.

The Big Island sees it's share of snow just about every year. I'm not sure how often it snows on Haleakala over in Maui. Last time Oahu got snow on was in March of 1953 as far as I can tell.

Kona Hawaii Weather NOW... kinda yucky today...

2010-12-10T12:01:00.004-10:00

On Wednesday they started putting out civil defense alerts for flash flooding for the island starting on Thursday evening, it finally started raining about an hour ago, call it 10:30 Friday morning. Kauai and Oahu had some good rains and wind damage yesterday, Maui started raining overnight, we'll see how it is here. This is what it looks like outside my house right now. I'm only 2 miles from the ocean and normally we can see the shoreline, the ocean and a whole lot of sky... now it's just gray space beyond our yard.

Click here for the current weather loop. Note: if you're looking at this on another day, it'll be current for then, not December 10th, 2010. Subtract 10 hours from the UTC time to get current Hawaii Standard Time.

I've cancelled tonight's charter. Frankly, it'll be very wet at the very least, if thunderstorms come up it'll be dangerous. Everyone's better off waiting a day or two if they can.

So today I'm running errands. I just ordered essentially a thousand bucks worth of pegboard accessories for the shop. It's not cheap setting up a retail store. I'll be unpacking boxes all day tomorrow and maybe into Sunday, then I gotta figure out where to put it and wait for the next shipments to come in.

Christmas season is almost fully booked, a week ago I had a couple charters booked, now I've got charters every day from the 17th through the third, and a good portion of them are already full... lots of phone calls the last week. Hopefully this is our only storm coming through the next few weeks. From the doppler, it's looking to be the longest stretch of rain (meaning 12+ hours) we've had in Kona in about two years. We don't typically get all day rains.

It's been gorgeous here for a couple of weeks.
Here's a shot of a sunset 3-4 evenings ago... it's getting to be that season where the sunsets are particularly gorgeous at our house. I suspect by tomorrow night we'll be seeing sunsets again.

Later,

Steve

My vacation post...

2010-12-08T19:45:00.012-10:00

Well, I took a vacation in November for a couple of weeks... Phoenix area and Vegas, with the DEMA dive show being the focus of the end of the trip. I haven't posted other than a couple of times in the trip, so I'll try to get back into it. Rather than bore you with DEMA reports, I'll bore you with highlights of my trip.

First and foremost...

After that it was pretty much all downhill.

Actually, a customer we had on the boat the week before the trip knew Phoenix and recommended we go to Gallo Blanco, a small mexican place that was real good. It was close to the airport so we decided to do lunch there after landing. This is a shot of the tacos and a torta we had. They were wonderful. It's a really good little spot for some good mexican food for a good price... she didn't even mention the urinals!

Here's a bunch more photos from the trip.

We hit a zoo/aquarium, ate more food, saw some Vegas, ate at the Horny
Toad in Cave Creek Arizona(who's motto "Enter yourself and enjoy" is a classic. Mannaged to see an ancient Indian cliff dwelling. It was an interesting spot, sort of idyllic with a river, flat area beneath the cliffs to grow crops. Interesting it went vacant around 1500 or so.

We were able to spend some time with our parents on the front end of the Vegas portion of the trip... good fun for us as we don't get to see them all that often.

All in all we did a whole lot of very little. I'll close with a shot of my 52nd birthday dinner meal - a 22 inch loaded hot dog at Alice Cooper's restaurant in Phoenix. Now I can say "been there, done that", if not for the fries, two would have been a cinch to eat.

That's it for a vacation report, I'll spare you the details of DEMA other than it was a pretty busy show.... lots of dive stuff to look at.

Later,

Steve

Frogfish with lure fishing in Kona Hawaii.....

2010-11-16T05:47:00.003-10:00

I've been on vacation for about 10 days and haven't spent much time on the computer. I'm all settled down for the dive industry show in Vegas so I thought I'd post one last fish photo before the posts become DEMA realted the next couple of days.

I took this shot in about 15 feet of water kinda swinging back and forth in the surge. This is a pretty decent sized frogfish, and I didn't realized at the time I took the photo that he was "fishing". Frogfish are a member of the angler family, they have small "lures" they wiggle to attract small fish. You can see the lure off the center of it's forehead, it appears to be a small feathery object on a thread. They'll wiggle that appendage 'til something comes along to eat it, then they'll eat the unsuspecting fish. They're jaws can sort of hinge and separate to where they can eat a fish of quite some size, and the strike is very very fast... I think I remember reading the strike was in the 16/10,000ths of a second range. It's regarded to be among the fastest movements (certainly eating strikes) in the animal kingdom.

Later,

Steve

My lips are cracked... My nose is bleeding... I'm on vacation...

2010-11-11T07:10:00.003-10:00

I haven't been off island for more than 10 hours (quick Oahu day trip) in over two years and it's getting to be time to get away. We've got friends that have a house in Arizona, who also love visiting Kona, so a trade was in order. Going from an extended time in medium/high humidity to zip for humidity does a number on the lips, nose and sinuses every time. Lots of chapstick and saline spray are in order... holpefully it'll settle down in the next few days.... I brought my neti pot (if you don't know what a neti pot is, do a youtube search, you'll be enlightened) just in case, but for now am trying saline spray to keep from totally drying out.

We'll be not running charters for the next short while, but will be running them again come the end of next week or so, so I'm still trying to answer e-mail and the phone for scheduling purposes... it can take a day or two right now, come this weekend I'll be settled to where I can respond quickly.

Here's a couple of lined butterflyfish. They're Hawaii's largest butterflyfish, significantly larger than most other species.

Later,

Steve

RIP "Danno". James MacArthur passed today....

2010-10-28T10:18:00.004-10:00

He was sort of one of the state's icons. Here's a link:Hawaii Five-O's James MacArthur dies

Spent 164 minutes underwater in Kona yesterday....

2010-10-26T16:32:00.004-10:00

Water temp is hanging in at 79 degrees and conditions are good. Yesterday we did two nice long one way dives... put in at one spot and pick up at another. Saw lots of neat stuff.... Flame wrasses, 3 flame angels, a huge school of lined butterflys (we usually see them in pairs),saddleback butterflys, gold lace nudibranchs... all good fun.

Yay! I got my boat back! I took my boat out of service at the tail end of last month for some warranty work. Wrong parts and waiting on shipping because the distributor refused to send parts second day air even if I paid shipping turned a one day job into 4 weeks of frustration. Tomorrow Cathy and I will take the boat out for a while and make sure things are working and try to wash off 4 weeks of dust and then we're back in business. I've been running charters off another charter boat the last week and a half, tomorrow will be the last one off it with any luck.

Here's a photo of a hawkfish hanging out in a hole in some lobe coral. I thought it was interesting that it seemed to like that little protected spot.

Later,

Steve

Dive Makai has shut down apparently... been a rough couple of years for a lot of the dive companies in the area...

2010-10-26T09:50:00.007-10:00

In the past few years we've seen the Kona diving scene change over time. A few longtime operators have gone and others have come in, the boats seem to be getting bigger and are carrying more divers. Things constantly change.

At the risk of being tacky, I'd like to invite any former Dive Makai customers who are looking for someone to dive with to at least check out my web page, reviews on Scubaboard and Undercurrent and such, to see what I have to offer. My wife and I were dive customers (I worked in it as well) prior to being dive operators and had gone out with operators such as Mike Severn's and Ed Robinson's on Maui, and Dive Makai over the years prior to starting the boat biz and wanted to try to pattern our business after those operators to some extent. There's no such thing as running it exactly the same, but I suspect that divers who enjoy those companies will enjoy diving with us.

Wanna Dive is a small company - very small. There's essentially 3 of us running 7-10 charters a week when we're busy. We run a 6 pack boat, never more than 6 customers on board, and we aren't always full. We'll run with just 2 divers on the day dives, and don't skimp due to a light load.

About the diving... We try to give a good fish and dive site briefing prior to each dive, discussing the things we're going to see on the dives, then it's time to dive.... We dive slow. I've been doing this for 11 years, and my other two crew have been doing this 15-30 years, over time you learn slow is better. We're always looking to spot interesting critters to show you, and carry rewriteable slates to identify the various critters we're all finding. Dive profiles are computer driven, with the bulk of the dive time being spent in maybe 25-40 feet of water, making for long dives. We drop customers off at the boat as they approach 500psi, and then continue on with the divers who are better on air. Longish dives are posible, as long as you are within NDL times and have plenty of air you can stay down... within reason I guess, if you're outlasting the DM by a lot at some point we need to cut it. Between the three of us, we're usually good for 80-95 minutes worth of bottom time at most sites.

Anyway, please feel free to check us out or ask any questions you might have. There's several good operators in Kona, the trick is finding the one that suits your needs.

The photo at the top is of a flame angel we saw on one of yesterday's dives (saw three of them actually). Back a decade ago we were lucky to run into one or two a year. Since about '05 they've really been on the upswing and we see them relatively commonly nowadays.

Aloha,

Steve

Awesome Kona diving today... 2 dives, 80 minutes each...

2010-10-21T10:26:00.003-10:00

It was sunny and flat out on the water today, good day for a couple of dives. Lots of neat fishes today... 4, yes 4, Threadfin Jacks, Saddleback Butterflyfish, Lined Butterfly fish, Heller's Barracudas, Anthias, all sorts of eels, Pyramid butterflys, Peacock Flounders, and all sorts of other neat fish. Viz was pushing 150+ feet, nice and clear.

Here's a shot of some divers passing under an arch. Kona is very volcanic, there's several sites that have lava structure that has been overgrown with corals. It's always fun to explore and see what's hanging out under the archways, we find a lot of our nudibranch sightings under arches.

More diving tomorrow... maybe I'll blabber about it...

Steve

Another nice day in Kona...

2010-10-21T10:25:00.004-10:00

It's another nice non-diving day for me today. I'm at the shop today, I'll be out on the water most of the next several days it looks like. Pretty busy 'til the 4th or so.

Here's a small Tiger Moray. It was out crawling about the other morning. We usually see parts of this eel through holes, don't see the head as often. This is one of our eels that people sometimes mistake for a seasnake, it doesn't have much of a dorsal fin to look at.

Later,

Steve

Oooh the water was flat in Kona this morning... dive conditions are great!

2010-10-20T13:06:00.005-10:00

I got up this morning to walk the hills with my wife, Pat, and saw the water is about is flat as it ever gets here. I should be diving! Been busy diving two dives a day for the better part of the last week, so it's a day off. Maybe tomorrow. Starting Friday I've got a stretch of bookings through the 4th of next month. The water's still sitting at about 78/79, hopefully it'll stay this warm into December.

I mentioned in yesterday's post that I saw some Threadfin Jacks on the morning dive. I quickly took some shots as they buzzed past and lucked into getting this not so great shot - they're almost impossible to get a focus on against the ocean background. As it was, with the blue backgrounds it's tough to get any kind of shot with accurate colors... gotta learn how. I had no time to set up, just point the camera, click, click, click and hope for the best.

These fish are pretty neat, there's not a lot of information about them. They look like they're made of mylar. I've only seen them a handful of times over the years.

Today's big project... wander in to town for a haircut. Being a "business man" I probably should get a haircut every 4-6 weeks to look presentable... but hey, I was a teenager in the 70's and long hair was imprinted on me then I guess. I actually prefer it short, looks better and stays out of the way, but I just can't seem to make the time to mess with my hair more than 3-4 times a year (that's up from 2-3 times a year, there may be hope for me yet).

Aloha,

Steve

"My best dive ever!"...

2010-10-19T20:13:00.006-10:00

I'm taking the liberty of quoting a customer after a manta dive last week. We hear this a lot, thing was, this customer was fairly well traveled and had over a thousand dives. When it's hot (we had nine mantas taht particular night) the manta dive is THAT GOOD.

Keep in mind, despite the fact that the manta dive is a world class dive that will amaze pretty much any diver, Kona has lots of good diving. It's tough to go wrong here.

I've been waiting on boat engine parts for 3 weeks... really frustrating, the boat's been out of the water with the port engine in pieces for that long... I was having some necessary warranty work (engine got an exhaust leak) and parts were brought in, wrong part, and I've been waiting since... got the call from Oahu this afternoon, parts are in, will be in Kona Thurssday and I should be back in the water on Friday. I've been using another boat the last week or so, but I want to get back to mine ASAP.

In the meanwhile... I've been doing some nice diving. The last couple of days have been particularly good critter days for me. I've seen my third Thornback Cowfish diving ever... a huge number of Flame Wrasses (I've seen these offered online for as much as 350-500 bucks a pair) at a location I hadn't seen them before, with a supermale that was displaying in a manner that would put the cover male on Hoover's Hawaiian Fishes book to shame - take a look at this youtube video of a pair in an aquarium - (too bad I had no camera on that dive, I think the one I saw was bigger than the one in the video)... Threadfin Jacks (they're so cool, look like they're made of mylar), as well as some other neat stuff.

Here's a strawberry nudibranch from an earlier dive. wehn you first see them they'll look like they're black with green/gray spots, get a light on them and their color will show (red light disappears underwater as shallow as 15-20 feet so red really doesn't show well at depth).

later,

Steve

Yippe-ki-yo, mini sirloin burgers... Jack in the Box has opened in Kailua-Kona... Boy did I carb out this morning...

2010-10-17T15:09:00.005-10:00

3 mini sirloin burgers, a chicken sandwich, 2 Jack's tacos, curly fries and a soda... now that's a breakfast! Jack in the Box opened sometime the last several days on Henry street above Kuikini, ironically enough it's practically directly above an old failed Jack in the Box, now a popular plate lunch place. At any rate, I just had to go and get one good pig out in there.

The rest of this post is a bunch of blabber (like the first part was oh so important?)....

I was full. I've been real good on my diet this year so one day won't kill me, probably. My New Year's resolution this year was to be able to hike the Captain Cook Monument trail without passing out.. I started walking the top half to two thirds of it early this year, but the last time I tried it in February my knee swole up for 2-3 weeks. Next thing I know I'm weighing myself and find I'm pushing 240 lbs.. can't be too easy on the joints, especially now that I qualify for an AARP card. Back to the low carb diet to see what it does for me.

So no I'm down to 207 or thereabouts and I'm trying to keep up with my wife walking hills... getting close (she's been walking 5 days a week for a couple years) but I'm still huffing a bit. Part of my drive for the weight loss is the desire to be able to climb that Captain Cook trail, but another part is to be able to spend some time hiking (and eating of course) on my vacation this fall. It looks like the hiking's gonna work out OK, I'm definitely in better shape than the trip I managed to survive a couple years back. The eating's a whole 'nuther thing... I can't eat as much as I used to, it seems.

In the past I've generally gained about 13 pounds each time I take a vacation... so this year, since I'm down 33 lbs, I guess I'm allowed to gain 46 pounds on my vacation. It's gonna be fun! We're headed to Vegas for DEMA (the dive industry show) again next month, gonna stop in Arizona for several days first and take in the sights.

One last comment about Jack in the Box... let me tell you a story.... (hopefully my father won't mind) My father has had the good fortune of being able to travel quite a bit over his lifetime. He's lived in several parts of the country over the years, was stationed in Guam for a while, helped out in several refugee camps (Cambodia/Thailand border, Ethopia, Rwanda), lived in Romania for a while and traveled fairly extensively, and last year he mentioned that in his life he can only remember one food item he couldn't stomach... It wasn't the boiled half grown duck fetuses they ate in Guam (he apparently liked those, I guess they're considered a delicacy in some parts of SE Asia), it wasn't the food at the refugee camps, it was Jack in the Box tacos. I personally like 'em... crispy greasy mystery goo filled tacos... YUM! I'm glad to see Jack make it back to Kona. I may not get my dad in there though.

I'll try that Captain Cook trail hike again after vacation... got a couple months left in the year to meet the resolution.

Here's a shot of a juvenile Domino Damsel. They stick pretty close to coral heads when they're small. As they grow they tend to find a spot on the reef to hang out. They're interesting in that if you come up to a group of the adults, and listen as you approach, you can hear them chirp a "stay away" warning. They're aggressive for a small fish (call it 3 - 3.5 inches as an adult), but don't do much to divers other than make their presence known.

Later,

Steve

1 tank manta ray night dives in Kona Hawaii....

2010-10-03T07:06:00.004-10:00

I thought I'd talk about a question that comes up from time to time about my business... why don't you offer 1 tank manta ray night dives? Well, we sort of do, but don't really push it for a couple reasons.

Back in the day when I worked for other operators I used to lead 1 tank manta dives up to 3 times a week for a pretty good stretch. We'd get people who hadn't dove in years, or people who took the class a year or two earlier and hadn't dove since, wanting to do that one tank night dive because they've heard it's "THE" dive to do in Kona. Well you know what, a single night dive when you've not been in the water in some time just plain isn't the smartest idea one can have. If something can go wrong, even if it's just a matter of comfort as opposed to something serious, it probably will the first time you're in the water, and doing it at night only compounds any issues that might occur. I've never had to perform a major rescue at night, but little panic session mini-rescues are pretty darned common when a night dive is the first dive a person's done in months or years... it's task loading for the person that's attempting it. I'm amazed at the difference adding a late afternoon dive prior to that night dive makes for LOTS of divers. I've found the night dive wasn't always a fun experience for some divers, generally due to discomfort, when doing a 1 tanker, the addition of that extra afternoon dive pretty much changes that. I can't recall one panic issue to anyone on the night dive in all the years I've been doing the afternoon dive first. It just makes for a better experience, in my mind anyways, for everyone... even if you personally don't have troubles, if there's someone in the group having issues it can affect the dive for everyone in the group.

As a bonus, that first dive is generally a very good dive. We generally dive the same spot as the night dive if we're diving the Garden Eel Cove manta site, 'cause it's one of Hawaii's premiere dive sites. Before I moved here I knew of it because it made a list of "Best Dives in the Pacific" in a reader survey in Scuba Diving Magazine (and that was before the night dive even started being held there). It's a very good dive. If we're heading south to the Sheraton site for the manta dive, we tend to dive one of two great reef sites on the way.

That said, while I don't push 1 tank night dives, that doesn't necessarily mean we won't do them. The trick is I need to have enough divers, preferrably that have already dove with us at some point this vacation, to make it worth going out. I usually require 4 to 6 divers to do a one tank dive, and I really want them to have some dives in this trip first so we don't run into problems. If you've got a group of 4-6 divers and are looking for a one tank dive to keep your evening shorter rather than making a 5-6 hour event of it, give me a call.

Here's a shot of a Moorish Idol. They're one of everyone's favorites it seems.

Ironman's a coming this next weekend... October 9th... Kona will be busy for a couple of days...

2010-10-03T07:03:00.009-10:00

I'm hanging out at the dive shop today and thought I'd post on the blog. We've had quite a bit of surf the last couple weeks, not overly huge, but coming from two directions (can happen around September/October and March/April with the changing seasons) making things a hair sloppier than normal, but it hasn't been too limiting as far as the diving goes... a few sites were too crummy to dive, but there's usually good options available.

I have the boat in to the mechanic for a repair for the first time in almost 3 years... bummer, but it's under warranty and this is the opportune time (if there's ever such a time) to be down for a few days. We picked up an exhaust leak so the engine needs to come apart and have some parts replaced. Hopefully it should be pretty much good as new once done, should be a 2-3 day fix. The fun of boat ownership. I got off cheap this time, warranty... yahoo. I talked with another dive company owner who just finished paying several tens of thousands worth of engine work a short while back. It's one of the hazards of the business.

This next weekend is Ironman. Kailua will be a bit busier than normal for fall this next week, but not crazy busy. It'll be pretty much business as usual, although the main tourist section downtown should be hopping for a week or so. I've never really seen a spike of business for Ironman, people are too busy doing other things than diving. I've had a couple of competitors dive 3-4 days after a big race from time to time, before the race they're too busy getting ready for the event. I may have to go hang out downtown for a couple hours the tail end of the week... lots of "good energy" in town around Ironman week. I'll close the shop for Saturday, they pretty much shut down the highway on the north end of town to the airport for the race so you'll find a lot of businesses off the highway in the area between Kaiwi street and the airport shut for the day.

Here's a photo of a Leopard Blenny. These guys are pretty cute, they're fairly tough to show to people and really tough to photograph because they dart into finger corals the moment you give them too long of a look. The new camera has a short enough lag time that I was able to get a shot off before it darted into a hole. This is the best shot of one of these guys I've ever managed to take so far. I still need to put in some time with the camera underwater, I've only had it wet a few times.

Later,

Steve

In the middle of a long stretch of workdays....here's an underwater video...

2010-09-27T20:19:00.003-10:00

Haven't posted in a bit. Here's a quick video I took while playing around between dives for a minute. We've been having back to back swells come in so the viz has been a bit down on several of our dives, call it 70-80 feet on the bad days in some spots, more in others. The video makes it look worse than it was, it was a cloudy day and the quality's not quite what it should be.

Later,

Steve

Painted Church, South Kona, Painted church road above Honaunau Bay in Captain Cook Hawaii....

2010-09-16T17:57:00.005-10:00

I'm playing with the new Olympus ib software for the Pen e-pl1 and other recent cameras. I went down to the Painted Church down the road from where I live in Captain Cook. It's a local landmark. It's an older church, and the minister at the time, having a fair number of parishoners that weren't all that literate (written language was relatively new to Hawaii at the time), painted pictures to help illustrate his teachings. It's quite fabulous.

Anyways, I tried the panorama function that the Oly Pen camera has. You can set it in panorama mode, take pictures which have some lineup helps/prompters on the LCD, then go into the editing program and stitch it all together. This particualr image has three separate photos involved. One merging is pretty obvious, but really doesn't affect the image, the other is less obvious. I managed to merge RAW photos, but it doesn't allow a RAW editing afterwards, I'm hoping I can do a RAW editing then merge the photos... if this happens, then... YAHOO... I can go underwater and take panoramas that are color corrected. Give me a few days (possibly weeks, I've got a full schedule ahead starting Saturday for a couple weeks at least) to figure that one out.

Anyways, for a first panorama, and about 5 minutes in front of the computer, I'm happy.

Later,

Steve

I finally put a RAW editor for the Olympus Pen e-pl1 on my computer....

2010-09-16T09:04:00.004-10:00

Aloha,
Well, it's about time. Unfortunately Adobe CS and CS3 don't support the Pen series of cameras, you need CS4 or later to find an update that'll support RAW editing for those cameras. The cameras come with Olympus' own editing and file management program. I'm working off two 4-5 year old computers and neither of them has a functioning DVD/CD drive, got on to Olympus' site this morning and downloaded their program. Yay. It's slower than Adobe's RAW editor, doesn't seem to do as many of the things I want to do, but it'll do 'til I get a new computer at some point in the future and load CS5 on to it.

I've only converted two shots so far, so I can't say much about the program. It does have a nice grey dropper white balance feature which works well for underwater shots... lots of greys on the reef with all of our hard corals. You can just put the dropper on a likely gray spot (OK, since this blog is read internationally I'm covering all my bases by interchangeablly using "gray" and "grey" I guess... Don't remember which one I should be using anymore) and click and the photo will hopefully go to it's natural color rather than the cyan/blue you typically get underwater. I should do some screen shots some day to show it. I tried it on a couple photos and they came out looking a bit too colorful, might have to tone down the saturation a bit on some pictures.

Here's a quick shot of a couple yellow tangs picking at algae amongst the finger corals. Tangs are herbivores and graze pretty much all day long. A lively reef will be coverered with numerous species of tangs.

Later,

Steve

Like snorkeling Kona? Try scuba! Discover diving intro dives are fun, no certification needed...

2010-09-15T10:40:00.007-10:00

Kona Hawaii is blessed with a lot of the best snorkeling and scuba diving in the state. There's lots of great snorkeling and lots of people love it. If you're one of those people, keep intro dives in mind. With a short briefing and practice of a few skills on and just below the surface with a qualified instructor, you can be diving in no time.

Pretty much all the dive companies offer intro dives off of their boats. Due to the fact that Kona has excellent reefs next to shore, with drop offs and both deep and shallow water near the boat moorings, it's easy to put both intro divers and experienced divers on the same boat, give them separate instructors or guides, and tour the reef without interfering with each other's dive experience.

As an intro diver you'll be with an instructor at all times. You'll be shown a video or a flip chart explaining the what's, why's and how's of scuba diving, then do some practice before diving. Once everyone's comfortable with their skills,it's time to dive!!! Whoohoo!!! You'll generally be diving the very same reefs the experienced divers are diving, but there are some depth and other restrictions. Depth limit for intros with an instructor is to 40', most all of our best fish and reef life is in the top 40' of water so this works great. 40' sounds scary for some, but generally it's the top 10-20 feet where the nerves kick in if there are any apprehensions. Once down to the bottom of the moorings, most intro divers calm right down and are comfortable in quick order.... they're usually too amazed to be nervous by that point.

My recommendation to anyone curious about trying scuba for the first time is to plan the outing ahead, leave a couple days in advance open to get some snorkeling in... snorkeling in the days prior to intro dives increases the success rate immensely... and plan on having lots of fun! Standards can vary from dive agency to dive agency, but the biggest one allows up to 4 intro divers per instructor. I try to limit it to 3 intro divers per instructor on my charters, and I typcially don't mix groups with an instructor, so if there are only 2 of you, expect an instructor for yourselves and don't worry about extra divers competing for the instructor's attention. I reserve the right, if there's only 1 student, to add another student if the opportunity arises, but I think that's happened only once in the years I've been doing intros off my boat.

I'm not sure what other companies price their intros at, but I currently charge $189 for a single, or $159 each for two or more, for intro dives (September of '10, prices could change at some point down the line). That's 2 boat dives (we typically move for the second dive), all the gear, a light lunch and beverages and such, and the instruction. Other than Hawaii's 4.166% tax, it's all included in the price.

It's a great experience for most people that are comfortable snorkelers. If you're in the water a lot on your vacation, you might want to call a dive company (pick me, pick me) and give it a shot. Advance notice is helpful, it's a good idea to call or e-mail before the trip as there is a medical history waiver that may require a physician's signature involved... once you get to a certain age it's easy to have a health history that might need a signature, better to find out ahead of time than having to play the fax game back and forth with your doctor on short notice.

This is a great way to find out if you're interested in going for a scuba certification without any time or financial committments. If you decide you want to get certified after trying intro dives, you've pretty much done the hardest part (getting underwater that first time) and the class should be much easier after the experience.

Here's an underwater photo of a spotted puffer I saw while diving for fun on my day off yesterday. I found it interesting as it was quite golden brown, compared to the usual black with white spots we usually see.

Aloha,

Steve

So every now and then, I kinda like a corny joke...

2010-09-11T15:31:00.004-10:00

We had a customer on the boat telling a couple jokes... here's one I can repeat...

What do they charge for piercings at the Pirate tatoo parlor?

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OK, this one is better heard than read...
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A buck an ear.

I got a kick out of that one.

I'm down at the shop today, have charters tomorrow and Monday evening then a few days off if the phone doesn't ring in the meanwhile. The last half of the month looks pretty busy.

Here's a shot of a small whitemouth moray eel. These guys are our most common eel, sometimes we make it through an entire dive without seeing any, but that seems to be the minority of the time... Hawaii has lots of eels.

This is another pic that I photoshopped out the blue. I should write down the steps when I do that, this pic turned out pretty accurate for color.

Later,

Steve

Raccoon Buttefly fish on the reef in Kona Hawaii....

2010-09-04T18:34:00.004-10:00

Wonderful weather in Kona today... sunny skies, flat ocean. I had the day off, work the next 5-6 days at least as calls are coming in. Hopefully the great weather and water conditions continue.... this time of year there's a good chance of that.

Here's a school of raccoon butterfly fish I took a picture of the other day. Turned out OK for a jpeg shot. It had a fairly strong blue cast to it, but I was able to go into photoshop and get in to the selective colors and turn down the blues and cyans, and boost the magentas and yellows a hair then go to levels and get it looking closer to real. I wish I could do that consistantly, it worked reasonably well this time though.

Later,

Steve

Oregon State Beavers beat number 6 TCU Horned Frogs in upset win in college football....

2010-09-04T06:29:00.004-10:00

OK, this is strictly an experiment. I'm seeing if my blog places well on google searches after the game, based on predicting the results of the game 7 hours before it starts... I may already be in the system before the game's over.

As you can tell, I'm a Beaver fan... lived in Corvallis for many years before coming over to Kona and went to Oregon State (my college experience is a whole 'nuther story in itself). I guess I could make up a headline predicting a different result in another post to really broaden the experiment in case it's not a Beaver victory, but I'm not going there. Go Beavers!

Note: game didn't turn out like I hoped... oh well. Expect this post to disappear in the next day or two.

aloha,

Steve

We're coming into the best season / time of year for scuba diving in Kona Hawaii...

2010-09-01T11:12:00.004-10:00

It's that time of year again... summer's over, crowds are down, water's warm and flat. We always look forward to September through November as it's probably the nicest water conditions of the year - not that they're bad at other times - it's just consistantly good for the most part.

We've had some really good diving lately. Been seeing lots of critters. Highlights of the last week or so have been frogfish, scorpion fish, flame angels, psychedelic wrasses, flame wrasses, a HAMMERHEAD!, leaf scorpions, and more. The manta ray night dive has been crazy busy, with both boats and mantas. We've been going out 2-3 night a week (a lot for us, we've only got 3 people to cover 7 days and 3 nights of diving) on top of the daily morning dives. Manta numbers have been in the teens the last couple weeks pretty much every night. The boat numbers on that dive are starting to shrink now that school's starting everywhere and tourist numbers are dropping.

Here's a nice frogfish that we've been watching grow. It's in the 5-6 inch length right now, was much smaller when Cathy found it earlier this summer. It's amazing how fast they grow. It's pretty "clean" and yellow right now. As they grow it'll get all sorts of red stuff growing on it (you can see it starting in spots) and start changing colors.

Later,

Steve

Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse (Labroides phthirophagus)

2010-08-22T17:22:00.005-10:00

Here's a shot of a Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse. This particular colorful little fish is endemic to Hawaii, not found in other parts of the world. Other species of cleaner wrasses can be found throughout the tropical Indo/Pacific, I'm not sure about the Red Sea but I suspect there's a similar species there. They are not found in the Caribbean, although there is a neon goby with similar markings and feeding habits.

Cleaner wrasses perform a valuable service to the reef community. Their diet consists primarily of parasites. Fish will solicit a "cleaning" from the wrasse, and the wrasse will work the fish over, removing anything that shouldn't belong there. You'll see even larger predator fish such as eels and groupers willingly let the cleaner wrasses enter their mouths and gills to pick at parasites.

I first learned about these guys back in my aquarium days... they're poor aquarium inhabitants. Their diet is primarily parasites and they typically starve to death in aquariums. This is a fish definitely best left on the reef.

I snapped this one on the spur of the moment as a damsel was begging for a cleaning. The new Olympus Pen was able to lock focus (well, close anyway) in a flash. I haven't been able to get a shot of these guys within several feet in the past as they dart practically every split second when you get close. I'm hoping some afternoon when I have time to really focus on getting a crisp clear shot of these.

Water temp is still hovering in that 78 degree range. We were hoping for a little higher by now, but apparently there's talk of a la Nina current coming in this year that'll keep things cooler.

Busy week this next week, day charters and a couple of night charters. We had 15 mantas on the night charter last week, heard it was around 20 last night... the manta dive is really hot right now. Things are starting to slow down, tail end of the summer tourist season... it's been a madhouse the last 3-4 weeks on that dive.

Later,

Steve

First results with my Olympus e-pl1 underwater...

2010-08-21T09:57:00.003-10:00

I took a quick dive yesterday with the new camera and underwater housing. First thoughts... a flash would be helpful... adn I need to shoot RAW. It was a very gray afternoon, and there was a pretty strong south swell, so the Place of Refuge was a bit more mucked up than usual... probably 60 foot of viz in the shallows and 80-90 at depth.

Wow! The camera reacted quickly, locks focus practically instantaneously compared to the cameras I've used in the past. I was using the underwater settings that are hidden on the camera... Olympus does a very poor job at explaining how to get at them in their manual, had to look it up on a message board, it's easy to get to and they have an underwater macro and underwater wide angle mode you can toggle back and forth between at will... more on that in another post. I spent most of the time just pointing at things using the underwater macro mode.

I took a bunch of photos, some of them turned out OK. The biggest issue was the dark day and lack of light made for typical underwater blueish photos. Without shooting in RAW, where you can adjust the white balance after the fact, and not taking time to custom white balance the photos underwater as I was taking them, I had to rely on my weak photoshop skills to get the proper colors on the fish. This photo of an Ornate Butterfly fish turned out pretty OK.

I'm off to the shop for the afternoon... open noon 'til 6 on weekends.

Steve

Olympus Pen PT-EP01 underwater housing for Oly's E-PL1 camera review...

2010-08-20T00:30:00.008-10:00

Aloha,

I just received the housing for my Olympus E-pl1 camera. I refused the urge to go down the hill and do a dive with it today, tomorrow morning I'll have to. I took the time to read the manual, it actually comes with a reasonable sized manual, something I haven't seen with a lot of housings I've had before.

My first impressions are that it's well made. In the box comes the housing, o-ring, o-ring grease, dessicant packs, rubber LCD hood, a rigid lens cover. It also comes with an application for DEPP insurance. DEPP insures gear sets and underwater photo equipment. The housing features a new-ish locking system that Olympus has come with in the last couple of years that seems pretty good. The back of the housing is a transparent polycarbonate type of material. My only gripe is that only the bottom part of the back is polished to clear so you can readily see the o-ring and check for moisture... I'd like to see it polished to where you could see the entire o-ring to check on your seal. The buttons on the back of the housing are really nice, they're larger than I'm used to on other housings, and they're labeled nicely - almost better than the buttons on the camera are labeled.

I was happy to see the lens cover and LCD hood as the company that sold the housing had those available as "replacements" and I decided not to purchase them at the time. "Replacement" to me implies they come with the original purchase, but if you look up the housing on Olympus' site, they have the zoom gear ring listed as a "replacement" item, yet it does not come with the original purchase. I think Oly ought to change their website to say "optional" on the zoom gear, as the way they have it makes it unclear as to whether it comes with the original purchase or not. It doesn't. I did pick up the zoom gear as a separate purchase. The zoom gears are basically rubber gears that fit tightly around the camera lens which matches up with a small gear on the front of the housing so you can use the zoom. It's an extra 45 bucks, but well worth it. Different sizes of zoom gears are available, as the housing has been made to accept a couple different lenses and the gear needs to fit the specific lens.

The other purchase at the time of the order was the macro lens mount. It's a rigid plastic piece that fits over the front port of the housing and will accept 67 mil threaded lenses. I have an Inon 67 mil macro lens already so I'm set there. The lens adaptor is another 45 bucks... it all adds up.

The housing itself is pretty big compared to the Canon housing I had for my G9, but it's quite comparable to the size of the Ikelite housing I had for my Olympus 8080 several years back. The Olympus E-pl1 is one of the smallest interchangeable lens cameras available these days, and the housing is also. Olympus could have made the housing a bit smaller by eliminating the space for the optional electronic viewfinder. I'm sure they put that in there to appease the people who love using viewfinders rather than using the LCD. In my opinion the LCDs with live view have sort of revolutionized underwater photography, I suspect we'll see less use of viewfinders in the future. Even with it's somewhat largish size, it's quite a bit smaller than most of the DSLR housings we see come on the boat. Price of the housing is $599, I found it for $75 less. It sounds like a lot of money, but the typical DSLR housing begins at around $1200 and can top a couple grand easily. Olympus has made it so you can get an interchangeable lens system underwater for what has been the price of just an economy housing in the past.

Unlike most of the smaller point and shoot housings, this housing is not made for use of the onboard flash for taking photos. It's set up so the onboard flash can trigger a remote flash.. that's another expense down the line. For now I'll be shooting with available light.

I can't wait to get it wet.

Video of Alii Drive in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii....

2010-08-17T11:41:00.005-10:00

Quality's not real good on this, I haven't figured out how to successfully upload a full size file to Youtube yet. I took a drive down Alli Drive some time in July and set the camera on the dash. Here's a little video from about the Royal Kona Resort to the King Kamehameha Hotel, that's pretty much the main business sector tourist-wise in Kailua. Hopefully it'll give you somewhat of an idea of what it's like here, it's a cute/quaint seaside town.

I've been real busy doing charters, not much time for anything else the last two weeks. Water conditions have been terriffic except for an occasional unexpected south breeze popping up.

I should be getting back to posting new fish photos again soon. Took advantage of the busy weeks and paid off my camera, the housing's on order... I may have to get it wet this weekend.

Later,

Steve

Kaloko Honokohau National Park. Exploring Kailua-Kona's backyard...

2010-08-08T14:55:00.007-10:00

This morning I decided to check out the trail at the Honokohau harbor parking lot that leads to the Kaloko Honokohau National Park. It's a trail back by the Kona sailing club lot,it's clearly marked. I checked it out the first month or two I first moved here and really haven't done it since. It runs from the back lot and winds it's way through the National Park. A short way in to the trail you"ll come across a split in the trail. One directions goes to a large tidepool and canoe house and the beach and the other leads to the trail going to the visitor center you access from the highway, and to the beach and Ai makapa fish pond.

I passed on walking to the visitor center, just checked out the beach and the pond. The beach here is one of the longest on the west side of the Big Island. It's probably at least a half mile long, maybe longer. The photo doesn't do the sand justice, there's a fair amount of black sand mixed in with the off-white/brown sand typical of sandy beaches here so it looks a bit "dirtier" in the photo than it is. This was taken at 9:45 on a Sunday morning... it's just 2 guys fishing, a dog, and me. Not a heck of a lot of decent sandy beaches in Hawaii see that kind of lack of activity on a weekend. I suspect it picks up over the course of the day, but considering it's just 2-3 miles from a major tourist center it seems quite uncrowded. It's not a frolic in the water kind of beach, but it's a good sunning beach. Back when I moved here they were working on eliminating the nudity, there's a sign reminding people of that as you enter the park. I think they've done it, was kind of news in the area back around the turn of the century (now I really feel old.... one of my grandfathers was a kid "back around the turn of the century" last time that phrase came up).

Back when I checked out the beach years ago, I just walked along the water and had no idea the fish pond was just the other side of the small dunes of the beach. I've checked out the more accessible Kaloko ponds below Costo several times, but wasn't aware of this one 'til I was training someone to scuba dive that had a pool at their house above Costco. You can clearly see it from up there and it's much larger than Kaloko pond. I'd like to catch it for photos on a clear quiet morning. There's some water foul around, and some kind of fish jumped in the distance when I was there. The Hawaiian's used to catch or trap fish and keep them in the ponds along the coast for food.

I didn't walk the entire park. think you can make it all the way to the Kaloko end from there if you want. It's a nice little cultural walk.

Yay! Humpy's Alehouse restaurant opened in Kailua! Kona just got another good restaurant (I hope it's good anyway)....

2010-08-05T21:59:00.011-10:00

Whoohoo!!! I've been waiting for this restaurant for almost a year. I'd never wandered into the Hard Rock Cafe the first several years I lived here, then finally did and kind of liked it... then it went out of business and there's been a big hole in the middle of the shopping/restaurant area of Kailua for a couple of years. It was announced that Humpy's Alehouse of Anchorage Alaska was going to put in a restaurant here and it sounded quite interesting. I talked to several of my Alaskan customers and friends and they'd mentioned it was as pretty good place up there that seemed quite busy... sounded like a good addition to Kailua village to me.

Original plans, if I recall correctly, were to open around October/November of last year. Well, things go slow here, especially permitting, and they were finally checked off just recently and apparently opened in the last couple of days. Pat was headed to the airport tonight to go to a friend's wedding on the mainland and we figured we'd do a quick visit for a meal. I'm not kidding about quick, we had a 50-55 minute window and I wasn't sure we'd be able to get it in. The restaurant was pretty busy, and I've got to commend them for their service. We've been to other places when they first opened where things didn't go smoothly the few nights.

A bit about Humpy's. Humpy's is a whole lot of BEER... and more. The upstairs is much the same configuration as the old Hard Rock, the downstairs retail space has largely been replaced by a bar and seating. When I mentioned "a whole lot of BEER", I wasn't kidding... 36 beers on tap according to their list. That's a lot for a small town.... they should start a club and offer a T shirt and a spot on a plaque to anyone who can finish the list (oh, at least 2 sittings of course). They also feature sandwiches, burgers, stone oven pizzas, seafoods (from King Crab legs to salmon burgers), a Hawaiian plate menu and more. It's gonna take me a few visits to navigate the menu and get a handle on the place. I had the Paniolo burger off their 10 oz burger listings with a Big Island feel... big burger, pretty good, but when it comes right down to it their "Humpy's Burger" and other 6 oz burger listings sounded a little more interesting, I'll try them next (I was hungry today). Pat had the calimari strips, I'd say they're more like calimari fries, cut like french fries and breaded with a spicy breading. They were cooked right... tender, not rubbery, but Pat's not into the style as much as I am, guess who got to finish the last few... yum, yum. I forgot to mention the fries that came with the burger... yay, fresh cut fries, happy to see them.

Anyway, the seating was immediate (seat yourself once checking in), the service prompt, drink and food orders were taken quickly and delivered quickly. No long waits through anything, but we weren't rushed in the least. Come desert time I mentioned we were timing things for a plane and the check was delivered right away. Service was good. We were treated to a pretty good sunset too....

It's located smack dab in the middle of the Coconut Marketplace shops next to the volleyball court on Alii drive. I'm happy to see new businesses in town. There's a few other spots right nearby that have opened recently too, haven't had a chance to give them a try. I'll be back to Humpy's.

Oooh, gotta mention the new camera again. I took these shots with my Olympus Pen, no flash and not trying to be particularly motionless. Not sure if I could get the interior bar or exterior shot with my old point and shoots that well exposed without paying attention to what I was doing in the lighting we had. It's fun having a bit higher end camera to play with.

Later,

Steve

The Kona Hawaii manta ray night dive is very busy right now...

2010-07-31T13:54:00.004-10:00

Untitled from Steve on Vimeo.

Just thought I'd throw in a little manta video from a year or so ago since the manta dive off the Kona airport is hopping right now. We've had numbers in the teens the last several nights - that'sa lot of manta rays in one spot! We've got 3 manta charters running next week, as well as a slate of pretty full day dives.

The next few weeks are looking pretty busy, it's that last of the summer crush I guess. Water temperature is still holding at 78/79. We've had a bit of a south swell this weeks, limits a few of the sites somewhat, but there's still plenty of great spots to dive that are free from the swell and have great viz. I'm hoping that swell has raised the water temp a degree or two. It'd be nice to see 80 degrees or more for a while this year, last year I only saw it once on a dive. Some years we get a few months in that range in the late summer through fall.

later,

Steve

Keei Cafe. The best value nice dinner restaurant in Kona?

2010-07-31T09:05:00.011-10:00

Looking for a good meal that won't necessarily bust your wallet? Pat and I went to our favorite nice restaurant on the island again last night for an early meal. I thought I'd give it a plug. Keei Cafe. We managed to pretty much open up the place last night, so seating was wide open and "Uncle Freddy" was just setting up to start performing (he apprently is there Thursday through Saturday at this time). Nice quiet jazz with singing, very pleasant.

When I first moved here I kept having people tell me about this great little roadside shack to eat at, it was the original location for Keei Cafe... I think it had 9 card tables with gingham fabric tablecloths at the time. Several years ago they moved into new digs... bigger, lots of tropical woods, full bar, very nice.

The Keei Cafe has a smallish menu... a fancy tostada, half a chicken, ribeye steak, rack of lamb, 2-3 fish items cooked 3 different ways, and a few other things I'm forgetting off the top of my head, as well as soups, salads and deserts. Everything we've ever had there is very tasty and cooked properly. Entree prices start in the 12-13 buck range and top out at $25.99 for the rack of lamb. My pan seared ribeye steak was $22.99 and Pat's pan seared lemon caper butter sauce Ono plate was $21.99. We also had a nice greek salad at $7.99. Everything's great, the portions are good, the photos don't do them justice as far as size goes, and we can't recall them having raised prices at all in several years. We haven't found a meal this good for this price anywhere else on the west side of the island in a long time.Pat and I are not big desert eaters, but Bob (my employee) loves their mango cobbler and every desert I've tried over the years has been great. Located in Kealakekua on the mauka side of the highway, it's a bit of a trip for some vacationers, but it's worth it in our opinion. One note: They've been cash only, no credit cards, for years. Nowadays with even fast food places taking credit cards I thought I'd better mention it.

Oh, and did I mention the maitais are delicious? Very interesting, have a bit of li heng mui powder mixed in... you'll either love it or hate it I guess.

Good meal.

Kahalu'u Beach Park Kailua / Keauhou Kona Hawaii. Great snorkeling spot on Alii drive...

2010-07-29T11:31:00.008-10:00

It was nice and sunny the other morning and I was in the area so I stopped at Kahalu'u beach and took a short video. I need to learn the Olympus Pen camera still, next time I'll try manual focus, the automatic focus in video mode tends to drift.

Kahalu'u is a little public park on the south end of Alii drive in the Keauhou area.
It's technically outside of the town of Kailua, but I consider it all to be Kailua - there's ancient family names for all sorts of villages here. Kailua is now the business hub of Kona (which extends from the south end of Anaehoomalu Beach up north to the south end of Manuka Bay to the south). It wasn't all that long ago that Captain Cook, up in coffee country, was the center of commercial and governmental activity on the west side of the island. I went to a traffic meeting back in about '04 or so and the Mayor said many of the problems here stem from the fact that in 1970, Kailua had a population of 291 (under 300, I may be off by 6 or so in either direction) and there's been not all that much time to effect major changes to keep up with the population boom. I came here with family as a kid back in 1972' or so... the town pretty much ended at Hualalai road, the Hilton (now the Royal Kona) was practically out of town, the King Kamehameha hotel was a grocery, and there was a long barely 2 lane road from town that, from what I can remember as a kid, ended at the little blue church on north end of what is now Kahalu'u park. We went down there nearly every day to body surf next to the church - I had no idea how good the snorkeling was here at that time.

Back to the beach... it's got a bit of a beach for sunning, but you kind of need to get there early to find space. The highlight here is snorkeling. Resident turtles, lots of fish, some reef (please do not stand on it, try to stand only on sand, best not to stand at all... just snorkel to your heart's content) and shallow water makes for good beginner to intermediate level snorkeling. When Pat and I came out here on our first visit, we hit the park and snorkeled in the late afternoon (actually, not the best time of day) and loved it.

Later,

Steve

Giant Sea Monster Eats Jimmy Kimmel....

2010-07-27T11:48:00.007-10:00

Last night we did another manta dive off the Kona airport. Water conditions were awesome... flat and clear... Our divers saw one manta in the distance on the first dive, then while we were taking our surface interval five or six mantas swam by the boat. There apparently were 11 or so mantas at the site on the night dive according to one of the videographers.

I went home after the night dive and turned on Jimmy Kimmel and straight up at midnight... the cable went out. It was still out this morning. The story I'm hearing is that somehow an undersea cable was severed and we won't have cable 'til it's repaired. Severed undersea cable? Gotta be the act of some giant sea monster surely.

Suposedly much or all of the Big Island is out of cable service. No TV, and internet options are limited. I've got service through the phone company here at the shop so I can still play on the internet. Major cable outages can effect things here, from what I understand the hospital and Kaiser both have their patient records based on Oahu and have no access to them right now 'til the cable's back up. There are notices on the radio station recommending people reschedule all but urgent care visits. My e-mail is routed through my cable connection, if I don't have cable service tomorrow I'll need to configure the shop laptop to check my mail. I can let it slide for a day, some days I'm running double charters and I just don't have time to spend on the computer, but I hate not answering e-mail reasonably promptly.

Here's a shot of a Sargassum Frogfish that Cathy took some time ago.

No charter today, too bad, it's wonderful outside. Sunny, little to no vog, mild breeze and very flat seas. Great diving conditions!

Later,

Steve

EDIT NOTE: I arrived home mid-afternoon and it appears the giant sea monster was no match for Time Warner/Oceanic Cablesystems. TV and computer are working.

LATER EDIT NOTE: The news just came on (5pm here) and said it was more or less a statewide outing of cable TV/internet/cable phones. Wow. Oahu and Kauai were restored early in the day, Maui and the Big Island had longer outages. It apparently was a single cable compromised between Maui and Oahu at about 3000 feet of depth... still might have been a sea monster that caused all of this after all. they figure it'll be weeks before they can pull up the cable and check it out, in the meanwhile everything's been re-routed.

Scuba diving operator review websites....

2010-07-26T14:52:00.009-10:00

The past couple of weeks I had a couple different sets of customers say they've read some nice reviews of us on www.Undercurrent.org. Undercurrent is sort of the bible for travel divers. It's a pay site and members review operators from all over the world, so it's a handy spot to look up reviews from fairly frequent experienced dive travelers. I hadn't been on there in ages so I thought I'd take a peek at the reviews in the Hawaii section. It's nice to see that I must be doing something OK, from 2008 through today (2008 was about the time I started getting to where I was going out at least 4 days a week) I've got about as many or more positive reviews on the site as any of the operators here in Kona, and I'm small potatoes (as far as the actual number of divers I service) compared to several of the big well established operators. I'm done patting myself on the back now.

Anyway, that got me to thinking about review sites where people can go to at least check on potential operators when visiting a new dive location. A good one I like to check out is Scubaboard. It's a busy forum website with forums covering pretty much all things scuba, it has a travel forum section broken down into regions (states, countries and such) and is a great source for picking up some info on operators. Scubadiving.com is another message board that has a number of followers, although it doesn't seem to be as busy as the previous one I mentioned. Over the past couple of months I've found Yelp and Tripadvisor have review spots for businesses of all types, including dive operators.

With most of the non-pay sites it seems the big operators get the bulk of the comments, it makes sense. For instance, being a 6 pack operator I'll probably never get the kind of comment activity that larger established companies receive. My best month ever (so far) was March of this year, I had 34 total individuals come on the boat, most for multiple outings... some companies here can, and do, put that many customers or more on their boats in a day. Word of mouth takes time... so on that note, I'll do a one time solicitation... if you've been on my boat in the past and had a great time, feel free to visit yelp.com or tripadvisor.com and post something nice some day, it can't hurt. Thanks in advance to anyone who posts something.

Anyway, there are sites that you can research to find out a little more infomation about operators so you're not going in completely blind when looking at a new operator to try out.

Aloha,

Steve

Great scuba diving this summer in Kona Hawaii...

2010-07-24T13:13:00.005-10:00

We've been real busy diving the last little bit. I've been Captaining for the last 3+ weeks, picked up a cold that went straight to my chest... I'm getting itchy to get back in the water.

Current water temperature in Kona is still sitting at 78/79, we're waiting for the next little bump in temperatures we usually see in late summer through fall.

The manta ray night dive has been hopping up off the Kona airport for about a couple months now. Last night we had 4 (mantas, and passengers) on our dive. We've been going out on the manta dive pretty much twice a week most of the summer, and the day dives have been 6-7 days a week for the most part. This week is looking as it'll be a bit slower so far, that could change. August is shaping up to be quite busy with bookings.

Here's a photo of a diver I took a few months back that is giving a good sized antler coral a once over. These corals occasionally house some interesting rare critters... leaf scorpionfish, harlequin shrimp, reticulated frogfish and such... we always take a moment to check them out when we see them.

Later,

Steve

Ed Sullivan is driving me nutz..

2010-07-17T16:09:00.002-10:00

OK, hadn't looked at the blog in a bit. Apparently that Octopuss's garden link starts automatically and Ed starts talking right away... a bit overpowering. If you get it, scroll down to the post and click on the play button enough and it'll eventually pause. Guess I gotta post a bunch to run that post off the page.

The Place of Refuge at Honaunau Kona... Hawaii's best scuba diving shore dive location?

2010-07-17T15:58:00.003-10:00

I went down to the dive site just outside the Place of Refuge National Park today and shot a quick video of the entry spot. This is probably one of the best overall shoredives in the state.... ease of access, easy entry, very nice reef right close in, deep water and shallow reef, lots of life. It's tough to top, although there are a number shore dives here in Kona and Kohala that are in the running for competition as the State's best shore dive.

One of these days I'll get the camera housed and get some clean video and pictures of it underwater. At the end of the clip there should be video links to old stuff of mine and other videos done by others of the location.

Later,

Steve

Just picked up an Olympus Pen e-pl1, no underwater housing yet...

2010-07-09T12:45:00.004-10:00

Well after 10 months without a camera, the one I've been lusting after came on sale. Bill me later had 6 months same as cash and I figured it was time. I mentioned this camera several posts ago. It's a smallish interchangeable lens camera. It's bigger than my old Canon G9, but a fair bit smaller than my old Olympus 8080, just a tad bit larger than the old 3030/3040/4040 series cameras. Olympus has a housing for it right now, rumors have it that Ikelite and 10 Bar are working on housings for it as well. We're coming into our busy season (last half of summer, and to some extent the early fall) and I won't be taking cameras down on most dives, so there's no reason to rush for a housing... gotta learn the new camera and pay it off.

Yesterday I did something I rarely do... I read the owner's manual. About the only thing I've read the owners manual before using first in the past have been our chainsaws - they scare me. I'm typcially in the habit of just using the camera for 6-12 months then trying to read the manual, I had 3 hours to kill while the battery charged so I got ahead of the game this time.

Initial impressions. Neat camera. I read a lot of comments about it being slow, but coming from the point and shoot world with Canon and Olympus cameras, it seems blazing fast to me. I took a little walk at Old Airport Park in Kailua and shot some quick snapshots. It was windy and I put it in macro... focused practically instantaneously in my book. My previous cameras had a tough time locking in macro on windy days and gently moving subjects. The macro was actually a bit better than I expected, not having a devoted macro lens on, possibly a bit "closer" than the Canon G9 I'd used for a couple of years. All in all, it looks as though it'll be a very nice underwater camera once I get a housing for it down the line. For now I'll learn what it can do.

The pic at the top was of some plumeria flowers. They are probably the most common flowers you see in the leis sold to visitors. The small shot at the bottom is nothing special, just the coast on a sunny-ish day in Kailua. Notice the flat water... scuba diving conditions have been excellent now that summer's in full swing.

Later,

Steve