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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

Things to do in Kona Hawaii... Home of some of Hawaii's best snorkeling and scuba diving....

I've been messing with my Wanna Dive website and figured out how to add a simple slideshow to the front page, hopefully it works here too.

Kona and the Big Island have a lot of things to do... hiking, the volcano, para-sailing, dining, shopping, beaches, ziplines, world class golf, horseback riding tours, ATV tours, stargzing, nature tours, waterfalls, rainforests, botanical gardens, biking, kayaking, whale watching, etc.... but if you come here and you don't make it into the water with a mask.... you're missing out!

The Kona side of the Big Island is probably Hawaii's top overall snorkel and dive spot... lots of healthy reefs, very good viz, lots of varieties of fish (some of which you are unlikely to see on the other islands - try to find black longnose butterflyfish and lined butterflyfish elsewhere in the state, they're fairly common here), all day snorkeling and diving (the volcanoes block the tradewinds so it doesn't get crazy choppy in the afternoon most days), the manta dive (considered to be one of the top dives in the world), great snorkeling right in shallow water, generally calm and current free waters, and teriffic shore and boat diving. It's a great spot for both snorkelers and divers. There are beginner level snorkeling sites that are fantastic, and if you like the snorkeling, you can try an intro dive - no experience necessary - and get under the water for a terriffic time. Kona is a great spot for water activities.

Sorry for the commercial hype type of post, but Kona really is a great place... and I really wanted to see if the self made slideshow works and needed something to say.

Later,

Steve

What can you see scuba diving in Kona Hawaii?

Here's a wonderful photo of a Longnose Hawkfish we've been watching over time sent to me by one of our customers. These are one of my favorite fish back from my aquarium shop days. I don't happen to have a photo of one, I'm thrilled they got this fantastic shot.

This post will be unlike others I've done. I was looking at their photos and thinking about how much variety of critters and types of diving we typically do over the course of 3-4 days... and thought I'd give you just a taste of it from a customer that was on the boat for 4 charters. We try to mix up the diving when we have people on for several days. The photos here are unedited and posted at a low resolution to save some space.... it's just a few of the many photos they took, don't even have shots of the whaleshark or dolphins they saw underwater on one dive... Thanks for the photos Roman....



















There are tons of critters and sites to see when scuba diving, it's easy to pack a lot of variety into a few short dives in Kona.

Aloha,

Steve

Titan Scorpionfish (Scorpaenopsis cacopsis) Hawaii's largest scorpion fish...

We saw this rather huge scorpion fish on a dive at Au-Au Canyon earlier in the year. We actually saw two of them, and both were huge, probably in the 18-20 inches or more range. These fish are one of the "stone" fishes, poisonous spines and all, and are easy to pass right by as they blend in with the surrounding scenery so very well.

I tried to get some decent photos and failed... they came out either blown out or too dull looking. Pat managed to get this cool angle on one of the ones we saw. I really like it.

Business has been really brisk up 'til the last couple of days. Managed to squeeze in a day off, hadn't had one since March ('cept for 2 days I was hit with food poisoning or some kind of bug back in April). Towards the end of last month it was looking like it was going to be quiet, then suddenly I had dives every day for about 12-13 days straight. Looks like it starts up again in a couple of days for us.

Done some very nice diving lately.... Bob led a group down off Naia and they had a trifecta of sorts the other day - a WHALE SHARK, a manta ray, and a pod of dolphins all on the same dive... can't say we have that happen too often.... very cool!

Later,

Steve

Our divers saw a Naked Lady while scuba diving Kona, but the highlight of the dive was the submarine....

Today we dove the wreck of the Naked Lady. It's a 48ish foot long ferro-cement hull out in Kailua Bay sitting in 105-109 feet of water. Because of the depth and the fact that you're looking at a deep and short dive, we don't get there all that often. The sinking of the boat occurred long before I arrived here, but from what I understand, a fire occurred out on a sailboat in the bay and a naked woman turned up at Kailua pier screaming "the aliens are coming" or something along those lines. The story's probably morphed over the years to this... but it could've happened that way?

This wreck is a mixed bag, sometimes there's a fair amount of stuff hanging out, sometimes there's very little. Today they found a shrimp or two and a good sized yellow margin moray and not a lot more in the way of critters. During the dive they could hear the Atlantis submarine (yep, there's a tour sub in Kona that actually goes to 104') and then suddenly it came out of the blue and our divers and their passengers all got a good look at each other. The first diver up commented that she'd never had so many people taking pictures of her diving before. It'd be nice to be able to time that dive so the sub comes by, but it's kind of by luck, as it's a nice turn of events if there's not a lot of fish life hanging around at the time.

Cathy led the dive, this is a picture she took of the sub. You can see the tip of the Naked Lady laying on the sand to the left.

Later,

Steve

Scuba diving Kona Hawaii with Wanna Dive... a typical day...

Looks like I've got the weekend off the boat, I've been going out every day since the 14th (one day off in there somewhere). I'm expecting a busy summer, been getting lots of bookings already. I thought I'd try to describe a "typical" day on the boat...

I'm in town about 8am on most days running errands, filling tanks and such. I ask my customers to meet us at 9 on their first day, or if they've got their gear with them. If we've already got the paperwork out of the way and have our customer's gear sized up and ready for Bob, Cathy and I to set up before the charter, I'll ask that they show up around 9:15 - 9:20 or so so they don't have a long wait before launching. When everyone arrives on schedule we can usually launch at 9:30, surprisingly, early arrivals can slow the process down as I can't get up on the boat and help set up gear. We may be fiddling with the starting time in the next couple of weeks, we're trying to get the new customers to meet us at the shop for paperwork and gear sizing and see if we can bump the launch time up by 15-30 minutes.

At launch we give the boat safety briefing for new customers then head out the harbor. We're generally trying to get an idea of what the divers have already seen, and what they'd like to see, and once we're outside the harbor and can get a good look at water conditions, we can figure out a couple of good likely dive spots. I'll never commit to a dive site 'til we see conditions, one of the typical questions we get at the boat in the morning is "where are we diving?" Best I can say is "out there somewhere" because you just don't know if sites are even available 'til you get to them. We try to pick sites based on best available conditions and what people on the boat want to see.

Once we reach our first dive site one of the crew will jump the mooring, then whichever of us is guiding the first dive will give a briefing. We break out the book and try to show people what to expect to see on the dive, most sites have their resident critters that we've come to know. After the briefing it's time to suit up and get ready to dive. We'll have you in your wetsuits, fins and with mask ready at the rear of the boat, then the Captain or crew will bring your BC setup to you so you won't be walking around with heavy gear on. Preferred entry is a back roll off the side (safest entry from smaller boats), we can have you do a giant stride off the swimstep or hand your gear down to you in the water to don there if desired.

Once everyone's in (usually goes fast because we max out at 6 divers and typical group size is closer to 3-4) it's time to descend. We take our dives SLOW, so people can get a good look at things and have time to take photos and such. We're always looking for critters to show you and carry eraseable magnetic slates to write down names of what we're showing. If you see something interesting and wonder what it is, just let us know and we can tell you right there. Our routine is to ask to be notified when you reach 1500psi and 700psi in the tank so we can drop off divers at the boat as they reach 500psi for their safety stops. Divers who have plenty of air remaining can stay down and tour other areas of the site we've not shown yet. It's pretty easy to give good tours to people of all breathing capacities, and we go by air and computer NDL time remaining so we're getting long dives from those that are good on air. 75-90 minute dives are not unusual for the good breathers on the day outings. Note: the night dives are a timed dive, usually in the 50-60 minute range depending on the mooring situation.

End of the dive it's back to the boat, hand up fins to the captain and up the ladder (if you've got back, hip or leg issues and need us to pull your gear out of the water, just let us know), our ladder goes down in the water fairly deep and it's easy to navigate with gear on for most divers. We'll get your gear off your back when get to the top of the ladder and switch out the tanks for the next dive. Between dives it's talk story about the things we saw, pass out dry towels (we keep a stack on board) water, sport drink, sandwich or salad, and we generally try to keep some snack stuff (trail mix, etc) on board to munch on too.

During lunch (usually about an hour) we move to a second site.... we try to vary the type of divng you see each dive. Kona has lots of different types of sites to offer, you can keep diving without repeating sites for quite a while as long as the conditions don't pin us down to a few sites. Once we're to the second site and moored off, it's time to give the briefing for the second site and then the routine repeats itself. One note: On the twilight/night trip, we generally don't move, they're essentially two completely different type of dives without changing sites.

After the second dive, it's towels again, along with more water or sport drink if wanted, then it's back to the harbor. We typically meet up at the boat wash after the dives, we've got wash buckets and we'll be rinsing off customer's gear and handing it down. We do keep big gear stored overnight for customers that don't want to haul their stuff back to their hotels or condos between dives if requested. We can store wetsuits, BCs and regs and have it back the next charter, we do ask that customers take their masks, fins, booties and other small items with them.

Typical days are from 9am to about 2:30 to 3:00 or so (depending on how many on the boat and how much ground we cover).


The photo above is one I took on a night dive about a month back. We've been doing the dive 1-2 nights a week lately, probably 2-3 nights a week once it picks up for summer. The mantas have been around fairly consistantly.

Thought I'd mention water conditions.... it's warming up nicely, we're seeing 78 and even 79 degrees now. The last week or so the viz has been FABULOUS... over 200' much of the time. I did a dive at "Hoovers" two days ago and it was "down" to about 150' viz for that dive. We had some wierd currents the other day and have been seeing some pelagic stuff float in... lots of Crown Jellyfish and such. I had my camera the other day, then realized I left the memory card out - bummer - I might have some good jelly photos if I'd pay a litlle more attention with the memory cards after I download them.

Later,

Steve

A rare windy day in Kona Hawaii...

Last week we had a windy day, well three of them. Normally the winds run east to west in Hawaii and the volcanoes block the winds from much of the Kona area. Last week there was a front parked somewhere that brought in a ton of wind from the north. It was still quite diveable, in fact the viz was well over a hundred feet underwater the day I took this video.

Funny thing is, back in the day I was diving the Oregon coast, we would be totally thrilled to have this kind of day for diving. We're spoiled here.

Seahorses and scuba diving in Kona....

We've been really busy diving the last month or so. Diving conditions have been good, we've had some big winds, and finally a couple days of rain (thank goodness, we've been having a drought and the local green was turning brown) but those don't generally effect the scuba diving here.

So we're diving outside of the harbor and one of the divers came up from the dive and starts talking seahorses, apparently he'd taken a photo of a seahorse on the mooring line. He showed me a pic, it was blurry but it was definitely a seahorse. I was bummed because I was up top captaining and I didn't have a housing for my camera handy that day. When the next diver came up, he mentioned the seahorse was RUBBER. The diver with the camera was so intent on the back of his camera LCD that he didn't notice the algae covered tie wrap holding it on, and the wind was up that day and shaking the boat so the mooring line was bouncing around and the seahorse did look like it was moving. When Bob surfaced, I mentioned the divers saw a seahorse on the mooring line... well he was all over that and descended immediately - came back up smiling and saying "that would be the rare Hawaiian rubber seahorse".

One of the other dive groups had obviously mounted it down there. Apparently there's a rubber snake on the other side of the chain as well. We do see seahorses here from time to time... mostly at the boat washdown... The Big Island doesn't really have any readily findable reef seahorses, we have a deep water/open ocean species that the fishermen see at night when they hang lights. Occasionally they'll clean a mahi-mahi and one will fall out of the entrails, that's how we see the most of them. Apparently Hawaii does have a reef species or two that can be found on rare occasions on the older islands, and I heard of a sighting on the reef up in Puako this last year, but seahorses are not one of the things we expect to see here at all.

Here's a shot of a couple of Moorish Idols (Zanclus cornutus) on the reef that Pat took. These attractive fish are always a pleasure to see, and we see them quite often. Most people will say they saw an "angelfish", the true angelfish species we have look nothing like a freshwater angelfish you'd see in an aquarium. The Moorish Idols are in their own family, sharing many of the traits of our butterflyfish and surgeonfish.

Aloha,

Steve

Very good diving conditions in Kona Hawaii lately....

We've been going out pretty much daily lately and the conditions have been wonderful for the most part. They've had heavy winds up north, but it hasn't affected the Kona area diving. Today we had two divers on board, decided to head up to Garden Eel Cove (yes, even though it's only two passengers we go pretty much anywhere we would normally take a full boat) to dive. On the way we came across a bunch of boats watching a whale.... Call us Ahab!!! It was white, well light gray anyway. Don't know if it was albino or awfully ill. Went to the dive and did our thing... Garden Eels, Dolphins underwater, Barracuda and more.

On the way to the second dive site we found a bundle of floaty net. We hate seeing that stuff in the water, as manmade garbage doesn't belong there, but we kind of like to explore it when we find it. The first picture is of the wad of net itself. Fish are attracted to anything floating in the ocean. The second picture is a bit closer shot of the net. ... Notice anything about the second shot? Take a look again, it's not just netting....

One of our favorite fish to find while we're diving on the reef is frogfish, they're always a treat. There's an ocean going frogfish, called a Sargassum Frogfish, that typically lives in sargassum seaweed. It also is attracted to nets. Here's the same photo as the second cropped and blown up a bit.

If you didn't see the frogfish earlier, you should see it now... look for the eye! This is the first one I've seen in the wild, last year I posted a photo that Cathy had taken at one time. I'm thrilled to have my own shot.

I gotta mention something, in the last post I raved about how hopping the manta dive was... well things can change fast... 3 days later we did the dive and got skunked. We still had a fabulous night dive. Shrimp, all sorts of life, even had a very large spiney lobster... could've had dinner, but we let it be.

Later,

Steve

No tsunami alert, back to fun.... We celebrated by making a long range dive trip to Au Au Canyon...

The ocean was really nice yesterday morning and we decided to make the long trip down to Au Au Canyon/Crater (whatever it's called, it's cool). We don't get down there much, it's an 85/90 minute boat ride in my boat and we need a sizable enough group of good divers to make a go of it. Au Au is an underwater canyon with sheer vertical walls that run about 80 feet high or so on the shore end to well over 200' high on the seaward end. It's one of the true "walls" we have here. Most of our "walls" are more like steep dropoffs or slopes.

It was a gorgeous dive. On the second dive I was Captain while the others all dove. We did a drift dive around the western end of Kealakekua Bay. Right on the corner the current was screaming, and the divers got to play Superman, "flying" with the current, for about 70-100 yards or so before reaching the calm water on the other side of the corner.

It was a long day. On the way back it got a bit choppier, then by the time we got to the middle of Kailua the winds picked up, then the last mile into the harbor was crazy windy... it got very wet very fast. One of the divers commented it was like doing a third dive. Other than a lot of spray over the bow it was uneventful and over in 10 minutes. Turned out it got apparently really nasty about mid-day up around the harbor. We came in at 5pm, around 2pm I'm told it was like a mini-hurricane there. It was sunny and windy when we arrived, Pat and I (Pat tagged along for the dives) went to the shop after cleaning up the boat and there was water all over the walkways, we thought maybe the landlord had sent in a pressure washer.

It's looking great today. Occasionally in the winter we'll get a cold front passing through that can make it nasty for a bit, this apparently was one of those days.

Aloha,

Steve

Here's the 5:45am NOAA tsunami warning supplement for the state of Hawaii...

1:30 The harbor's been reopened apparently. Boats are returning. Other than the evacuation and business closures, the tsunami was pretty much a non-event here in Kona.

Aloha,

Steve

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12:03 Finally, found a live stream... www.kgmb.com you have to click on the live streaming link.

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Update11:41am. The radio station I'm listening to is reporting the water is receding in Hilo Bay around Coconut Island.

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Update 11:05am HST Nothing so far according to the radio station overlooking Hilo Bay. The county water supply has turned off the water in the evacuated areas to prepare in case anything happens.

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Update 10am HST: I'm down at the dive shop across from Honokohau Harbor. Met up with a lot of fellow boaters getting their trailered boats to higher groud. Looking out at the ocean it's full of boats sitting a half mile out or so ready to ride out any surge if it occurs, looks like a big regatta. The shoreline drops off deep rapidly around the Big Island so if you get out a half mile you can be sitting in 2000 feet of water, most tsunamis are not more than a big long bump in the water in those depths but become very dangerous when they hit shallow water.

The tsunami sirens have been going off hourly all day. We talked to some friends down in Napo'opo'o, which is on the water, that said their sirens weren't working... not good if this occurs in remote communities.

It appears there was a pretty orderly evacuation of downtown Kailua. I came in to town at 8:30 to get the boat and traffic leaving the area was minimal. By the time I was leaving the harbor with the boat they had the area blocked off and were only letting people in to move their boats.


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They do state to expect wrap around on all islands. I'm glad I don't live on Hilo side at this point, gonna be hectic over there this morning.

http://www.prh.noaa.gov/hnl/tsunami_msgs/HEBTSUHWX.201002271749

6am and the tsunami sirens went offf.... so'd the neighborhood dogs...

Well, I've always wondered how long the sirens went off in case of an actual tsunami threat. 5-6 minutes worth. They test the siren system at 11:45am the first weekday of each month for about a minute or so... I've heard them once or twice when they've gone off accidentally at oddball hours, that usually causes a stir.

Latest news is they're expecting some wrap around on this side of the island, sounds like a cancel for our charter. It's not worth taking a chance of something unexpected occurring.

Big earthquake in Chile. Tsunami currently expected to hit Hawaii about 11am to noon...

Something woke me tonight and I'm up a couple hours early and saw the tsunami warning. Supposedly they're seeing 4 foot deep ocean waves in the Pacific, which means a tsunami is expected once the wave hits shores. All the arrival time listings are 2119z - whatever that means - I finally found a report that gave a 11:19 Hawaii time estimate.

The report said our civil defense sirens to go off at 6am and again 3 hours prior to arrival.

I've got a charter today... not so sure I'm going...

Scuba diving with wild spinner dolphins in Kona Hawaii...

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

It's uncommon, but every now and then we're lucky enough to have dolphins swim around us on dives. A couple days back we were out on a dive up at Makalawena and the moment we entered the water we were greeted with the sounds of whale songs. A couple minutes later I heard the dolphin sounds and looked over my head to find this pod approaching. On the first clip the dophins were right there, this is zoomed out wide, they were probably within 5-8 feet of me at one point. It was a pretty good sized pod and I was lucky enough to be carrying a camera, I think this is the first dive shots of dolphins I have.

We've been real busy with charters this month, busiest February in at least a couple of years, if ever, for us. Next month is looking good at this point and Pat and I are working on a plan to open the shop portion of our Kona dive business for regular hours on weekends starting about the middle of next month. It'll take a while, but eventually we'll have the shop open full time - it's by appointment or luck at this point as we're open around our charter schedule.

I'm in the shop today for a half day, I've got a manta ray night dive night dive meeting up at 3:15 this afternoon. Last night they apparently had 10 mantas up at Garden Eel Cove, hopefully it'll be another great show tonight.

Aloha,

Steve

Endemic Hawaiian Longnose Butterfly Fish... They're not just yellow, there's a black phase too...

Longnose butterflyfish from Kona Hawaii from Steve on Vimeo.

Here's a short clip of Hawaii's endemic version of the Longnose Butterflyfish. They're real unusual in that they have a black phase (this one was especially black, lots of time you can see some yellow mixed in). I'm not sure that anyone's actually figured out why they'll sometimes turn black. We see the black phase in Kona on a fairly regular basis, but they're uncommon on the other islands from what I understand.

Tonight we're doing the manta night dive again. Most of the last couple of months we've been making the trip down to the Sheraton for the manta dive, the mantas kind of scadoodled from Garden Eel Cove when the surf came up and the plankton level dropped for some reason. I suspect they don't care to eat a lot of sand that gets kicked up by heavy surf - that's as good a theory to make up as any, so I'm sticking with it. We've had a week and a half or two without major northwest swells and apparently they're back again... 10 last night... Yahooo!!!!! Most of the dive operators really prefer to do the manta dive at Garden Eel Cove off the airport, it generally has better water conditions, larger numbers of mantas, and is a great night dive to boot in comparison to the Sheraton site. We'll be happy to do the dive there again.

later,

Steve