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

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

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

Lots of fun scuba diving in Kona Hawaii.....

Here's a goby I've been wanting to get a good picture of for a long time, this one's about as close as I've managed to get, I may have another more head-on pic I've got to photoshop that may come out OK. I'm thinking this is a Twospot Sandgoby (Coryphopterus duospilus). The picture really doesn't do them justice, in real life they're.... invisible.... well, almost. They've got see through bodies. You can see all their internal structure and their body meat is literally clear.

We've been diving pretty much every day since my little 4 day break early in the month. Tomorrow I'm not on the boat though, Bob and Cathy will lead the charter... gotta sit in my office and wait for the phone guy to come and get me service.... I ordered phone service a while back and the office is loaded with phone jacks as it used to have a multi-desk travel agency in it, but none of them work. I'm to expect the technician some time between 8 am and 5 pm... I can't help but think of the Seinfeld episode with Kramer and the cable guy....

We've been all over the area lately. We've got some regulars who've been diving with me since the early days of my boat operation and I'm trying to show them some dive sites they haven't done over the years at least some of the time. We dove Casa Caves yesterday. It's been a while since I dove that... I like it for it's hard coral reef - many of our dive sites are topography or critter oriented, this one's just a good 'ol fashioned excellent example of pristine Hawaiian hard coral reef. I took the photo of the goby above in a small sand patch there. The dive site also has a nice cave feature. I was hoping for a shark but none were sleeping in it at the time.

The water's been super flat since it settled down from the swells we had last week. Very Nice!

Man, the Kona manta ray night dive is still going strong....

The manta dive has seen 15+ mantas a night for the better part of almost a month and a half now. It's a spectacular event for divers and snorkelers. We did three of them last week, in addition to some day outings - made me tired... I'll use that as my excuse for not posting in that time (but it's more likely that I just haven't had much to say during that time). Going out on the night charters and then having to come back the next morning (or not, depending on the schedule) takes it out of me. I normally hit the hay around 10:00-10:30, after a manta dive it's more like 1am and I don't feel normal for a couple days... what ever happened to the good ol' days when 4 hours was plenty of sleep as long as it wasn't every day? It's our slower season right now so I've got a few days off before it all starts again.

I just got an e-mail that the Manta Ray protection act has made it through both the State House and Senate and is now waiting on the Governor to sign it. The mantas have been unprotected here and there's been a few attempts to get them protected so someone won't come in and harvest them all. Kona is the one place in the world that you know exactly where the mantas are likely to be 30 minutes after sundown, so that raises the risk of them being taken efficiently if someone were to decide to target them... this should help keep that from happening.

The pic above is of a Redstripe Pipefish (Dunckeroampus baldwini). Pipefish are related to seashorses, the males carry the eggs on their undersides, unlike the male seahorses which carry their eggs in a pouch on their bellies.

Reading in John Hoovers new book , which happens to be probably the best book on Hawaiian fish available right now, I just noticed that these particular pipefish were endemic - I didn't know that before tonight. They are typically found in pukas (Hawaiian for "holes") or cracks in rock formations. They're small, maybe 5 inches long in total, and quite slender so they're tricky to point out to other divers. We've got a few of them stashed at a few dive sites so we do get to brief our divers and show them from time to time.

Welcome to the Kona Hawaii squid blog...

Ok, so it's not a squid blog... but I did get a bunch of photos on the manta ray night dive last night. I'll be able to keep showing squid from time to time 'til I get more regular stuff in.

These shots were taken with my Canon G9 in a Canon WP-DC21 waterproof case. I didn't use any external strobes or lenses, just the base kit. They were taken at night using some light from other divers along with a handheld LED light, primarily for focusing purposes as the onboard flash is pretty much responsible for the lighting showing in the photos.

Aloha,

Steve

p.s. I haven't shown my favorite squid shots yet.

Seven-Eleven Crab.... Hawaii....

I was looking back through some photos I've taken in the last several months and realized I've never posted a picture of a Seven-Eleven Crab (Carpilius maculatus). These guys can get to a pretty good size. People don't generally harvest these critters, but I've heard rumors the big claws are pretty good eating. We see them from time to time... we've seen them out in the late afternoon prior to reef dives in a few spots, but most of the time they're holed up somewhere. Supposedly they have 7 or 11 spots on thier back (this one you can see a bit of a twelfth, close enough I guess).

Later,

Steve

We did a three tank dive day today in Kona.....

Howdy,
I mentioned the other day that I was coming into a lull and I'd try to catch up on posting during then, well, the lull basically turned into one day of trying to re-repair the damage I did last month to our water line (read the archives, I think it was the post on July 4th of this year) and then I got more bookings. Today we did a three tanker with a fun group. We dove sharkfin rock, Kealakekua Bay and driftwood. Highlights of the dives were... frogfish on two dives, a manta, tinker's butterfly and all sorts of other good stuff.

Water conditions are darned good right now, it's the time of year we look forward to.

This photo is of the mouth end of a Horned Helmet Snail (Cassis cornuta). They spend much of their day mostly buried, with the tips of their shell exposed... you can see it's "mouth" here. When something tastingly smelly goes by they'll come out of the sand (kinda slowly, they're not speedsters) to eat it. To see a pic of one stalking a collector urchin click here.

Later,

Steve

More on gettin' older...

The other day I go to pick up something from my wife at her work and she mentions one of her 20 something-ish co-workers said to her "I hope this doesn't offend you, but your husband's cute, sure he's older, but he's cute"... Now I'm feeling pretty good about myself for the rest of the day... hey 20 something-ish women think I'm cute, they didn't ever say that back in the day, but they do now... I'm feelin' kind of manly... then my wife comes home and the first thing out of her mouth is... "Yeah, so and so (name edited) says you remind her of a younger Santa Claus".

A younger Santa Claus!?!?!?! I'm not sure that's what I was privately hoping for... I don't think I look like anyone famous... but Santa Claus??? Oh well, guess I gotta take a "compliment" for what it's worth, and I guess I can think of worse people to remind people of than Santa.

Well, it's time for new glasses and part of my last grasp at youth is getting back into contact lenses part time. I went to the optometrist and was given both standard contact and bi-focal contacts. The bi-focal contacts are interesting, apparently the center of the contact is slightly more set for near vision and you see around it for distance vision, and in my case the lens on my dominant eye (didn't know I had one) is corrected more for distance vision and the less-dominant eye is corrected more for close-up vision. Well, neither works perfectly and it's kind of aggravating, but most of the time it works. I wore the bi-focal lenses for several days and today I tried the standard vision lenses. Wow, a noticeable difference in the distance vision, but I can't see a darned thing within 3-4 feet. I had to borrow my wife's reading glasses (she had lasik a few years back and can't read real small print without them) for even basic reading and detail work, like typing this post... my mind is basically made up at this point, ixnay on the andardstay contacts and I'll probably go with the bi-focal ones, at least I can see my camera settings with them.

The pic above is of a Divided Flatworm (Pseuderos c.f. dimidiatus) -maybe the "c.f." stands for "certainly familiar", whatever, apparently it is similar to yet different from the originally described species. The other pic above is of me a couple months ago (before my white-hair breakdown haircut).

later,

Steve

Ask Steve a question????

Just for fun, I thought I'd solicit questions and see if anyone actually asks questions. I may or may not be able to answer them, but I can give it a try.

A few basic guidelines: Questions can be about the dive biz, my dive biz, Kona, Hawaii, diving, living here, opinions on places or activities here, and things related to them. I'm not going to answer questions about other specific dive businesses, you'd need to contact them to answer questions about them. Personal questions may or may not be answered. I'm staying away from religion or politics, there's plenty of other blogs for that. I reserve the right to not answer anything I feel inapropriate... or that I just don't want to answer for whatever reason...and repetitive questions may be dealt with as a single response.

Getting questions from outside sources may help me cover some different, yet related, subjects... so ask away. Before you ask, I do ask that you look at the very top of the blog, where you'll find a search function that you can search for the subject matter you are curious about to see if it's already covered ad nauseum and refrain from asking something I cover often (like water temperature, today's dive, etc).

I'll do my best to answer questions, and I'll try to be honest about not knowing the answer.... I know a few things, I'm pretty clueless about others.

Feel free to ask questions in the comment section of this post. I will try to get to them as I can, and anything that requires more than a very quick answer will probably appear as a new post. If I get overloaded (I'll be pleased if I get any questions at all, amazed if I get a lot) it might take some time to answer everything.

The critter pictured above is a Hawaiian Red Reef Lobster (Enoplometopus occidentalis). We see them from time to time on the night dive. I was very lucky to get this shot... these guys don't like light and generally will back down into whatever hole they're in front of when you hit them with light for more than a couple seconds or approach too closely. They're sort of tough to show customers because of that, I probably show them to a diver or two about every third time I find them as they'll scoot away before the divers figure out what I'm trying to show them generally.

ASK AWAY!

Steve

It's "slow season" for a bit....

I looked back at my calender a couple days back and realized I'd had charters scheduled most every day the last 60 days. I did have 4 cancellations in that stretch because of the ATA and Aloha airline closures. Now I'm into a 10 day dead period with little (I have a charter tonight) scheduled and then I have another stretch where I'm working at least 10 days straight. A couple days off now and then is fine, but it's always fun to be working. So far though, it's been a busier spring than in years past and May is looking much better than last year.

I have had a couple of inquiries for charters this week, and I guess it's maybe a mistake to say "I'd be happy to dive with you, I'm wide open so let me know when you'd like to go out". I guess some people are afraid to be the only one's on the boat, like they'll get shortchanged or something, which is the just about the opposite of reality as when we have our lightest loads are the times we can really cater to the individual divers (We're lucky that we only take 6 passengers max, as it's been my experience that the more passengers a boat has on the greater the likelihood there will be some limiting factors), we don't scrimp on the diving just because it's a light load.

Locally, the vog situation in Kona has improved for a couple days at least. We've had huge south swells that have just come down. I'll be looking forward to tonight's charter to see if the water temperature came up because of the swell.

A little Kona news... I may have mentioned that Hooter's closed, if I didn't then here it is. They closed a couple months back saying something along the lines of their target audience apparently wasn't visiting Kona in the numbers they'd expected. Not a big loss for me, I went there once with Pat and wasn't impressed by the food - lackadaisical chicken wings and a very average burger in my opinion. A bigger loss will be the Hard Rock Cafe. They've announced they'll be closing early this summer. They've got fairly decent sandwiches, burgers and salads (good salads are hard to come by here, we see a lot more rice and macaroni salad mixes here than greens). With the loss of those two, of course there've been rumors that Bubba Gumps is on the way out and Kona is soon to be a ghost town.... that rumor was quashed in the local paper by Bubba Gumps management this weekend. It will be curious to see how long the spots held by the two that have or are leaving fill back up.

The underwater photo above is of a Hairy Yellow Hermit Crab (Aniculus maximus). This one wasn't a big individual, say smaller than a golf ball, they can get roughly the size of a softball. I was happy to see it as I hadn't seen one in a while. Take a close look and you can see it's eye stalks... cool looking critters.

That's it for now, time to get a few things done before the afternoon charter.

Later,

Steve

Been busy....

Aloha,

I've been reasonably busy with Wanna Dive the last little bit, so I havn't been posting as much. I've been doing more of the diving the last while, which has been very fun.

Today we had a couple of very nice dives, lots to look at and pretty reasonable conditions, although the last little while the water temp has cooled off a hair (I'm seeing 73-75 on my computer). We had several nudibranchs, banded coral and ghost shrimps, a male psychedelic wrasse and it's harem of females, a pair of flame angels (in a spot there was only one last year... dating is alive and well in the reef world), several eels and other neat animals.

Here's a baitball of opelu we saw today. It was a pretty thick swarm of opelu. Fishermen catch them for use as bait for larger fish or for smoking, they're a popular snack item when smoked.

I'll try to post a bit more frequently (I'm five or six photos ahead right now so even if the post is worthless there'll be an OK picture).

Later,

Steve

First Aloha Airlines shuts down, now ATA does the same....

Hawaii has just lost roughly 15 percent of it's mainland arrivals in the last few days... that's pretty big news here.

I've already had to juggle my schedule next week to accomodate divers who were delayed a couple days trying to get here, may lose a charter or two out of it. I currently have customers who are diving with me who just found out today (from Cathy and I) they might not have a way home set up at this point... the ATA flights are going to be tough to replace right away. Apparently Hawaiian is trying to add what flights they can, but they can only do so much.

It'll be curious to see how this all shakes out. It was very quiet at the harbor today, several of the boats I see regularly at the boat ramp and boat wash at the end of the day weren't on the water today. I know at least one of them had to cancel today's charter as they're customers were caught up in the closings.

Interesting times, so far other than a little schedule juggling I'm not feeling the sting too much.

The underwater photo above is of a divided flatworm that Pat took on a dive a couple weeks back. I'm back to diving regularly again and I'll have the camera in hand when I'm not teaching, hopefully something interesting will happen by (I generally don't actively shoot when I'm leading dives, maybe a few shots a dive if any, most of my shots come on my day off or if I take a "Captain's dive" during the surface interval) that I can capture on the camera.

We're very busy 'til about the 17th or so, I'll post when I can.

Aloha,

Steve

Did a three tank dive trip today...

Today we did a three tank dive trip up north. We did Kua Bay and Makalawena dives along with a dive closer in to town. Kua Bay is a very nice dive, especially when you've done all the closer in dives. Makalawena is an exceptional dive (I don't want to describe it 'til I dive it... let's just today's divers said there were about 10 swimthrough archways within 100 feet of the boat) we'll probably start doing more often as the weather and swell conditions improve. I'd heard about the Makalawena dive but had never actually done it. Today's group was a bunch that had dove with Bob over the years so he did the diving, but I managed to snorkel the site and could tell it's really quite something. It's a bit of a haul up there so I'm trying to figure out how to work it charge-wise since I often just go out with two or three divers and that trip would make a break even charter into a money loser between fuel and extra time.

Speaking of pricing... just a note to anyone who's thinking about booking, I'm probably going to have to sit down and open my web page program and bump prices a bit in the next month. I'll honor all pre-existing prices on bookings, so if you are thinkiing about setting somethin up for later in the year, you might want to just book before the prices creep upward.

The pic above is of a Zooanthid colony that Pat took a couple of weeks back. This particular colony is absolutely HUGE, maybe 25-30 feet or more long, usually we see only small clusters of them if we see them at all as they aren't all that common.

I'm busy the next couple of days, so I'll probably post again on the weekend.

Aloha,

Steve

2 mantas at the Kona manta ray night dive this Saturday...

Actually one extra showed up at the very end of the dive. Bob and I were out with some customers from Oahu for the dive. They really enjoyed it and asked me to give them a heads up the next time we start seeing big numbers for a stretch so they could give that a try.

Bob said the water temp had dropped on his computer by 2 degrees from the day before. That tends to happen in December when the temperature starts dropping, each new northwest swell can potentially drop it a degree or two. He saw 77 on his computer yesterday afternoon... still fairly warm but this year never really topped out too warm so it could be cool by next month.

Above is a Wire Coral Goby (Bryaninops yongei?) that Pat took a picture of a few weeks back. These guys spend pretty much their entire lives living on a wire coral, adult lives anyway as I'm not sure what the larvae and juveniles do.

I stayed up top for both dives so I didn't get to have any of the fun. My big excitment for the night was just hearing a commment one of them made to another... I think this is the cleanest dive boat I've ever been on.... Well the boat is basically just a month old since the total rebuild, so I haven't had a chance to really mess it up yet.... hopefully we can keep it shiny for a few years, it's already got it's share of tank dings tht we'll need to rub out every now and then.

Sloppy water in Kona the last few days...

Aloha,

We've hit a rare little stretch where the water is quite rough. Surfers are probably loving it, but it's not great for diving in. On the manta dive the other night it was pretty nice, but the surge was coming up. On the way home the winds were sort of battling the swell and it was a rough ride, and it seems to have more or less stayed that way for a couple of days. This afternoon I could hear the surf from my home, which is about 2.5 miles by road and over a mile as the crow flies from the ocean. I'm hoping it settles down, the news said to expect big swells on Oahu - sometimes they hit us, sometimes they are blocked by Oahu and Maui.

The picture above was taken by Pat on a dive a couple of weeks back, it's a semi-closeup shot of a cushion star. The neat thing about this photo is the critter that was on it - here's a closeup....
This is some type of Imperial Shrimp which hangs out on the cushion stars. Different colored stars will have shrimp that more or less match the color of the star fish, so they're tough to find lots of the time. You'll also often find tiny little crabs and bristle worms and such on these stars.

Later,

Steve

Long day for me today....

We had a fun charter with a couple that have been diving with us off and on for several years. I played captain for both dives as I agreed to fill in for a few days at the job I had at the airport last spring as they were shorthanded and I had a light schedule this week. I got off work at the airport just before midnite, so I'm up way past my normal bedtime right now. The biggest highlights of todays dives were dolphins underwater and a good sized Dragon Moray Eel (wish I'd been on the dive with camera in hand for that one). They saw plenty of other great stuff, but those two sightings aren't typical of just any dive day here in Kona.

I've been playing around with the camera trying a few things that wouldn't work with the cameras I've had before this just to see if it could be done with this one. This shot is uncropped, on board flash only, taken from about 20-24 inches away. The fish is maybe an inch long, if that, might be more like 3 quarters of an inch. This camera has a bunch more zoom power than my last one. Purists might cringe, because I went into digital zoom, on top of the regular optical zoom, to get this shot. I tried shooting lots of pics this way, not many of them turned out, so I'll likely keep shooting critters that are more forgiving when it comes to actually getting close. I'm not sure what species this goby is, it's not in Hoover's book.

Good night,

Steve

Cool find today at the Place of Refuge...

I hadn't seen these in about 4 years, but apparently there's a bit of a bloom of them right now, at least down at the Place of Refuge. I noticed them on the sand. You'll likely need to click on the photo to get the larger photo just to see them.

These are Siphopteron quadrispinosum (I haven't found a common name). I thought they might be some type of bubble snail, but apparently they are a slug. They are very tiny, with the biggest ones probably running less than an eighth of an inch in length... real tough for me to get a picture of.

I've been very busy lately, what with working at the airport 4 days a week, diving 4-5 days a week and checking on boat progress. I told my work to consider me unavailable after this Sunday. The boat and the business need to take priority from here on and once the boat is ready I can't let the airport job cost me charters. I tentatively have employee number 2 lined up, I think I can keep Bob, this person (to be named later) and myself busy once the boat's back in the water.

The water has definitely warmed. I was seeing 81 in the shallows at the Place of Refuge, I didn't check it at depth, but it didn't seem cooler.

Later,

Steve

Fly inter-island for practically free - super low airfares...

OK, I generally don't post this kind of stuff, but this price Go Airlines just announced is almost plain silly. 9 bucks! I'm almost tempted to buy a couple of tickets just to do it. I figured I might post it just in case anyone might benefit, the sale only lasts a couple more days.

This is a Redspotted Sandperch (Parapercis schauinslandi). They hang out on coral heads in the sand down at depth.

Later,

Steve

Don't count your chickens before they're hatched....

In the spirit of that, I'm sitting on some news. I've been waiting on something and I'll probably know the outcome one way or the other in a few days, so next time I post I may be happy, disappointed, or somewherre in between (if I'm still waiting to find out the outcome).

It's been cool and wet up mauka today, with rain most of the day... a rarity here in Kona at our elevation. I talked with Bob earlier today, he was out with another company, said it was pretty nice on the water as long as they stayed out of the south facing spots. We've had a pretty good south swell the last couple of days, apparently yesterday was particularly nasty and the best diving was up in the Sand Chute and Garden Eel Cove area off the Kona airport where we do our night dive.

It'll be curious to see if the swells bring our water temps up. It's about the time of year the temperatures start to bump back up slowly.

The picture above is of a Pebble Collector Urchin. The common form is dark blue and looks much like an imperial crown, this one (two actually, there's one in the background) is a white one, which is much less commonly found here. If you do happen to see them, take a close look at the white portions - the white is tons of little white tube feet that move rapidly... almost mesmerizing.

Later,

Steve

Leaf Scorpionfish Taenianotus triacanthus

This is a picture of a face of a Leaf Scorpion. You kind of have to look at it twice to see it. I do have some very nice pictures of leaf scorpions a year or more back in the blog if you care to explore the archives (linked on the right side of the page if you are on the home page). Leaf scorpions spend most of their lives just sitting around gently waving with the currents, pretty much looking like a leaf, 'til something edible happens by, then it's a matter of a very quick distending of the jaw and they've had their meal and they go back to just sitting there. These fish seem to be very attracted to antler corals, placing themselves in or under the corals, so you'll often notice the divemasters checking out every antler coral they come across for this critter and a few other things.

Tuesday's night dive turned into a non-happening. My group was all snorkelers but one and when they called on Monday I'd filled them in on the relative lack of mantas and they decided to do other things (if I have a group of snorkelers, I really try to give them the option of not going out if it's likely they'll see nothing), the one diver in the group did join us for the morning dive. We had a couple of real nice dives in the morning, and as luck would have it, it was a good thing for the snorkelers that they decided not to do the night dive - no mantas. Last year this time we were in the front end of a 5-6 month stretch where we had mantas most every night... haven't been that lucky yet this year but I suspect it'll kick in at some point.

I finally sent out my fist e-mail "newsletter" today. I set up for it a long time ago and just never sent one out, figured I need to get started sooneer or later and now is a good time what with summer coming up. I'm not going to send them out too often, maybe quarterly or when something relatively big for the business occurs. If you'd like to get on the list, there's a link on the right side of the blog. Regular readers will get a lot more news from the blog than the e-mails.

That's about it for now.

Aloha,

Steve