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

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

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

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...

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

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

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...

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

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

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