Frogfish seen while scuba diving Kona Hawaii.

Here's a young frogfish, maybe 3.5 inches long or so. These guys start yellow and then tend to change colors to blend in with their envirnment. I wish I had a camera with a working flash when I took this. I may break out one of our older cameras to use 'til I can get the current one fixed.

So I haven't posted in a bit. Lots of stuff going on, but little action on the boat renovation until this week. The interior cosmetic work is now coming along quickly and I'm thinking it may be ready for all the electrical in a couple of days. I'm trying to find someone who can re-sew the seams on my canopy in fairly quick order. The old ones were falling apart so now's the time to take care of it. Pat's got a pretty good machine, but it can't quite go through several layers of sunbrella material, as well as the piping on the edge.

We've had some very nice dives. As far as water temperature goes, we're still seeing mostly 79-81 degrees on the dives. My personal highlights the last couple of weeks include this frogfish. Probably the best find, although I have no photographic evidence as I didn't have the camera that day, was a "family" of 4 Green Lionfish (Dendrochirus barberi) all on one coral head. They ranged in size from around 2 to about 4.5 inches in length. We don't see them too often, and usually just one or two at a time.

I'll try to get back in the habit of posting a bit more.

Aloha,

Steve

Hooters is coming to Kona....

OK, so here's the face shot of the young lionfish I saw recently. This was probably just a little 3 incher, not that these get anywhere near as large as their cousins further south and west.



We did the night dive last night. I hadn't dove one in the last few outings, having Bob or others filling in do the dive, so last night was another good dive for me. GREAT FUN!!! We had mantas before we even hit the water. There were 11 at the dive site total, the customers were pretty happy with that.

Today we did a couple of dive sites off Old Airport and Pawai Bay. I did the first dive. I only had two customers on board today and they were returning for their 3rd trip this year, so it was a very relaxing day. We went looking for Tinker's butterfly and nudibranchs... we scored. I took the camera along and managed to pick up 4 or 5 shots that'll eventually (as in pretty soon unless I get a bunch of more shots, I'm running low on unposted pics I kind of really like) post here.

...Oh, yeah, Hooters is coming to Kona. Our little town is getting commercialized. for those of you who've been here before and are wondering where it'll be, it's going to be in the old Chart House Restaurant location, above Bubba Gumps and the Wyland Galleries at the Waterfront Row shops. I've never been to a Hooters, but I hear the chicken wings are really good... yum, yum - maybe, while in Houston a few year back we went to a place that specialized in wings and I wasn't overly impressed.

later,

Steve

Tropical fish are really proud of their backsides....

The bane of the underwater photographer is... fish butts. Talk to nearly anyone who's taken underwater photos, and you'll probably hear they have plenty of perfectly focused and exposed shots, only the fish are facing the wrong way.

Nearly all the digital cameras, that are so popular, have a bit of delay. Once you get your subject to where you can focus on them, they turn... happens most every time.

The photos on this page are of a young Hawaiian Lionfish (Pterois sphex). I was real tickled to see this one. The last few years I've only seen them at deep spots in sites not normally dove by the tour companies. It seems like they may have been collected out over the years. This one was at one of the dive sites most companies visit, and in less than 40' of water. They tend to hang out at the same spot, so some time in the future I'll be checking to see if it's there.

I took about a dozen shots of this fish, these two were probably the cleanest... but it was facing the wrong way. The second photo is kind of nice because you can see it's face. I did get a pretty decent face shot, but not a good full body shot... I'll post the face shot on the next post (so you have something to come back for).

Later,

Steve