What wetsuit to wear in Kona Hawaii.......

Ah, the age old question.... I get this quite frequently and see it on message boards all the time. Which wetsuit to wear can depend on many things - water temperature, body size and type, cold tolerance, how much you are scuba diving, etc. Every person is going to be a bit different, I'll try to give you a basic idea.

When I first moved here it was February and about 74 degrees in the water. I wore a 3/2 mil wetsuit (3 mil on the core and 2 mil on the arms and legs) and that lasted all of 3 dives - then I went to just wearing a swimsuit for quite a while. 74 was quite comfortable. Now that I've been here and diving all this time I'd be wearing at least a 4/3 full suit with a 3 mil shorty over the top to make it through a couple of dives at that temperature. I'm looking at moving to a 5 or 7 this winter if it gets as cold as last winter.... but it's taken years to get to where I need that.

Kona's water temperature on a typical year can run as low as 73/74 during the January through March time frame, then start rising in March through the summer with a high of 81/83 coming in the early fall. This last year we were colder in the winter than usual, seeing 71/72 'til about late April, currently we're running 77/79 or so. At any rate, the need for a particular thickness of wetsuit can vary depending on the time of year.

Most visiting divers here can do OK with a 3 mil full much of the year except during the colder times of the year. Slender divers or divers with a bit of cold intolerance might want something more year round, especially in the winter months. Heavier divers or divers with good cold tolerance may find themselves quite comfortable with less. I've recently started to make the switch to 4/3 full suits in my rental gear for our boat charters. It's just a bit thicker so it takes some of the chill off that might exist with a 3 mil suit. We try to keep shorty suits available for over the top for slender or smaller divers (women tend to require a bit more neoprene than men in general, many might want a 5 mil much of the year) just in case the suits we have or the customers bring just aren't quite enough. Those tend to come out quite a bit in the winter months.

This is pretty vague. If in doubt, you can always go a tad bit thick on the neoprene, a mil or two extra isn't going to be overwhelmingly hot. For the most part, we don't see a lot of visitors in 7 mils. You might see a good number of local DMs and Instructors in 7 mil suits, maybe even a hood or hooded vest in addition, but if you're diving 200-300 days a year 76 degree water can feel like 68.

One note - if you are looking at snorkeling, throw this all out the window. When you are snorkeling you'll probably need nowhere near as much neoprene. You're on top of the water, back exposed to the sun and 85 degree air, and you're typically working a bit harder. Good diving is more controlled floating than anything and you'll be fully surrounded by water (which conducts heat away much faster than air) without the benefit of sun on you. Most visitors often can comfortably snorkel without a wetsuit, or with a shorty or hooded vest only.

I hope this helps some.

The photo above is of a Lei Triggerfish.

Later,

Steve

Today's dives were a blast....

We went diving today and had a great time. The gentleman who was stuffed up yesterday was much better today and joined us. We dove at Hoover's, which is just off the north end of the Kona airport and at Kaloko Arches/ Kaloko Canyons or whatever you choose to call it.

I had something interesting happen with the camera housing - started clouding up and got a spot or two of moisture in it so it went back to the boat - turned out to be a hair on the o-ring. Hair on the o-rings of housings has killed many a camera over the years, I lucked out. I'm going to relube and reseat the o-ring and take it diving to a reasonable depth before taking the camera out on the boat again

Bob led the first dive, we swapped captain's duties after the first dive so I'd have a chance to dive. Both of these sites are great and are among my faovorites over here. Highlights of the dives were nudibranchs, psychedelic wrasses, several flame angels, flame wrasses (can't wait to get a shot of those), a male whitley's boxfish that I'm pretty sure is not the one I've been seeing lately, as well as lots of other goodies.

The shots above are of one of the local triggerfish. In the aquarium trade we called this the Picasso trigger, Hoover's book has it listed as a Lagoon Trigger (Rhinecanthus aculeatus) and one of it's cousins (which I knew as the Rectangulate trigger back in the fish store days) as the Picasso. Anyway, they are cool looking for sure. We don't see them on the dives all that often as they stay shallow, often in say 5-10 feet of water. This guy was at the Place of Refuge right out front of the entry spot when I was coming off my dive the other morning.

Aloha,

Steve

How to pronounce humuhumunukunukuapua'a....

The Hawaiian name for a couple of well known triggerfish is humuhumunukunukuapua'a. People love to mispronounce it, as it's easy to do. Here's my best shot at sounding it out...

who moo who moo new coo new coo ah poo ah ah

Now say it real fast and you'll impress your friends.

This particular fish pictured above happens to be called a humuhumu lei (also called a Whiteline Triggerfish- Sufflamen bursa). Hawaiian names for triggers are usually humuhumu followed by a descriptive section. Leis happen to the be the floral garlands you wear around your neck here, so I'm not exactly sure how the description fits on this fish unless the vertical bars behind the head are thought to resemble a lei. The Humuhumunukunukuapua'a, shown earlier in the month (could be lower on this page or you may have to check in the archives for April/March) aptly translates into "trigger fish with a nose like a pig" humuhumu - triggerfish ; nukunuku - nose ; pua'a - pig

Aloha,

Steve

Humuhumunukunukuapua'a - the triggerfish that woke us up at 3am.

We did the manta ray dive up at the Kona airport last night. There was one manta, very little plankton. We did it down at the Sheraton site on the weekend, that particular night had a huge current that blew the snorkelers from one of the other boats way off the site... the airport site is a much better site for this dive when the mantas are in.

I've got the weekend off and then it gets busy for a while again. The goal is to get it going 7 days a week and then hire an extra staffer to work in and give Bob and I breaks. We've got someone who's been working with us occasionally who hopefully will be available when the time comes. We had a great sunny morning today and I went out for a brief shoredive. I managed to get this, which is my best humu picture so far. I generally don't make the effort to get a photo of these guys because they like to stay away about 8-10 feet or so. By the way, we had tremendous viz again today, we're epecting one more swell this weekend and then hopefully we're done with the big stuff 'til winter.

So anyway... A couple of years back the phone rings in the middle of the night and Pat answers it "Hello" then a pause, then "You've got to be kidding me. Do you realize it's barely 3 AM here? Let me put you on with Steve, he's the fish guy." Turns out the only thing the caller wanted was to know how to "say the name of that state fish". We get our share of callers who forget about time zones, but this was probably the earliest we've had.

The fish above is one of the Humu-humus (Rhinecanthus aculeatus) we have locally. Hoover's book (A great Hawaiian fish book linked on the sidebar of this page) calls it a "Lagoon Trigger", in the pet trade we called it a Picasso Trigger (which is the name he calls what we called a Rectangulate Trigger). We see them mostly in shallow water, say in the 4-12 foot depth, more than where the divers are normally found.

Back when I first moved over here I worked for a now defunct scuba/snorkel place downtown. We had some people stop by who were laughing about spending a week on the Aggressor dive liveaboard and spending all week looking for a particular fish and finding none, only to find 6 or more of them in 20 minutes snorkeling at Kahalu'u beach after the week was over. I'm pretty sure they were talking about either these or Saddleback Butterflys, as they are both common on the north end of Kahalu'u. I ought to go down there on a sunny morning to get some real good shots of both, they're fairly tame there.

later,

Steve

Senior Billy's in South Kona

My wife and I went to our favorite mexican food spot in Kona again for dinner yesterday. Senior Billy's is a small sit down style restaurant located in what was South Kona's mexican fast food spot. It changed hands a couple years back and the new owners fixed it up some and changed the menu and made it into a decent little restaurant. The menu isn't huge by any means, but the food is good and the price point reasonable by Kona sit down mexican food standards.

I've been diving the last several days. Played with the camera again a bit today. I have just one customer on the boat so it was a light day. He didn't mind if I carried a camera (as long as I'm willing to e-mail him some pics if they turn out). I tried playing with the manual white balance today. It basically changes how the camera sees color and in theory you can color correct on the fly underwater with just a little effort. It seems to work, at least as long as you don't change depths. I didn't bother resetting the camera at each depth because I just didn't want to mess with it that much, but it seemed to work well when at the depth I set it at. Good thing to know. I don't have a whole lot cooking next week as of yet, if I have a few days off I may have to play around with the camera a bunch. Here's a 4 spot butterfly and a pair of finescale trigger fish guarding a nest of eggs.