Wow. You couldn't ask for better weather or skies in Kona the last several days...

The tradewinds died out and were replaced by north and northwest winds the last few days, it blew all the vog out and the skies have been clear and bright. Today was partly cloudy but still absolutely beautiful.

I had the day off today, start another stretch of diving tomorrow. It looks as though June will be quite busy at this point.. lots of charters started, now I just need to add additional passengers on the dives to fill things in.

Here's a frogfish from one of our recent dives.

Aloha,

Steve

Wow, now is certainly a good time to look into flying to Kona... hint, hint, hint...

Just checking air prices right now I'm seeing prices in the 320-360 RT range to Kona from all over the western US. This time last year it was starting to really climb, hit nearly 900-1000 or so by mid-summer. Hopefully flight prices stay low for a while. (Edit note: it was brought to my attention that prices are bumping up around mid-June. Must be that summer surcharge. The prices I'm seeing aren't like last year at this point anyways).

The diving conditions have become pretty good. No major swells right now, viz was great yesterday. The vog's clearing out right now... yahoo,it's been a bit thick lately. I can see the horizon from my house, according to the horizon distance/elevation calculator I just looked up that means we've got visibility of at least 38.6 miles topside right now. We'd been unable to see the horizon from this elevation for several days due to the vog.

Here's a pic of a Blood Star, also called a Spotted Linckia (Linckia multifora). Hawaii isn't loaded with large starfish like back in the Northwest US where I come from. We do see this one fairly regularly, but you rarely seem them over 4-5 inches or so across.

Later,

Steve

Let's switch from a big nudibranch to a small nudibranch... White Margin Nudibranchs with eggs...

Here's a pair of White Margin Nudibranchs (Glossodoris rufomarginata) laying eggs. These nudibranchs get to about an inch in length, and are one of the easier nudibranchs to find on purpose. I typically look for them on overhangs, say arches or the lip of a lava tube. It can often be found by looking for the white spiral egg mass - if the find the eggs the nudibranchs are not far away. I usually find them in groups of two or three within several inches of an egg mass.

We've had lots of fun customers on board lately. Today was fun, we had a woman and her family that were out to dive for her 75th birthday today. She hadn't dove in a few years and wanted to do it while they were here. She's pretty experienced, got 58 minutes on the first dive but was getting cold on the second dive and came up with a ton of air. The group seemed to have had a great time.

We get divers in their 70s from time to time. The "oldest" student (calendar-wise anyway, he was rather youngish physically - still very active and strong) I've ever had finished his class 5 or so days shy of his 70th birthday. Plenty of divers that age do just fine, some may need to don or remove their gear in the water due to knees and such not making it up the ladders quite as easily in their younger days. It seems a lot of divers who are still diving into their 70s and beyond are very experienced and have been diving in many places... it's a blast listening to dive stories.

It was sunny on the water today, no clouds over the ocean, but the vog from the volcano was up. The tradewinds are down for the next few days, so I'm hoping it'll clear out.

Wow! One of our divers spotted a Tuberculosis Nudibranch on the manta ray night dive the other night....

This is what I was so excited about on the night dive with 20 manta rays the other night. Customer Peter found this after we'd peeled off for a short night dive at the end of the manta show. It's a Tuberculosis Nudibranch (Dendrodoris tuberculosa) or a very close relative not in my book. I've heard of them being seen up in the shallows at the manta dive site in the past, but I've never seen one. This one was actually in more like 25-30 feet of water out towards the edge of the reef. I'm glad I had the camera in hand, although it took a while to get the settings right and I missed the good angles on it. They're a good sized nudibranch, this one was probably almost 6 inches long.

It's partly sunny today, but kind of hard to tell because the vog is very thick right now in the Captain Cook area. It's thicker than usual the last couple of days. Up in Kailua it's rarely this thick, in Captain Cook we're right at the spot where the winds sort of eddy around the island and the vog ends up. My eyes are itchy, but then again I was out under the house yesterday hauling off some old building materials the previous owners had left... could just be dust, not the vog, causing the irritation.

Yesterday we had a nice little earthquake. I missed it... bummer (after that one a couple Octobers back, any little shake gives you a nice adrenaline shot)... I was in the garage and didn't feel it being at ground level, Pat upstairs in the house felt it quite noticeably. It was a 5.0 centered off the volcano on the other side of the island, pretty shallow so it wasn't as noticeable here as some of that magnitude.

The ocean is full of color...

And yesterday afternoon we could color it kinda green. During the first dive yesterday (Golden Arches)the viz wasn't so great, but not all that bad. It was a three tank dive day so we went quite a bit north for our second dive, and it wasn't too bad for viz. On the third dive we came back in to the Pine Trees area to do Aquarium and Suck 'Em Up... now that dive had poor viz. It was down to maybe 20 feet or so by then. We had some kind of unusual algae bloom or coral spawn or something. I've seen really heavy algae blooms diving twice since I moved here in '99, it usually lasts for a couple of days.

It was a fun day of diving though. The sky north of Kailua was clear, with little vog and beautiful "puffy" clouds in the distance.... I should have taken a picture, it was gorgeous. We could see Maui from the water. The water temperature has bumped up nicely, I saw 79 degrees my entire dive. The seas were very flat and we were doing a three tanker with a couple of very good divers from Oahu so we took them to a special spot we don't make it to often due to water conditions, distance and such. I got to dive the second dive so it was a blast for me, Cathy dove the other two dives. I'm betting the divers were tired... first dive 77 minutes, second dive 100 minutes and the third was 60 something (the divers were getting cold at that point, despite the extra shorties we threw on them... nearly 4 hours underwater dims your furnace).

Speaking of color, the photo at the top of the post is a closeup of a Fried Egg Nudibranch, one of our most common sea slugs here. Here's the full photo, it wasn't one of my best efforts, but in good focus for the cropped version.

I thought I'd post another interesting blog... I earlier posted a blog from Saipan, this one's from an obviously enthusiastic California Diver and has a bunch of local shots, both above and below. Some people knock cold water diving, but there's a lot of color if you can get past the freezing. I'm looking forward (well sort of anyway) to one day doing some cold water diving again now that I have more of an eye for little stuff than I had back in the day when I was diving in Oregon.

Aloha,

Steve

A bunch of mantas at the Kona manta ray night dive tonight...

We did the manta dive tonight after doing the morning trip also. I'm making this post quick, gotta hit the hay for a few hours and get up for tomorrow's charter - we've been staying quite busy despite being the slow time of year.... How slow is it you may ask... this last Saturday the only other dive charters I saw on the water were the two companies that service primarily Japanese clientele and two companies that have been here for over 25 years. Saturdays seem to be generally a slower dive day because it's a travel day or "the last full day in Kona so I'll do something other than dive" day for a lot of people. We've been going out consistantly, be we are running a bit light (as far as number of divers on the boat) often, going out with a light load beats not going out at all though.

Here's a scorpion fish I took a picture of on a night dive a couple weeks back. With the night time coloration it's tough for me to tell if it's a Decoy Scorpionfish or a Speckled Scorpionfish right off hand without scrutinizing the books.

Quick update on the weather.... Vog is down - Yahoo. It's nice seeing the horizon again after not seeing it for a while, and we were able to see Maui from the water yesterday. We've had nicer skies the last few days, although we are seeing late afternoon winds and rains.

Later,

Steve