I'm such a meanie... I made Bob jump the same mooring twice...

Two days ago the water settled down and was very nice. We went up to a dive site called "sand chute" up by the Kona airport. Bob jumped the mooring and as he was climbing up the ladder I noticed a lot of ruckus going on about a half mile out on the surface. I told Bob I was sorry to do this, but I think we needed to unhook and check it out.

As we approached the spot we could see it was what I expected... a baitball! There was a circle of white foamy water and small fish about 10 inches high off the surface of the ocean with a bunch of shark fins swirling through it.


We parked right next to it and you could see fish jumping and probably 6-8 five to six foot long sharks swimming through it. The sharks were probably Galapagos or Sandbar sharks, I'm not sure as I really don't know the difference right off hand.

Once our eyes adjusted to looking through the water, we could tell the mass of fish life was much larger than just the immediate foamy spot where the fish were jumping. It was all around us. After 8-10 minutes or so a dolphin watch operator pulled up about a hundred feet away and we could tell the whole area between us was quite busy. Looking down you could see tons of little 2-3 inch fish, with tons of 6-8 inch fish below them, which were being hit by tons of 12-15 inch fish below them and the occasional shark passing through.

I wish I had my camera, but then again I'm kinda glad I didn't as I would have had choices to make. I pretty much chickened out about going in to check it out... probably a good idea, but if I'd have had a camera and housing with me I might have been tempted to ease down the ladder with the camera. I know from experience with swimming with Ocenic Whitetip sharks years ago that it's not the most comfortable feeling (especially when you read up on how many deaths Oceanics are responsible for - apparently it's more than all other sharks combined) being in open water with predators and not being able to see in all directions at once. These weren't Oceanic Whitetips, but still I'm kinda conservative these days.

It was an exciting thing to watch for a few minutes before going back to sand chute for the dive.

Above is a shot of one of my favorite fish... a Yellowtail Coris Wrasse. These colorful guys change colors as they grow.

"My best dive ever!"...

I'm taking the liberty of quoting a customer after a manta dive last week. We hear this a lot, thing was, this customer was fairly well traveled and had over a thousand dives. When it's hot (we had nine mantas taht particular night) the manta dive is THAT GOOD.

Keep in mind, despite the fact that the manta dive is a world class dive that will amaze pretty much any diver, Kona has lots of good diving. It's tough to go wrong here.



I've been waiting on boat engine parts for 3 weeks... really frustrating, the boat's been out of the water with the port engine in pieces for that long... I was having some necessary warranty work (engine got an exhaust leak) and parts were brought in, wrong part, and I've been waiting since... got the call from Oahu this afternoon, parts are in, will be in Kona Thurssday and I should be back in the water on Friday. I've been using another boat the last week or so, but I want to get back to mine ASAP.

In the meanwhile... I've been doing some nice diving. The last couple of days have been particularly good critter days for me. I've seen my third Thornback Cowfish diving ever... a huge number of Flame Wrasses (I've seen these offered online for as much as 350-500 bucks a pair) at a location I hadn't seen them before, with a supermale that was displaying in a manner that would put the cover male on Hoover's Hawaiian Fishes book to shame - take a look at this youtube video of a pair in an aquarium - (too bad I had no camera on that dive, I think the one I saw was bigger than the one in the video)... Threadfin Jacks (they're so cool, look like they're made of mylar), as well as some other neat stuff.

Here's a strawberry nudibranch from an earlier dive. wehn you first see them they'll look like they're black with green/gray spots, get a light on them and their color will show (red light disappears underwater as shallow as 15-20 feet so red really doesn't show well at depth).

later,

Steve

Great scuba diving in Kona Hawaii today....

Today was a blast. We went up to Makawena, a site way up north by the cinder cone you can see along the highway near the resorts, and had a very nice first dive. That area was practically inundated by whales, and we had whales swim very close to the boat at the dive site. During the dive the divers were treated to a group of dolphins underwater - I've got video, check back on the next post.

For the day we had some nice sights... archways, lava tubes, a whitetip reef shark, dolphins underwater, scads of whales above water, a barracuda and much more.

Here's a picture of a juvenile Dragon Wrasse. These guys are very tough to get a good shot of, this is about as close as I can get most of the time. They tend to flitter and drift with what little current or surge there is so they're always on the move. Very cool looking.

Later,

Steve

Scuba diving in Kona Hawaii is FUN!!!

We had a last minute charter happen yesterday. The swells of the last couple of days dropped off pretty nicely so we were able to get some good dives in. Bob was the guide for both dives, I played Captain for the day and got a 30 minute "Captain's dive" in while the divers were having lunch and their surface interval on the second mooring of the day.

I took my wife's old Canon A620 down on the dive to try to get familiarized with it. I took a look at it while the divers were down on their first dive and sort of figured out what I wanted to do with the camera. I only took a few shots, here's a shot of an adult phase Yellowtail Coris Wrasse (Coris gaimard). I don't have many, maybe any, shots of the "terminal" phase adults on this blog prior to this photo. These fish go through a pretty radical color change over the course of their lives... they start out as red fish with white diamonds (many people confuse them for clownfish, which we don't have in Hawaii) then eventually lose the white and gain a bunch more colors. They're neat looking in all phases.

The water's still very warm for this time of year. I didn't bother with a wetsuit for the thirty minute dive, although I'd have appreciated it on a longer dive. I was seeing 77 on my computer, we've heard anything from 75-78 on the customer's computers. Yesterday's the first day in almost 2 months I've not seen whales on the water, but we heard them underwater on my dive and the group's second dive. Next month should be the really busy month, although it's been a fabulously good Humpback whale season so far.

No charter today so I'm hanging out at the dive shop 10-5 today.

Aloha,

Steve

Another day of gorgeous weather in Kona today....

Yesterday's rains were predicted to continue on into today originally. We woke up to gorgeous blue skies once the sun came up. It was completely flat and the boat was full of good divers who were in no hurry (we're getting back to the harbor around 4:30 or later when we do the longer trips), so we decided to make a day of it and cover some ground again heading north to check out the area adjacent to the dive site we hit the other day with the same group. Cathy dove with the group, checking out a veritable swiss cheese reef of swim throughs. We've never actually dove that specific area before, although Bob's dove it as part of a one way dive, I'd like to dive it the next time we get up that way. It's quite different from the adjacent parcel of reef we dove the other day. Hopefully we can get up there again a couple times this year.

Tomorrow was originally a day off, but now it's a charter. I may have a day off later this month, still plenty of openings in April though.

The fish above is a "Rockmover Wrasse", which is the adult version of a "Dragon Wrasse" (Novaculichthys taeniourus). They look quite a bit different from the juveniles, and have slightly different habits. As adults, they've earned the name "rockmover" because they spend their entire days picking up rocks and corals and moving them around. They can pick up a pretty good sized chunk of coral, even chunks roughly the same size as they are. They're searching for small urchins and other goodies that they can eat.

Later,

Steve

Razor Wrasses of Hawaii...

These guys are pretty interesting. There's a couple different species, and frankly I'm not that good at telling them apart on the fly. This one is what we call a Peacock Razor Wrasse (Iniistius pavo). As a juvenile they'll have a very elongated first dorsal spine, oftentimes as long as the body of the fish, they tend to lose it (or keep it back and down) as they mature and it's much less noticeable. The adults are much more pale in coloration than the juveniles, this one's starting to be a "tweener" that's maturing.

We find Razor Wrasses generally in larger sand patches in the shallows, and below the reef in the sand at depth. They're not often easily approachable, as they tend to dive into the sand when you find them. It seems as though they have specific spots they "cultivate" in my opinion, 'cause sometimes they'll move as you approach then get to a spot and hover 'til you get too close and dive in. Interestingly enough, sometimes when you stick your hand in the sand it'll go through like nothing while the sand around it is much more firm. Anyway, these guys seem to have a knack for covering some distance under the sand as you can't dig them up (not that I've ever tried - it's hearsay, yeah that's it).

I used to have a Dragon Wrasse in an aquarium at home a half a life ago, these fish also dive into the sand on occasion and tend to sleep underground at night, mine had the habit of pulling up algae and piling it in one corner of the tank about 45 minutes before my lights were timed to go off and then it would dive into the pile and the oyster shell/dolomite mix for the night.

Pat took this photo, which is better than anything I have of Razor Wrasses, on a dive a couple months back.

We're off to do the manta dive tonight. Water conditions are quite decent today. I heard through the grapevine that there were 7 mantas seen off the airport last night.

Aloha,

Steve

Manta ray cleaning station...

The water's finally warming up and getting to more summer-time like conditions. We've been seeing mostly 77 degrees off Kona with the occasional 79 the last couple of weeks.

Today I'm cleaning the vacation rental for our next renters who come in tomorrow, then I have a night dive tonight with day trips the next several days. I thought I was going to have more time off than I wanted, but suddenly I booked an extra 12 or so charters... that's nice, but I'm still hoping for more divers to add on to those days... gotta keep busy!

I'm stealing a couple of photos from Bob for this post. He was leading a dive the other week when a manta ray came by for a cleaning. The mantas will come to the reef and look for a cleaner wrasse. When one comes in to pick parasites off them they typically will circle around in slightly larger concentric circles in an effort to find more cleaner wrasses. Sometimes you'll see mantas with numerous wrasses working them over. If you look real hard, you can see a small wrasse just below the manta in the second photo. I belive Bob's group had the manta hang out for several minutes during this dive.

Aloha,

Steve

Scuba diving and protogynous hermaphrodites in Kona Hawaii...

Now there's a phrase that's probably not gonna be googled a lot. Something few people know is that several species of fish are actually hermaphroditic. In the case of these fish, Psychedelic Wrasses (Anampses chrysocephalus), they all start as females that form a harem under a dominant male. If the male ever disappears, then the dominant female will change sex and become a male.

Protogynous hermaphrodites go from female to male. The reverse is true in protandrous hermaphrodites. I suspect there are some Hawaiian fish that might do that, but you'd have to ask a marine biologist... but there are some recognizeable fish elsewhere that do just that. The most common ones I can think of are several of the clownfish (everyone seems to know them as "Nemo" these days) species. They start as male, and then the most dominant member becomes female as needed - this insures that if two young clownfish find each other they can successfully pair up and mate. Back in my aquarium shop days people would occasionally ask about why one of their clownfish wouldn't grow like the other one, that's the reason.

This group of wrasses was off one of our favorite dive sites yesterday and I got this shot with a bunch of females and the male in the same shot... too bad he's a bit blurry, but his brightly colored face still shows off very well.

Water temp yesterday was 75/76 - Yahoo! It jumped 2-3 degrees the last couple of weeks. We had an unusually early major south swell (been a rough, yet diveable, month) that apparently brought in warmer waters. It was very very flat water conditions the last couple of days, hopefully we're over most of our heavier winter swells.

Aloha,

Steve

Taking photos underwater can be a bit of a challenge...

I've been wanting to get a "good" shot of one of these guys for a long time. This isn't it quite yet. So many of the fish dart about so much that it's tough to get them focused. The closer you are the tougher it is, too far out then the flash doesn't get enough light to the subject.... this photo has just a bit too much movement for my tastes. One of these days!!!

This is a juvenile Yellowtail Coris Wrasse (Coris Gaimard). On occasion, people not familiar with the Hawaiin fish will mistake it for a clown fish (Hawaii doesn't have clown fish, I believe we've just a tad to cool of a water temperature for them to reproduce successfully). Typically we'll see the Yellowtail Coris in this coloration up to about 3 inches or so. As they grow, they will lose the white stripes, start adding blue and develop a yellow tail. If you take a look through all the archives, or click on the "wrasse" label below, you should find a shot or two of larger specimens.

Aloha,

Steve

So, when should you place your dive outing reservations?

I started to write a long look at reserving activities, then I realized it was just a bunch of paragraphs that really didn't say much...



...so here it is in a nutshell. There really is no hard and fast rule for reserving activities when traveling, but if it were me, I'd pick the thing or two I really want to do, and reserve it in advance so I know it's locked in, leave some open time in case I get there and discover something interesting I want to do, then go from there.

What brought this on is one little thing... Christmas is coming. Quite often I get lots of calls around 8pm looking for a dive tomorrow morning, it seems to happen almost every day during Christmas week - Sometimes I can make it happen, oftentimes I can't, it's much more difficult at that time of year.... I suspect this is true with most dive operators, especially during the busiest times.

In Kona, our absolute busiest time for dive and other water oriented operators is probably Christmas week. Depending on what day Christmas falls on the calendar, it can go from slow/steady to crazy/busy overnight around the 18th-22nd of December and continue on 'til a few days after the first of the year. My guess is that at least one or more of the most established dive companies will probably have their entire holiday schedule nearly completely set by the 2nd or 3rd week of December. I may not be there yet, being comparatively new to some, but I expect I'll be filling up a good portion of my seats in advance this year.

... So remember, the early bird catches the boat (or something like that). If you are heading to a tourist destinaton this holiday season, it might not hurt to schedule some of your priorities in advance, especially if you have a particular provider in mind.

Above is a picture of an Ornate Wrasse (Halichoeres ornatissimus). In the aquarium trade we'd normally see these show up as a "Christmas" wrasse, but there is another wrasse that occasionally show up when a Christmas wrasse was ordered that Hoover's book has with that name (Get 5 books, you'll probably see 2 names on several fish, scientific names even seem to change every now and then as species classification evolves). Oooohh.... Christmas wrasse, how apropos, considering this is sort of a Christmas topic.

Later,

Steve

We now return to our normal programming....

Please take a brief look a few posts down and you'll see pictures of a "Dragon Wrasse". Those pictures were of the juveniles. This is the adult phase. They go through a transformation of both appearance and habits as they grow. The adult version is referred to as a "Rockmover Wrasse", for it's habit of digging around and literally picking up and throwing rocks around. They spend most of their adult lives foraging under rocks looking for goodies to eat. They can easily lift a rock that is their own size... kinda fun to watch.

Now that all the natural disaster activity has passed, I'll be back to posting primarily about diving, with some local info tibits every now and then. Kona saw nothing weather-wise out of Hurricane Flossie, had no tidal wave from the earthquake in Peru, and no damage from the Hilo side earthquake of the other day... other than school closures and the economic impact of closures and cancellations all over, it's been life as usual the last few days.

Take care all,

Steve

Hey, earthquakes, hurricanes... Hawaii's got it all...

So I'm frying up some italian sausage and the window starts rattling, for about 10 seconds. There's nothing else unusual going on anywhere else in the house, so I figure I'll check the time in case there was a small earthquake. 7:28. During "Fat Walk" on ABC a bit over a half hour later there's a hurricane update.... oh, and by the way, there was a 5.3 quake about 20 miles south of Hilo on the Big Island at 7:28pm.... any other day and that'd been one of the first mentions on the 10 o'clock news, as a 5.3 is a once every year or two or three event if I recall correctly. Here's the LINK to the USGS Hawaii earthquake map

Anyway, the current thinking is the hurricane won't hit the island directly, but might generate surf and 40-50 mph winds on the southeast side as well as surf on most of the east side. No talk about the Kona side yet. More updates later, if I'm still up (I'm getting to where I actually go to bed around night news time -10pm here), I'll update any new news I hear.

Later,

Steve

Coris Wrasse.... one heck of a colorful fish.

Good Evening,

Boy have we been busy on the boat. I had the fuel tanks replaced and was basically down for a month, but turning down little business, and suddenly were going out every day. I've had one day off since the 15th of last month between the two jobs, and only 3 days off on the boat since then with the next off day on the boat tentatively scheduled on the 16th.

We've been seeing lots of neat critters on our dives, sharks (mostly sleeping reef sharks, but the divers saw a hammerhead off Kaiwi point a couple days back), rays (we had one at a cleaning station for several minutes today), scorpion fish, turtles,etc. I saw a thumbnail sized yellow frogfish the other day but didn't have the camera... bummer, left it at home. Today we hit the site with another group and I looked for it and it wasn't there... also a bummer, but the manta ray coming in for a cleaning more than made up for it. I took a poor quality video of the manta circling that I'll post later.

The leg's feeling much better, but I did notice it when I dove off the boat to set the mooring, nothing major though. It's just nice to be back in the water.

The underwater photo above is of a Yellowtail Coris Wrasse (Coris gaimard), I knew them as a Red Coris Wrasse back in my aquarium keeping days. These guys are tough to get a picture of usually, they tend to zip off just as you are taking the shot. This one was fairly cooperative though, Pat may have an even better picture. The colors are a bit "hot" on this one, I had a rather dull looking photo and then hit
"auto levels" in Photoshop and this came out. It probably could be toned down a hair, I think the red on the top fin and the blue dots are almost too brilliant, but it's pretty darned close.

Kona diving conditions? It's been excellent as of late. Good visability, slightly warmer (I saw 75 the other day, but my computer read 73 today) than earlier, and pretty calm waters. The weather has been great.... sunny days with rain showers in the evenings up mauka. Rain almost never affects the diving conditions here as we have no rivers or streams on the west side.

That's about all for now.

Aloha,

Steve

Hurricane Daniel was a non-happening in Kona

Just a little update on Hurricane Daniel... it dissapated into a tropical depression and caused rain on the east side of the island and on some of the other islands. As much as 2 inces of rain fell in some parts of the state yesterday as a result of the ex-hurricane.

Kona was sunny and hot for the day yesterday, the day it affected everywhere else.

We did manage to get some nice rain today later in the afternoon in Kona, but that wasn't part of "Daniel" and didn't effect the diving. Hopefully we're settling down into our regular summer weather pattern - sunny in the morning with clouds building on the mountains and occasional rain in the late afternoon/evening, with most of tghe rain being near the mountains. We had nice diving conditions for the charter today, doing dives at Golden Arches and Turtle Heaven with a group doing a combined Open Water coruse and refresher.

The photo above is of a Fourline Wrasse (Pseudocheilinus tetrataenia). These little guys are tough to get a picture of. They tend to dart into coral heads when you approach. This particualr individual was relatively tolerant of me being near, I was able to snap off a few shots and this one was probably the best of the bunch. My first shot of one of them.

later,

Steve

Urgent Kona Hawaii weather report....

It's nice!!!!!





Here's the underwater photo of the young adult phase of the yellowtail coris wrasse I pictured two posts below. They go from red with white diamond patterns to this. This is probably the most stunning color phase. Older adults will develop a more greenish-turquoise hue. This pic is my first known repeat on the blog - I'd posted it a couple months back using a photo host which is now down, you may or may not see it in the archives.

Aloha,

Steve

Kona's water temp has bumped up quickly...

In the course of 4 days the temp readings on all our computers (Bob's, mine, and our customers') jumped 4 degrees. I've been getting readings of 79 from the old airport diving area up to Garden Eel Cove and slightly north. This was looking to be a very cool summer of diving last sunday, but it appears our last south swell brought in the warmer waters. I haven't seen it jump that quickly before.

I haven't posted the last few days. On tuesday's night dive we saw 4 manta rays. That night we did a dive early with a customer who I certified last year. He hadn't dove since, but did great, getting around an hour on the dive. After his dive we dropped back in the harbor and picked up the divers I've had earlier in the week for the trip out to the Kona Airport for the manta ray night dive. It was a good dive, nice and warm for me... I've been getting quite cold on the night dives 'til the temps started bumping up. Next year I'm going to need to get a thicker wetsuit when the temps drop.

On Thursday, we had a double. We took a couple out for the day. They'd dove with Bob for several years and saw him in town and got our number. Bob did both dives with them, saw lots of stuff, including Harlequin Shrimp. I'm not going to name the site with the shrimp, as once they set up on a good coral head they can stay for a few years - I'm hoping we find them regularly at that site... sometimes they disappear.

On the evening trip, we had a diver who hadn't dove in 5 years and 4 snorkelers. I dove him on the first dive, he did great! It was a nice 60 minute dive. We saw lots of critters, loads of banded coral shrimp and 2 eagle rays- It was a nice lead in to the manta dive. There was one manta on the dive that evening, but it gave everyone a great show.

Here's a much better picture of a Dragon Wrasse (Novaculichthys taeniourus) that my wife, Pat, took on the dive the other weekend. These guys are really tough to get a good picture of with a point-and-shoot digital camera because of the focus and shutter delays these cameras have in low lighting. I've yet to get anything this decent.

Later,

Steve