The water's great today!

I have an afternoon/night manta ray trip today. With the morning free, I did the sensible thing.... went diving. It's handy living within 15 minutes of some of the best shore diving in Hawaii. The water's been flat for a couple of days so I wanted to try working with the camera while on my own for once. It's been rough water most any time I've had an opportunity to go out on my own.

Here's the highlight of my morning. Frogfish are a member of the angler family. They're tough to spot and not found very often.

later,

Steve

Saw a whale today.

Unfortunately not underwater, that's something I've yet to see... maybe this year. Today was very flat conditions early on. Good viz, 79 degree water still. I did the first dive of the day and played Captain the second.

We saw the whale between dives while cruising around. Last December we saw plenty of whales and then the Januuary swells came along and we really didn't see much of them 'til almost March. I'm hoping we get a good show all winter long.

Here's a rather busy shot I took the other day. It has several of the types of hard corals we have here. In the middle of the picture (kind of behind and above the yellow tangs) you can make out a bunch of the blue goatfish foraging for something. Above them in the background near the top of the photo is a trevally. There is a phenomenon called "nuclear hunting" where different species of fish hunt together. On Kona reefs we often see eels, grouper, trevally and occasionally the goatfish hunting together. I need to get a more obvious picture or video of it some day to post or link.

Aloha,

Steve

2 manta rays

We had 2 manta rays on the night dive the other night. It's always fun being on the boat when the customers come in after that dive. They're always quite stoked. Having a 14 foot wide fish glide inches over your head repeatedly is not the typical dive experience for most people. We get a lot of people saying that it's the best dive, or best night dive they've ever done.

The surf came up yesterday and today. Should settle down again tomorrow for a day or two before the next swell hits.

Brrrrr... It's cold. It's sitting about 65 degrees at home right now, it was 63 when we got up this morning. We live at the 900 foot elevation so it's a bit colder than it is in Kailua or down by the shore. It's really funny how you get used to warm weather after living here a few years. One or two degrees cooler and I'll be wearing sweats.

Later,

Steve

A great day on the water today.

It was a cloudless morning in Kona today. The east side of the island had been getting a good amount of rainfall, but we've got a couple of nearly 14,000 foot tall behemoths in the way (Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea - tonight's news said both received snow today) that absorb all the rain before reaching Kona on the west side of the island.

We did the first dive at turtle heaven, lots of turtles and other fish. A male phychedelic wrasse, awa awa, helmet snail (looks like a foot long Qonquistador hat), papillo/ulua/blue trevally and other goodies were sighted. The second dive was a one way dive from Kamanu/Carousel to out and around Kaiwi point. This is an outstanding dive... Flame angels, a bandit angel, nudibranchs, tons of pyramid butterflys and such were all sighted. My wife was able to join us today. I'm not sure if she'd done either site before, she was real happy with the second dive... it's a great dive.

Unfortunately for me... played Captain on both dives. It was still a great day on the water. Apparently wth viz was very, very good today. I think my DM was talking 150' at our first dive, which is incredible for that dive site. I talked with another DM/Instructor/Captain friend who estimated 200' or more at the dive site they did on their first dive.

79 degree water, 100+ foot viz.... not too bad compared to what I dove in off the Pacific Northwest.

Here's a juvenile Chevron tang. they lose the red/orange s they mature and turn into a black (actually black striated with white) tang as they mature.

Take care,

Steve

We had a lovely little thurnderstorm...

....this afternoon. My wife called me from her work and asked if it was pouring yet, nope, probably started 2-3 minutes later... One of those 2-3 inches of rain an hour rains we occasionally get. We don't see tons of them, but they can happen. Right now the rain has stopped and it's a cool 75 degrees outside. We live down around Kealakekua bay, other areas may have had less (or more) rain, topography of the island has a lot to do of where it rains. In general, the closer the mountains are to the water, the more rain. Elevation can have a dramatic effect, the higher on the hill the more rain.

I'm enjoying my time off right now. I have charters on Wednesday and Thursday, but starting on Sunday the 11th I'm not sure if I will have any days off the rest of the month. I do have 5 days open the last 20 of the month so far, but I have enquiries on all of them. I'm hoping they all book up, this is one of those jobs you don't mind working 15-20 days straight.

Here's a pic of a short piece of cave. One thing we have in Kona is short lava tubes and archways at many of our dive sites. Makes for a neat little swim through if the surf isn't crazy.

later,

Steve

Turtle photo

I was just looking through some of my older photos and saw this. It was a nicer photo than I recall seeing at the time I took it.

We rescheduled tomorrow's dive to later on. My customer just wanted to do one day of diving while here so it might as well be a day that the swell's down. It works out just fine for me either way.

Today is a football day. My wife graduated from Texas years ago, and she's working on her Doctorate through Colorado - she basically couldn't care less who won though. We're both big Oregon State Beaver fans, having gone to school there and living in Corvallis for years - uh, we'll get 'em next year. Now the USC game's on. I think Texas is pretty for real this year. USC has dominated for 2 years, I'm not so sure what'll happen in the Rose Bowl this year (assuuming USC beats UCLA today). My one other football comment (since this paragraph is about football, I might as well get all my football related comments out of the way) is that Reggie Bush deserved the Heisman last year, he deserves it again this year - he truly is a great player.

Later,

Steve

Kona's got a west swell coming in.

I did a dive for fun down at the Place of Refuge today. I was hoping to shoot a lot of pics but it was pretty stirred up. I had an opportunity for teaching tomorrow (Saturday), but it'll be nasty due to a west swell coming up and not what I'd consider good conditions for Open Water certifications or intros. I do have a day on the boat planned for Sunday with certified divers.

Here's another tiger cowry from the other day. I keep hoping to find an empty one some day. I don't mess with any cowries that are alive. Many cowry species mate for life. They leave a slime trail that the mates follow - if you pick one up, odds are that you'll put it down in the wrong spot and break up a happy couple.

Take care,

Steve

A day off.

After being in the water 14 of the last 17 days I didn't have anything booked (my slow season's turning into a busy time) and took a day off. I thought about DIVING for fun today, but I'll give my ears a rest. Maybe tomorrow.

The big news around today is the roughly 40 acres of land that fell off into the sea over on the lava flow a couple of days back. Sorry I don't have a link, if I find one in the next day or so I'll link it. --- Here's a link with some pics of the new island edge, it may be updated to something different for those looking at the site after 12/2/05 --- http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/kilauea/update/#images --- We have an active volcano that is continuously building new property on the Big Island. The photo above is of my family (wife, parents, sisters and in-laws and families) out on the lava flow back in late '99. The glowing orange stuff in the background is real red-hot flowing lava. You can still walk to the flow but they do warn of bench falls. As the lava flows to the sea it forms a bench which could potentially fall, this is what happened to the parcel which fell into the sea the other day. It's a very popular thing, walking out to the flow, hopefully nobody was on the parcel that sank. It apparently happened in smaller portions over several hours, haven't heard of any problems with hikers as of yet.

Here's a photo of some Pyramid and Thompson's butterfly fish soliciting a parasite cleaning from a cleaner wrasse.

later,

Steve