Manta ray night snorkel in Kona Hawaii - swim with manta rays...

Wierd little video of people snorkeling with manta rays from Steve on Vimeo.

We've been pretty busy lately, I've got a lull coming for several days before the spring break rush kicks in for about a month.

Last night we did a manta dive. About half of our group was divers and the other half snorkelers. I posted plenty on this before, but this is a video of what it looks like to the boat Captains during the dives. The divers are down below in about 32-34 feet of water and the mantas spend their time between the divers on the bottom and the snorkelers on the surface. If you look real hard, you'll see brief instances where there's a real bright spot directly under a group or two of the snorkelers on the left side of the video about half way in... that's actually a manta ray doing belly rolls a foot or two below the snorkelers. It was kind of a bumpy night, so you'll notice the water isn't glass smooth, but it wasn't big surf by any means either.

The video doesn't do this justice, it's been listed as the world's top night dive, and people (last night included) come up raving about it. One of the best things about it is that it is also a great show for snorkelers.

Later,

Steve

Surf, Sand and Stars Buffet at the Four Seasons in Kona Hawaii

Surf, Sand and Stars Buffet at Four Seasons Kona Hawaii from Steve on Vimeo.

We went out for our big meal of the year this weekend. We went to the Four Seasons for their Saturday night beach buffet. It's a spendy (75/78 bucks or so a head) and very delicious meal. I'm getting old, so I restrained myself and only had 10 lobster tail halves, a couple pieces of steak, a bunch of lillikoi pork ribs, a pile of steamer clams, a few salads (I didn't know fried chicken could be a salad, but they had fried chicken salad... and here I'd been overlooking salads all this time) and a few deserts (the chocolate souffle was delicious)... I skipped the sushi table altogether. It's a delicious dinner, and even the kids at the place had fun... they break out a fairly sizeable telescope after dark.

Sometimes the video on the Canon G9 surprises me. I decided to see if it could handle the relatively low light at the buffet and it did just fine.

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

Spinner dolphins in Kona Hawaii...

Here's a shot of some spinner dolphins right outside of Honokohau Harbor. Several days a week we might see a resident pod that hangs out in front of the harbor and a few other spots. When they are in, you have a fair chance of seeing them on nearby divesites... way cool!!!

Arothron Meleagris - Spotted Puffer. Yellow ain't the regular color...

OK, so I can't get enough of the puffer that Cathy took photos of yesterday. Here's the regular coloration of the spotted puffers we see, it's from a photo I took about 3 years back. Quite a contrast from the yellow colored one for sure. The shot below is another pic that Cathy took as the puffer from yesterday was just inside the mouth of a cave/puka (puka is essentially Hawaiian for "hole").

Apparently the yellow coloration is more common in other parts of the Indo-Pacific, but for Hawaii it's a pretty unusual sighting. It was definitely the highlight of yesterdays outing, even though they saw a Great Barracuda, a frogfish, a couple of eagle rays, a couple groups of psychedelic wrasses, an octopus and other cool stuff.

Holy Cow!!!! Cathy came up from one of today's dives very excited....

We had a group on board today of mixed snorkelers and divers and hit a couple of spots where we can do both. When Cathy came up she was thrilled to see a fish she hadn't seen ever before in the time she's worked the dive boats in Kona (since '76, 32 years and seeing something new is still a thrill). Before she climbed back on board she asked if I happened to have my camera on board and if she could borrow it to take some photos.... yup. While she was down one of the snorkelers said they'd seen it under the boat and thought it was pretty cool, but didn't know it was anything out of the ordinary...

Well here it is....


After looking it up in Hoover, it turns out this is a rarely seen color morph of the Spotted Puffer (Arothron meleagris). Man, I hope it's still around when I'm back in the water in a week or two. Photo by Cathy.

Later,

Steve

It's whale season in Hawaii...

Between dives on yesterday's charter we were treated to a momma whale and her calf on the surface. The youngster was breaching, quite cool as it was probably in the 10-13 feet in length range by my wild guess. Anyway, that got me to thinking I ought to repost a link I posted last year - here it is... Live audio feed from a sonobuoy system up in Puako - click on the link and you can hear the whales off Puako, which is up north of Kona in South Kohala.

The pic above is of a Crown of Thorns Starfish. You don't want to touch the spines on these guys as they're sharp enough to go through gloves and pack a nasty toxin that can be very painfull and will leave you a reminder in scar tissue for a few years. Crown of thorns stars are coral feeders so you'll occasionally see white patches on the coral that lead a trail to them. They're generally considered to be a pest, and in some parts of the world have caused severe damage to reefs when there's a bloom of them. In Hawaii, their only real predator is the triton's trumpet snail.. one good reason not to collect the trumpet snails, which are relatively few and far between.

Later,

Steve

Sometimes, when you are checking out the underwater world.....

....The underwater world is checking you out too!