OK, I'm excited about white balance... just stumbled across...

a blog by a guy who's into photography and diving and found this post. Apparently Photoshop has had a white balance, a black balance and a gray balance dropper in their program all along... go to image>adjustments>levels and then look for the droppers in the lower right of the box that opens... whohoo!!!! You can experiment using this on photos that are bluish and get them much closer than you'll likely get them by other means unless you're really talented at Photoshop. I managed to "save" a few old photos in just a couple minutes' time that I couldn't do a whole lot with earlier.

Save your originals! You never know when you'll find out something that'll help you fix a problem you didn't think you could overcome.

Later,

Steve

Current Kona water and air quality conditions.....April 18th, '08

We've got a huge south swell right now. I should've taken my camera with me downtown today to take a picture in Kailua Bay... lots of water pounding against the sea wall. The winds have been coming up the last two days also so it's been pretty sloppy on the water.

The volcano is still actively putting out lots of gasses. They've been off and on issuing voluntary evacuations in communities near the park the last couple of weeks. Wednesday morning they even had a sulfur dioxide alert in HOVE, which is on the west side of the island, and were calling for a voluntary evactuation of the whole area... luckily that was shortlived and called off in about 2 and a half hours. Here in Kona we haven't had the sulfur dioxide issues, but the vog has been very thick for the better part of two weeks now - yuck, we haven't had a good horizon in most of that time and sunsets have turned into a big orange ball with orange sky.

Here's a pair of Banded Coral Shrimp I found the other day. They've set themselves up in a hole that used to house a pair of Ghost Shrimp at Turtle Pinnacle. Hopefully they'll stick around and it'll become a nice eel spot - eels often go into holes where these guys live so the shrimp will clean them, the shrimp will climb on the eels looking for parasites to pick off.

Later,

Steve

Hawaiian Yellow Margin Moray eel....

We saw this guy on a dive a couple of days ago. It swam right across our path and into a hole on the wall, then turned around to watch us pass. This was a big and thick eel. You can see the yellow margin on the tip of it's tail quite nicely in this pic.

Later,

Steve

We were skunked on the manta dive the other night...

It was a fun dive, but alas no mantas a few nights back. As much as we'd like to, we can't guarantee mother nature.

Bob sent me a couple of pics from the other week of a good sized frogfish he found on a dive. This guy's still got a fair amount of yellow in it despite pushing 7-8 inches in length. Bob reduced the size of the photo for email to send it to me, by the time I reworked it for my blog posts the resolution leaves a bit to be desired, but you still get the drift of what the fish looks like. They're neat looking critters.

Aloha,

Steve

Been busy....

Aloha,

I've been reasonably busy with Wanna Dive the last little bit, so I havn't been posting as much. I've been doing more of the diving the last while, which has been very fun.

Today we had a couple of very nice dives, lots to look at and pretty reasonable conditions, although the last little while the water temp has cooled off a hair (I'm seeing 73-75 on my computer). We had several nudibranchs, banded coral and ghost shrimps, a male psychedelic wrasse and it's harem of females, a pair of flame angels (in a spot there was only one last year... dating is alive and well in the reef world), several eels and other neat animals.

Here's a baitball of opelu we saw today. It was a pretty thick swarm of opelu. Fishermen catch them for use as bait for larger fish or for smoking, they're a popular snack item when smoked.

I'll try to post a bit more frequently (I'm five or six photos ahead right now so even if the post is worthless there'll be an OK picture).

Later,

Steve

First Aloha Airlines shuts down, now ATA does the same....

Hawaii has just lost roughly 15 percent of it's mainland arrivals in the last few days... that's pretty big news here.

I've already had to juggle my schedule next week to accomodate divers who were delayed a couple days trying to get here, may lose a charter or two out of it. I currently have customers who are diving with me who just found out today (from Cathy and I) they might not have a way home set up at this point... the ATA flights are going to be tough to replace right away. Apparently Hawaiian is trying to add what flights they can, but they can only do so much.

It'll be curious to see how this all shakes out. It was very quiet at the harbor today, several of the boats I see regularly at the boat ramp and boat wash at the end of the day weren't on the water today. I know at least one of them had to cancel today's charter as they're customers were caught up in the closings.

Interesting times, so far other than a little schedule juggling I'm not feeling the sting too much.

The underwater photo above is of a divided flatworm that Pat took on a dive a couple weeks back. I'm back to diving regularly again and I'll have the camera in hand when I'm not teaching, hopefully something interesting will happen by (I generally don't actively shoot when I'm leading dives, maybe a few shots a dive if any, most of my shots come on my day off or if I take a "Captain's dive" during the surface interval) that I can capture on the camera.

We're very busy 'til about the 17th or so, I'll post when I can.

Aloha,

Steve

Scuba diving at the Place of Refuge in Kona Hawaii

Scuba diving off Kona Hawaii from Steve on Vimeo.

Here's a quickie underwater video of part of the drop off at the Place of Refuge taken with my Canon G9.

Adios Aloha. Aloha Airlines just announced tomorrow (March 31st) will be thier last day.

It's the end of an era of over 60 years. It'll be curious as to how this all shakes out. The State will ask the bankruptcy court to not allow the closure but that may not have any effect. Expect another airline to come in and purchase what remains of the company in a short time... hopefully.

Aloha and Hawaiian had attempted to merger a few years back to attempt to create a larger, healthy company. The state wouldn't allow it despite pricing lock guarantees. When that fell through prices went up and the two companies have been struggling to do well since. Go Airlines came in a couple years ago and has offered artificially low prices which has weakened both companies. While benefitting passengers for the short term, it's made it tough for everyone to operate. Both companies have sued Mesa, the parent company of Go. Hawaiian won thier suit and was awarded 80 million, Aloha's suit is ongoing.

Hopefully someone steps in soon to service the interisland traffic or things could get dicey for a number of businesses, as well as travelers, here. Custmers who have purchased tickets should contact their travel agencies or credit card companies. Those who paid for their tickets by cash or check will need to deal with the bankruptcy court.

later,

Steve