Ocean Rider, the Kona Hawaii seahorse farm....

We've had family in the last week. Pat had a day off and we all went out to Ocean Rider out at the Natural Energy Lab for their little tour.

The Natural Energy Lab is out on Keahole Point, just south of the Kona airport. It originally was a science lab where they were working on using cold water piped up from the deep to try to create electricy. Nowadays the water is more used for various aquaculture projects, although I believe they are putting in another electric research project.

One of the aquaculture projects is Ocean Rider, which concentrates on raising seahorses for the aquarium trade. They've started offering tours of the faciltiy. It's sort of interesting from an aquaculture standpoint, it's pretty much a typical hatchery setup, with more atypical creatures being raised. Not sure what my family thought, it was kind of a spendy tour, but worth it once. Probably the highlight for most taking the tour is a chance to get to stick your hands in a big vat and have a seahorse hang on to your fingers.

The pic above is of a bunch of Bluestripe Snapper (Lutjanus kasmira), known locally as tiape. These fish were introduced back in the late 50's with the theory that the original Hawaiians came from the Marquesas (although the large majority of Hawaiians actually come from later waves of immigration from other polynesian island states), the Hawaiians would love this fish as it's a popular food fish in the Marquesas. Dumb idea. It's considered to be a pest by local fishermen. They eat everything and really don't make much of a good food fish. Anyway, they are quite common in some spots and often hang out in large groups. This group is part of a group that is pretty much always under the south arch at Golden Arches.

Steve

Aliens Found in Hawaii Cave!!! Not quite, actually these are a shrimp

These are a really cool little shrimp. I took an underwater photo of them at an undisclosed location sometime in the last few weeks. I think many of the dive ops know of this particular pair, but everyone keeps it quiet.

These are Harlequin Shrimp ( Hymenocera picta or Hymenocera elegans, depending on who you read) aka Clown shrimp. They are one of the most unique and colorful shrimp we see. I first came across these guys in the aquarium trade. They eat nothing but starfish, unless maybe the occasional feet off urchins. Back in the day when I was keeping and selling marine fish we would see these on occasion. People would actually set up an aquarium for them and another for starfish, then throw a starfish into the shrimp tank 'til they manage to rip off a leg then pull it out. Several days later they'd throw another starfish into the tank while the earlier victim recovered. Starfish can grow back limbs, so theoretically, several relatively inexpensive starfish could keep a pair of Harlequin Shrimp going indefinitley.

In Hawaii, these shrimp likely feed off blood stars (I think I have one pictured somewhere in the archives) and the occasional linkia star. We had a pair of Harlequins near an arch just north of High Rock for several years that various DMs used to feed blood stars on a regular basis. One year we had particularly large surf and the spot they were living at was damaged and we never saw them again.

Several years ago there was a teacher at one of the local high schools who actually bred them, had a web page, and sold them. He apparently fed them crown of thorns stars. These are huge stars, so I bet one could feed a pair for a looooong time. I haven't looked at that site in years. If I can find it again, I'll post it here.

In other news... I recently started a mailing list. It's an opt in system and tonight I sent out a bazillion confirmations, one to most everyone who's contacted me over the years... I hope nobody was offended. If you are reading this and you've contaced me before and receive the message... just ignore it if you aren't interested, or sign up if you are curious, you can opt out at any time. For anyone else who's curious, I have a link on the right side of the blog where you can opt in for my Wanna Dive mailing list. I won't be giving the info to anyone else, and likely won't be putting out an e-mail more than 3-4 times a year I suspect. I don't want to bombard anyone with SPAM, I get 150-300 pieces of junk mail a day myself I have to filter through. It gets to be bothersome because occasionally I probably miss legitimate e-mail.

later,

Steve

Hawaiian Garden Eels. Ever seen 30-40 eels at once?

Aloha,

These guys are found at depth off Kona by the thousands. This short eel video was taken in a single spot, there are acres of these guys at this location.

Hawaiian Garden Eels (Gorgasia hawaiiensis)are a plankton feeding eel which spends it's life buried in the sand with it's head sticking out feeding all day long. According to divemaster/instructor/boat captain Bob, these guys grow to about 70 feet long - Prove him wrong! Actually, we usually only see about 12-18 inches of these critters sticking out, they'll back down into their burrows as you approach and they never do seem to get their entire body out, so you never know. The books put them at maybe a couple feet long.

This was taken at Garden Eel Cove, which is also home of the Manta Ray night dive. It's one of the locations we tend to see Garden Eels shallower than their typical 80 feet and deeper. At this location they are relatively used to people so you can slowly approach to within a few feet without them completely backing into their holes, in other areas you are lucky to get within 15-20 feet of them and still see them.

later,

Steve

Hawaiian Ghost Shrimp.

OK, I finally took a reasonably decent pic of a ghost shrimp (Stenopus pyrsonotus). They are also known as Flameback Shrimp or Fountain Shrimp, depending on who you are talking to. This shrimp and it's mate I'd only recently found at one of our more popular dive sites, in fact, I found another pair about a hundred-150 feet away just yesterday. Both pairs seem to be very good posers, coming out of their holes when divers approach, so I suspect there will lots of photo opportunites of these guys at that site assuming all the other DMs find them too (the first set is hard not to find for someone who does the site regularly). These shrimp will often set up house in the same spot for a couple years at a time as long as storms don't knock them out of their holes or something else get to them.

Aloha,

Steve

Kona water temperature has bumped up to 81 or so...

We've had a pretty big south swell the last few days, but it seems to have brought the temp up a bit.



Sometimes you just gotta work for your dinner! Here's some turtles eating (or attempting to anyway) algae off the rocks on a mildly surgy day down at the Place of Refuge right near the "2 Steps" entry point. I sometimes wonder what they do when the surf is really up. I compressed this video a bit more than I should have, so pardon the pixellation.

I've been doing primarily students the last couple of weeks, seems sort of odd because I've really only had a couple sets of students the last several months and have been taking out certified divers primarily. My business has changed over time. When I started my shore diving business, it was primarily instruction. Now that I've added the boat I appeal much more to the certified crowd.

Something I did last week which was kind of neat was an open water student who had certified family and friends that hadn't dove in years. We did the class for her, and mom and friend also joined in for the entire class as a refresher. I cut the divers a deal on the cost of the class to where it was essentially cost a little more that just going out and doing the 4 dives would've cost. A lot of people would benefit from doing this type of thing after having been out of the water for several years. It's easy to forget some things, especially the important stuff involving handing emergencies that you probably will never need to use... but it's nice to know what to do if needed. They're all back in the swing of it now and ready to go if they decide they want to get back into the hobby on a regular basis.

Later,

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

Funky Kona Manta Ray night dive video

Here's a short video of the Kona Hawaii manta ray night dive off the Kona airport that I shot underwater with my Olympus sp350 on Tuesday night. We work with a local videographer who takes video of our divers and snorkelers (it is broadcast quality stuff, not like what you see here) and I thought I'd poach some of her light and see if my little point-and-shoot digital cam could take the video. Turns out I was too far back and it doesn't do anywhere near as well in low light as a dedicated video camera. After a little tweaking in quicktime, I was able to at least bring up the brightness to where things show up. Pardon for all the psychedelic colors, it's not like that in real life.



Aloha,

Steve

Lots of manta rays right now. Water temperature is 79 in Kona.

Been busy on the boat the last little bit. We did a double yesterday, with dives in the morning and then the late afternoon dive followed by the night manta dive. We has the same thing on Tuesday. I have a pool session with some open water scuba students scheduled for later this afternoon.



Here's a little video I took of a manta ray on a day dive a couple weeks back with my Olympus sp350. We see these guys on day dives on occasion and we'll have divers oh so excited to have seen them. At that point we highly suggest they try the night dive. Seeing a manta in the daytime doesn't even compare, they're just swimming by. At night they are swimming to you. I do have a little, very dark, video I took of the night dive I'll post later. It'll give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

later,

Steve