Happy Halloween!!

The picture above is of a green sea turtle that was photo shopped a bit to look more like a painting. You can do some fun things with photoshop. I'm starting to run out of new photos, so I may just doctor some of the old one's from time to time. I'm not sure if I've posted this exact one, without the doctoring, before - lots of turtle photos have hit the site over the last year, so it's gonna happen sooner or later.

We finished off our classes yesterday. 6 new divers. Diving conditions were great in the morning, with a bit of a northwest swell bumping up later in the day. Water temp is running a warm 81 - yahoo - I like diving in the fall as the water's usually so nice.

I'll keep this post short, not a lot to say today.

Aloha,

Steve

Nice diving conditions yesterday....

Short report today.

Bob and I have been working with a group of students. Our water temp has bumped up a hair the last couple of weeks. I had almost given up, but I saw a solid 81 and even saw 82 degrees on the computer during the dive yesterday. Call it 81 degrees in the water right now.

Posted above is an Arc-eye Hawkfish (Paracirrhites arcatus). These guys perch on coral heads waiting for small prey to pass by.

later,

Steve

Still alive and well in Kona.....

I haven't posted lately ... I came down with the flu last week and just haven't felt like writing anything. More or less back to normal now. Tomorrow I get to work on the boat some. It's a case where a 16 buck part fails and it takes 10 days (mostly waiting on new parts) and a lot more than 16 bucks to get back to where you started. The joys of owning a boat... that's what credit cards are for I guess. Should be back up and running tomorrow afternoon. I have classes later in the week so the boat needs to be back to normal by the weekend.

Ironman came and went. I had the weekend off and was looking forward to actually going downtown for the activities (we usually just try to stay as far away as possible) but spent the whole weekend in bed instead. The quake had basically no noticeable effect on the event. I did talk to a gentleman who lives up north in the area most affected and heard some interesting/even scary stories. Sounds like I need to take the highway up north to Pololu and check things out.

The picture above is a top looking downward view of one of the Harlequin shrimp I posted a month or two back (go to the archives to see that photo). They are such a cool find.

...And now back to our regular programming...

Here's a shot of a Tinker's Butterly (Chaetodon tinkeri) from the other week. This is one of a pair that was VERY cooperative. I had a customer on board who wanted to take some photos of the fish we'd seen earlier in the year. Tinker's tend to hang out quite deep, but they saw us at about 75' and came directly up to us. Couldn't ask for more, other than to maybe back off enough to get both fish in the same shot. They can be a very curious fish.

Big Island earthquake, October 15, Kona Hawaii

This is my last post about the earthquake unless something real interesting on a personal note comes up. I thought I'd pass along some links to the local paper and one of the Oahu TV stations... Take a look at West Hawaii Today and The Hawaii Channel for more thorough information.

The earthquake made for an interesting morning here in South Kona, but was far more of an event up Kohala and Hamakua direction. One of Pat's co-workers who lives up north apparently had major home damage, as in the roof fell in and windows blew out. I'm sure we'll be hearing lots more stories of more serious damage tomorrow. Hopefully the first reports that nobody was seriously hurt hold up.

Take care all.

Steve

Kona Hawaii... the land of natural disasters...

Just kidding. We rarely have any earthquakes of any real damage, in fact I can't think of any actual damage from a quake here since I've moved here.

Here's the only real evidence near my property. We've always had some rock overhanging near the road just down from our property line. It fell, didn't go very far. There are lots of smaller rocks, primarily from the older rock walls, along side the roads in many parts of Kona also.

Pat called to tell me to not be surprised if our next renter calls wondering if things are OK. I'm gradually hearing from friends and family on the mainland also wondering. Not too much looks out of the ordinary at the home though. Apparently the upper floor of the hospital took a pretty good hit, also apparently North Hawaii Hospital also was damaged.

Here's a bonus natural phenomenon photo... We saw three funnel clouds the other day, I remembered I actually had the camera in the car. Tornados are not a problem here in general, but we do see waterspouts every few years.

Later,

Steve

Here's an internet radio link to a broadcast covering the earthquake...

It's pretty much the only radio station on Oahu going. The link requires you to allow popups to hear the broadcast.

I could only get one local privately owned radio staion, literally a guy with an antenna on a cherry picker up the hill, when I was driving earlier. As the power comes back in all areas I'm sure there will be more info available.


Interesting... I looked at the stats and I'm getting huge numbers of people hitting this site looking for Kona earthquake information... I hope some of them are divers and will remember me.

Later,

Steve

More Info on the Kona Hawaii earthquake...

Here's the link to recent earthquake activity... USGS map .

Bob just called, he's back from the Galapagos. He said he did not see a single whaleshark on one of his whaleshark dives... 22 sightings on the other 7 dives though. Between that and a couple hundred hammerheads, and sea lions galore, he thought the Galapagos was quite a place. Anyway, Bob was headed to Safeway when the quake hit. He said his car was bouncing all over the place. When he got to Safeway they'd had ceiling tiles all over the place and food off the shelves.

Pat called from the Hospital to say she had no clue when she'd be coming home. Apparently they've lost a lot of ceiling tiles and had lots of broken water pipes. The hospital has been evacuated and they are finding spots for all the patients.

The Pali (cliffs) down at Kealakekua Bay had several landslides. Apparently there was a huge dustcloud. I wish I noticed it when it happened, we live right above the bay but have trees in the way of the view. I checked out the bay a while later and there was still tons of dust/dirt on the surface of the water in the bay.

I'm sure I'll have more to report later...

Steve