Today was a slightly rougher day out on the water. We had to time the exit from the harbor as the surf was coming up. The TV had said the swell was supposed to be 1-3 form the west and 4-6 from the north in Oahu, that usually means flat in Kona.... not so today. More like 4-10 coming in west/northwest.
We were still able to find a couple of nice calm dive sites. We first went to a dive site called "lead city" by most ops, a lot of local fishermen have fished from shore there over the years so there's a fair amount of lead there. It's also call "freeze face" because there is a lava tube with a lot of cool fresh water coming out of it and you can really feel it if you go into the tube. The site was fairly protected. Later we moved around to the Pawai bay area. I was with the student and we had a divemaster with the other group. Between the two groups we managed to see all the usual stuff, plus the shark, the large barracuda mentioned the other day, and a male psychedelic wrasse and his harem of 6-8 females. These wrasses are worth looking up - Anampses Chrysocephalus - as they are quite interesting looking and they are one of a handful of species here which are sexually dimorphic (males and females look different). They are another bunh of fish I need to try to get pics of.
Coming back from the second dive the swells had come up and they were backed by a northwest wind that brought in additional chop. The trip back to the harbor was about the roughest water I've had a charter out in, nothing dangerous, but a bit wet for sitting ont the bow. We cancelled the night trip. The manta site is not really protected from the kind of stuff we had today and we had snorkelers... they'd have been miserable if we'd gone. Hopefully it'll settle down and I can get them in in the next couple of evenings.
later,
Steve
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