It's "Hurricane Season" again in Hawaii.

As I type this, there is a Hurricane sitting about 900 miles to the southeast of the island. It's losing power. For the most part, hurricanes seem to peter out before they make landfall here due to hitting cooler water.

The current hurricane, Hurricane Daniel I believe, is expected to maybe make it to the islands downgraded as a tropical storm. In a way, many here are actually hoping to see it bring the rain, it's been kind of dry. I just noticed that things were starting to show some signs of dryness in our area. Normally the water's a degree or two warmer by now and we're seeing convection rains in the late afternoon 3-4 days a week at our place, we've really only had one decent rain the last several weeks.

Since I've been here in early '99, hurricanes have had little to no effect in the Kona area. There've been two or three that brought in surf and winds to the other side of the island. We've got a 14,000 foot mountain in the way that seems to act as a bit of a barrier. I'd heard that Kona never actually saw winds and major weather disruption from hurricanes in all of the last century... just big surf on a couple of the biggies (Iniki comes to mind) that swung by from the south. Those particular hurricanes went northwest after rounding the Big Island and caused troubles on Oahu and Kauai.

I'm just posting this because every year I get questions about how the hurricanes affect our diving. They haven't at all in the 7 seasons I've been here. Kona is probably one of the places (tropical destinations anyway) I'd least worry about hurricanes ruining a trip.

Here's another photo forwarded to me by customer Mike from Texas. It's of a pair of Ghost Shrimp, I don't really have any decent shots of my own of these critters so I thought I'd post it. Ghost shrimp are a pretty good sized shrimp that tend to set up shop in one particular spot for several years. We've got a few spots where we can pretty much nearly guarantee you'll see them. Notice the little fish in the photo... I'm not exactly sure what they are, but they are common in dark holes, one of these days I need to make it a point to find out what they are.

Have a nice day,

Steve