We're doing a manta ray night dive tonight...

The mantas have been around the last couple of nights and we're going up with a group tonight.

Yesterday we had some interesting dives. We had a small group on who had to change their schedule from morning to late afternoon and wanted to do two dives right outside the harbor at a site that has a lot going on... a lot going on was definitely the case yesterday. I missed out on most of the fun because I played captain, but I did manage a "captain's dive" in between (Bob's also a licensed captain, as as long as one of us is on board at all times everything's cool). During the first dive, they were swarmed by a sizeable group of uluas (jacks), Bob said there were maybe 30-40 in the group - this is just something we don't see here, I think I've maybe seen 10-12 at a time before. Also seen over the course of the dives were leaf scorpion, a reticulated frogfish that I'm dieing to get a picture of (I couldn't find it on my dive), longfin anthias, 2 dwarf morays (along with several other moray eels), 2 devil scorpions, several pipefish, one of our less common flatworms (Bob had to look it up after the charter, so it definitely was not common), a male Whitley's boxfish was sighted, and at the end of the day as it was turning dark the divers were treated to an active Dragon Moray right near the boat. Overall a lot of good stuff.

The days have turned beautiful here the last litte bit, and today is no exception. I'm thinking of going up the hill to the Captain Cook Monument trail for a short power waddle... it's getting easier, but I've got a ways to go before I take on doing the whole trail.

The pic above is of a Yellowtai Filefish (Pervagor aspricaudus). It's the only photo of these guys I've got, I took it yesterday. This one was particularly colorful, oranger than the picture in Hoover's book (a really great Hawaiian fish book I've got linked on the right side of the blog), and more blues also. They're very shy and tough to get a shot of, I had to brighten this photo a bit as it was back in a hole, but the color's pretty true on the pic.

Aloha,

Steve