Sloppy water in Kona the last few days...

Aloha,

We've hit a rare little stretch where the water is quite rough. Surfers are probably loving it, but it's not great for diving in. On the manta dive the other night it was pretty nice, but the surge was coming up. On the way home the winds were sort of battling the swell and it was a rough ride, and it seems to have more or less stayed that way for a couple of days. This afternoon I could hear the surf from my home, which is about 2.5 miles by road and over a mile as the crow flies from the ocean. I'm hoping it settles down, the news said to expect big swells on Oahu - sometimes they hit us, sometimes they are blocked by Oahu and Maui.

The picture above was taken by Pat on a dive a couple of weeks back, it's a semi-closeup shot of a cushion star. The neat thing about this photo is the critter that was on it - here's a closeup....
This is some type of Imperial Shrimp which hangs out on the cushion stars. Different colored stars will have shrimp that more or less match the color of the star fish, so they're tough to find lots of the time. You'll also often find tiny little crabs and bristle worms and such on these stars.

Later,

Steve