Whoohoo!! I got to dive today....

... and my sinuses held up.

We had some crazy surf come up two nights ago. About 10PM it started pounding enough we could hear it fairly well from the house (we're two miles up the road from the coast, maybe at least a mile in a direct line), our friends at the bay said it shook their house. Yesterday was blown out, some of the dive companies went out, but I had nothing scheduled, I'm glad I didn't have to make the call. This morning things had settled down enough to get out of the harbor and make it to Pawai Bay, off the Old Airport Park, where the diving conditions were actually pretty OK from the boats.

I played Captain on the dives and was able to do a short dive in between dives once we reached the second mooring. Pat (my wife, who was onboard since it was a very light load today - only one customer) joined me for a few minutes on the dive.

Pat noticed a pair of Bandit Angels (Apolemichthys arcuatus) down at 70-80 feet. We went down to take photos. I'm rather proud of this one.... it's tough to explain to someone UNDERWATER that you want them in the photo, and they need to align themselves so they are behind a moving fish while you take a shot - especially when you've never tried it or talked to them about it before. I found out something new about the Canon, with the underwater housing, if you forget to use the flash diffuser, the flash works differently - lotsa backscatter if there's much particulate matter in the water (mostly cloned out in photoshop in this case) and sort of only lights up a band on the photo. In this case it worked out in that the band that was lit up went through the fish and my wife.

Anyway, conditions were actually pretty nice down in Pawai Bay today. Highlights of the dives were a manta ray, tons of raccoon butterflyfish, pyramid butterflyfish, a couple of free swimming octopus, the Bandit Angels, trumpet fish of various colors, and more.

Kona water temperature report. Things have cooled off since I last dove, prior to the sinus issues. I saw 75 today, down from 79 in early December.

Later,

Steve