Road construction update... Whoohoo!!! Kona has a new highway... sorta kinda anyways...

They opened up the north bound lanes of the highway from Palani Road to Honokohau Harbor the other day. This hopefully will really speed up traffic to the north in the mornings from here on. They still have about a half a year's work, at least, on the south bound lanes and the area between Palani and Henry Street. I'll try to take some photos of the work in the next little bit.

Yesterday was a fun day, we had a certified diver and two intros, so both Cathy and Bob were on board as we don't mix students and certified divers unless it's a family thing. Everyone had good dives. Cathy and her diver had a 15-20 foot pelagic manta ray swim up to them. The pelagic rays are open ocean rays and are slightly different than the resident ones we typically see... big and solid black with a white saddle. She said the remoras that were tagging along with this one had to be 10 pounds each, which is huge compared to the little ones we see on the local rays.

So here's an almost irritatingly too close closeup of a Banded Coral Shrimp (Stenopus hispidus). I was playing with the new closeup lens.

Later,

Steve