Kona scuba diving has been great lately....

We've had some really great scuba diving in Kona lately. We did a night dive on Friday night, there was very little plankton but we had 6 manta rays putting on a good show for the crowd. I thought I'd have several days off the last few days, but I got a phone call or two and have been going out every day. Tonight we do the manta ray night dive again.

We've had a fun couple on board the last few days that have been diving here for years and are new to us. They were quite complementary yesterday, said they'd seen more new species on this trip than any dives here they can recall... part of that was site selection, part the fact that Cathy, Bob and I are into the fish and look hard, and part sheer luck - any given day you know. Anyways, it's been fun diving for both the passengers and the crew.

Their only complaint yesterday was after the first dive they mentioned... the dive would have been great, but every time they saw some cool fish to look at the dolphins would get in the way! They had a really good dolphin dive yesterday, along with a bunch of critters that were kind of uncommon. We've lucked into about 3 or 4 really good dolphin dives the last few weeks. I wish we could guarantee that, but it's kind of the luck of the draw.

I do have to report that the water temperature has dropped 3-4 degrees suddenly the last couple of weeks... brrrrrr... it's not really all that cold, but when you are used to 79/80 and it suddenly becomes 76/77 you feel the difference. I may be moving up in wetsuit thickness this winter if it drops below 74 again (last year it got down to 71 - very rare for here, it usually bottoms out around 74 degrees in the winter).

Here's an old (and not the best) shot of a Chevron Tang. We're seeing a lot of the 50 cent to silver dollar sized juveniles out right now, they're exceptionally brightly colored at that size, this photo doesn't do them justice. They become a large black tang as they mature.

Later,

Steve