Bi-color anthias Kona Hawaii...

OK, I'll do something a little different. I'm posting a photo that customer Jim forwarded to me that I find interesting. It's of Bob (one of our guides) and a group of anthias.

Back in the day, there used to be a dive spot called "anthias rock" up in Garden Eel Cove that the dive charters used to go to. It was a rock in 102 or so feet of water that had maybe 4-6 anthias on it. We had a terrific high surf several winters ago that basically buried all but the top of the rock and the anthias site was no more... same surf episode moved the garden eels about 20 feet deeper than they had been prior to that. At some point, divers started visiting a rock out in the sand off one of our other sites to see the anthias that were living at it (anthias often will congregate around a rock out in the middle of nowhere). The last year or so this rock has really become well populated with anthias, tends also to have cleaner shrimp and eels hanging out at it too, so it's an interesting spot.

This particular photo was taken on our customer's very first dive with a housed camera... nice shot! It took me several dives with a camera to come up with something I consider to be a "keeper". He happpens to have the same camera I now own, but with a nice strobe and a wide angle lens with a domed port. The wide angle makes for an interesting perspective, and keeps pretty much all of the scene in focus as well. I'll probably move that direction with my gear at some point.

So I came down with a nasty chest cold for about a month after my trip. I'm pretty much over the caughing and back to diving again. Water conditions have been holding up pretty well, with a bit of a swell that really doesn't affect us much. Last couple nights we've had thunderstorms in the Kailua area - rare event here - we're doing a night dive tonight, hopefully that won't occur again.

Later,

Steve