NOAA survey says Big Island has most live coral...

Here's a link to an online version of a news article I saw last week.... on their recent coral survey of the Hawaiian Islands. It basically says the Big Island has live coral covering 57% of it's shallow coastline. The print article I saw also mentioned the bulk of that was on the west side (Kona,Kohala) and the other islands average somewhere in the mid 20s percentage-wise in coverage.

If any of you are interested in some of the specifics of the survey, you can click on this link to get to an interactive map of the islands and check out maps of coral structure around the islands.

The picture above is of a day octopus I took at Pawai Bay the other week. I couldn't quite get the focus on him I wanted, he wasn't interested in sticking around and posing. A little personal health update- Saw the doctor yesterday and he's thinking tears at the top of the hamstring and down behind the knee, but nothing that won't heal over the next little while - that's good news as surgery is required for complete tears. I'm now walking gingerly, yay! Jogging by next week... not hardly, but hopefully walking normally, it might be a few weeks before I don't have to pay attention to what I'm doing as to not reinjure the hammy.

Later,

Steve

One of my best pics of a Scrambled Egg Nudibranch...

This was taken with the Canon G9 using RAW. When I've taken shots of these guys with my other cameras, or with this one without using RAW, it's been tough to get the right exposure. Photoshop CS3's RAW editor allows you to change over all exposure, and cut back on things that are too highlighted, as well as other goodies. It worked quite nicely with this particular pic, some of my others were still not really salvageable.

Sorry, not much to update on the diving conditons as I've been flat on my back for 3 days with a torn hamstring. Now that the swelling is down to where both legs are the same size I want to see a doctor that works with muscle tears who can say if it's a stage 2 or stage 3 hamstring tear as I do have some knotting in the muscle, but it may just be residual swelling. I'm hoping it's a stage 2 as no time's a good time for a stage 3 and a stage 2 tear should heal up enough in the next week or two to get me back to work.

Three days without checking my e-mail was interesting.... nearly a thousand offers for genital enlargements, Russian girlfriends and drugs at cheap prices - I didn't win any international lotteries this weekend though, bummer. I did manage to read one interesting newspaper article the other day though, I'll link it on the next post if I can find a link... It'll give me something substantiative to write about.

Aloha,

Steve