Things to do in Kona Hawaii... Home of some of Hawaii's best snorkeling and scuba diving....

I've been messing with my Wanna Dive website and figured out how to add a simple slideshow to the front page, hopefully it works here too.

Kona and the Big Island have a lot of things to do... hiking, the volcano, para-sailing, dining, shopping, beaches, ziplines, world class golf, horseback riding tours, ATV tours, stargzing, nature tours, waterfalls, rainforests, botanical gardens, biking, kayaking, whale watching, etc.... but if you come here and you don't make it into the water with a mask.... you're missing out!

The Kona side of the Big Island is probably Hawaii's top overall snorkel and dive spot... lots of healthy reefs, very good viz, lots of varieties of fish (some of which you are unlikely to see on the other islands - try to find black longnose butterflyfish and lined butterflyfish elsewhere in the state, they're fairly common here), all day snorkeling and diving (the volcanoes block the tradewinds so it doesn't get crazy choppy in the afternoon most days), the manta dive (considered to be one of the top dives in the world), great snorkeling right in shallow water, generally calm and current free waters, and teriffic shore and boat diving. It's a great spot for both snorkelers and divers. There are beginner level snorkeling sites that are fantastic, and if you like the snorkeling, you can try an intro dive - no experience necessary - and get under the water for a terriffic time. Kona is a great spot for water activities.

Sorry for the commercial hype type of post, but Kona really is a great place... and I really wanted to see if the self made slideshow works and needed something to say.

Later,

Steve

Titan Scorpionfish (Scorpaenopsis cacopsis) Hawaii's largest scorpion fish...

We saw this rather huge scorpion fish on a dive at Au-Au Canyon earlier in the year. We actually saw two of them, and both were huge, probably in the 18-20 inches or more range. These fish are one of the "stone" fishes, poisonous spines and all, and are easy to pass right by as they blend in with the surrounding scenery so very well.

I tried to get some decent photos and failed... they came out either blown out or too dull looking. Pat managed to get this cool angle on one of the ones we saw. I really like it.

Business has been really brisk up 'til the last couple of days. Managed to squeeze in a day off, hadn't had one since March ('cept for 2 days I was hit with food poisoning or some kind of bug back in April). Towards the end of last month it was looking like it was going to be quiet, then suddenly I had dives every day for about 12-13 days straight. Looks like it starts up again in a couple of days for us.

Done some very nice diving lately.... Bob led a group down off Naia and they had a trifecta of sorts the other day - a WHALE SHARK, a manta ray, and a pod of dolphins all on the same dive... can't say we have that happen too often.... very cool!

Later,

Steve

Scuba diving Kona Hawaii with Wanna Dive... a typical day...

Looks like I've got the weekend off the boat, I've been going out every day since the 14th (one day off in there somewhere). I'm expecting a busy summer, been getting lots of bookings already. I thought I'd try to describe a "typical" day on the boat...

I'm in town about 8am on most days running errands, filling tanks and such. I ask my customers to meet us at 9 on their first day, or if they've got their gear with them. If we've already got the paperwork out of the way and have our customer's gear sized up and ready for Bob, Cathy and I to set up before the charter, I'll ask that they show up around 9:15 - 9:20 or so so they don't have a long wait before launching. When everyone arrives on schedule we can usually launch at 9:30, surprisingly, early arrivals can slow the process down as I can't get up on the boat and help set up gear. We may be fiddling with the starting time in the next couple of weeks, we're trying to get the new customers to meet us at the shop for paperwork and gear sizing and see if we can bump the launch time up by 15-30 minutes.

At launch we give the boat safety briefing for new customers then head out the harbor. We're generally trying to get an idea of what the divers have already seen, and what they'd like to see, and once we're outside the harbor and can get a good look at water conditions, we can figure out a couple of good likely dive spots. I'll never commit to a dive site 'til we see conditions, one of the typical questions we get at the boat in the morning is "where are we diving?" Best I can say is "out there somewhere" because you just don't know if sites are even available 'til you get to them. We try to pick sites based on best available conditions and what people on the boat want to see.

Once we reach our first dive site one of the crew will jump the mooring, then whichever of us is guiding the first dive will give a briefing. We break out the book and try to show people what to expect to see on the dive, most sites have their resident critters that we've come to know. After the briefing it's time to suit up and get ready to dive. We'll have you in your wetsuits, fins and with mask ready at the rear of the boat, then the Captain or crew will bring your BC setup to you so you won't be walking around with heavy gear on. Preferred entry is a back roll off the side (safest entry from smaller boats), we can have you do a giant stride off the swimstep or hand your gear down to you in the water to don there if desired.

Once everyone's in (usually goes fast because we max out at 6 divers and typical group size is closer to 3-4) it's time to descend. We take our dives SLOW, so people can get a good look at things and have time to take photos and such. We're always looking for critters to show you and carry eraseable magnetic slates to write down names of what we're showing. If you see something interesting and wonder what it is, just let us know and we can tell you right there. Our routine is to ask to be notified when you reach 1500psi and 700psi in the tank so we can drop off divers at the boat as they reach 500psi for their safety stops. Divers who have plenty of air remaining can stay down and tour other areas of the site we've not shown yet. It's pretty easy to give good tours to people of all breathing capacities, and we go by air and computer NDL time remaining so we're getting long dives from those that are good on air. 75-90 minute dives are not unusual for the good breathers on the day outings. Note: the night dives are a timed dive, usually in the 50-60 minute range depending on the mooring situation.

End of the dive it's back to the boat, hand up fins to the captain and up the ladder (if you've got back, hip or leg issues and need us to pull your gear out of the water, just let us know), our ladder goes down in the water fairly deep and it's easy to navigate with gear on for most divers. We'll get your gear off your back when get to the top of the ladder and switch out the tanks for the next dive. Between dives it's talk story about the things we saw, pass out dry towels (we keep a stack on board) water, sport drink, sandwich or salad, and we generally try to keep some snack stuff (trail mix, etc) on board to munch on too.

During lunch (usually about an hour) we move to a second site.... we try to vary the type of divng you see each dive. Kona has lots of different types of sites to offer, you can keep diving without repeating sites for quite a while as long as the conditions don't pin us down to a few sites. Once we're to the second site and moored off, it's time to give the briefing for the second site and then the routine repeats itself. One note: On the twilight/night trip, we generally don't move, they're essentially two completely different type of dives without changing sites.

After the second dive, it's towels again, along with more water or sport drink if wanted, then it's back to the harbor. We typically meet up at the boat wash after the dives, we've got wash buckets and we'll be rinsing off customer's gear and handing it down. We do keep big gear stored overnight for customers that don't want to haul their stuff back to their hotels or condos between dives if requested. We can store wetsuits, BCs and regs and have it back the next charter, we do ask that customers take their masks, fins, booties and other small items with them.

Typical days are from 9am to about 2:30 to 3:00 or so (depending on how many on the boat and how much ground we cover).


The photo above is one I took on a night dive about a month back. We've been doing the dive 1-2 nights a week lately, probably 2-3 nights a week once it picks up for summer. The mantas have been around fairly consistantly.

Thought I'd mention water conditions.... it's warming up nicely, we're seeing 78 and even 79 degrees now. The last week or so the viz has been FABULOUS... over 200' much of the time. I did a dive at "Hoovers" two days ago and it was "down" to about 150' viz for that dive. We had some wierd currents the other day and have been seeing some pelagic stuff float in... lots of Crown Jellyfish and such. I had my camera the other day, then realized I left the memory card out - bummer - I might have some good jelly photos if I'd pay a litlle more attention with the memory cards after I download them.

Later,

Steve

Hey, let's talk about seasickness... cures or remedies anyone???

I don't remember ever writing a post about seasickness yet. It's one of those things we see from time to time on the boat, not as often as you'd think, but it does happen.

I'll start off by saying... I'm not a Doctor! Take anything I say as being anecdotal speculation.

Now that that's over, let me tell you about myself. I used to get sick bigtime when I first started diving. I just put up with it. One day I had chocolate donettes before the dive... I lost it, tasted more like a milkshake than bile. I ate chocolate donettes before every dive boat outing from then on 'til I got turned on to Bonine. Some friends recommended Bonine and it worked for me, stuck with it for quite a while.

When I moved over here I worked in a now defuct dive shop down on Alii Drive and the manager was recommending taking 1 Bonine tablet in the evening, then one again in the morning about two hours before the charter. When I moved over to another dive shop to start working on a boat, they had the exact same recommendation. Pretty much every dive boat I've worked on had the exact same recommendation. It works pretty darned well for most people. I was on Bonine for the first couple weeks I worked on the boat, then we had some glassy flat days and I tried it without it and found I'm pretty much over the seasickness thing, on small boats anyway.

On every boat I've worked on over the years, we've seen our share of people feeling ill. Typically, we'll see people who say nothing works for them, they've tried everything, then we ask if they've tried Bonine or less-drowsy Dramamine (same active ingredient - meclizine hydrochloride) taking one pill in the evening and one pill in the morning. A lot of people are resistant to even trying it, but those that do generally feel pretty good the next day. A lot of people say it won't work because they've tried any number of things, usually with the active ingredient dipenhydramine hydrochloride, and can't stand the side effects. Well, dipenhydramin Hcl is used not only in sea sickness meds, but in Sominex, Nytol, Benedryl and other things not related to motion sickness... no wonder they're getting tired. It's primarily sold as an anti-histamine.

Anyway, from anecdotal observation, the meclizine hydrochloride pills, taken 1 the night before and 1 the morning of (so it's in your system) seems to work wonders for most people. I have seen it fail with about a half dozen people over the course of the last 11 years, for them it's time to visit the doctor and get a prescription for the patch and hope it works (nothing's fail proof, everyone's body's different).

Anyway, I managed to get past my sea sickness, except when I'm helping out on bigger boats or taking in diesel fumes on boats with older diesel engines. I'm not sure what it is about size, possibly a change in motion I'm not acclimated to, but I have a rough time of it on the big catamarans. I helped out with a now gone dive company that had a double decker catamaran a few years ago for a bit, and the second deck of that boat was really tough on me. My suspicion is that different people are set off by different motions. I talked with a Captain that worked multiple boats a few years back and he said his worst boat for people losing it was the biggest boat he drove, didn't think it was the boat so much as having that many people on board, someone's gonna get ill and then the sympathetic puking starts happening. He said he eventually broke down and brought a paint spatula to work with him during the winter months when working that boat - not sure if he was kidding or not.

Nowadays, about the only time I feel off is when eaten nothing before the charter. A little food goes a long way to fix that. I'd probably discourage a big meal, or loadiing up on bacon and grapefruit right before the dive too.

The underwater photo above is of a Yellow Margin Moray down at a coral head in the sand. When you find a nice coral head out in the sand, it can be an oasis of life. This one had bicolor anthias, cleaner shrimp, banded coral shrimp and more on this visit.

Later,

Steve

No tsunami alert, back to fun.... We celebrated by making a long range dive trip to Au Au Canyon...

The ocean was really nice yesterday morning and we decided to make the long trip down to Au Au Canyon/Crater (whatever it's called, it's cool). We don't get down there much, it's an 85/90 minute boat ride in my boat and we need a sizable enough group of good divers to make a go of it. Au Au is an underwater canyon with sheer vertical walls that run about 80 feet high or so on the shore end to well over 200' high on the seaward end. It's one of the true "walls" we have here. Most of our "walls" are more like steep dropoffs or slopes.

It was a gorgeous dive. On the second dive I was Captain while the others all dove. We did a drift dive around the western end of Kealakekua Bay. Right on the corner the current was screaming, and the divers got to play Superman, "flying" with the current, for about 70-100 yards or so before reaching the calm water on the other side of the corner.

It was a long day. On the way back it got a bit choppier, then by the time we got to the middle of Kailua the winds picked up, then the last mile into the harbor was crazy windy... it got very wet very fast. One of the divers commented it was like doing a third dive. Other than a lot of spray over the bow it was uneventful and over in 10 minutes. Turned out it got apparently really nasty about mid-day up around the harbor. We came in at 5pm, around 2pm I'm told it was like a mini-hurricane there. It was sunny and windy when we arrived, Pat and I (Pat tagged along for the dives) went to the shop after cleaning up the boat and there was water all over the walkways, we thought maybe the landlord had sent in a pressure washer.

It's looking great today. Occasionally in the winter we'll get a cold front passing through that can make it nasty for a bit, this apparently was one of those days.

Aloha,

Steve

Dwarf Moray Eel....

Here's a little Dwarf Moray Eel (Gymnothorax melatremus) I spotted today peering out of a crack at Turtle Pinnacle on our second dive of the day. Turtle Pinnacle has become a bit less reliable as a turtle cleaning station as of late, but it's still a very good dive. We had a pretty big swell today and the viz was down for the second dive, but we were still able to find several eels, a divided flatworm, a rather uncooperative octopus that took off right after being spotted, a Flame angel, Great Barracuda and a school of Opelu, several pipefish and other critters. We had dolphins swim past us underwater briefly as we were going to our safety stop. Bob was Captain during that dive and said they'd been around our bubbles a few times during the dive....

... and that wasn't the good dive... the first dive was at a different spot where they (Bob and the gang) came up talking about seeing Tinker's butterflys, Flame angels, a Reticulated butterfly, a male Psychedilic wrasse with his harem of females, a manta or two (2 separate sightings, not sure if it was the same one) and a bunch of other goodies.

We've had signifcant north, south and west swells that have made things quite sloppy the last couple days, but it's settling down. Looking at www.magicseaweed.com it appears as if it's getting nothing but better throughout the week. Lots of diving ahead for us the next 10 days or so, I'm looking forward to better conditions.

Later,

Steve

Frogfish, Kona Hawaii

Pat joined us on the boat yesterday and had a blast diving.... frogfish, dolphins underwater, eagle rays and turtles, a huge snowflake eel hunting with a grouper - all kinds of neat stuff. I've been recovering from the darned cold, staying out of the water and Captaining the boat 'til I stop draining, but Pat had her camera along and got this shot of the frogfish.

Water conditions have been exceptional the last couple of days. We had 150'+ viz today on the dives.

Whoohoo!!! Summer seems to be coming....

Wow, what a difference a few weeks makes... the water temp has risen to a point where it's quite comfortable for those of us who dive here nearly every day, and the water's flattened out most of the time lately (not that it was all that big of surf earlier). Water temp today was a very comfortable 75/77.

Earlier in the week we were able to go south to the Red Hill/Kealakekua region, and yesterday we were able to go way up north to a spot that we pretty much only go with "regulars" - don't feel slighted if we don't get there with you, it's just that it's different and once you've been to 30-40 dive sites we here want to start showing our "regulars" something new. It's fun for us to dive something we don't see all the time so on occasion we try to cover some distance when the boat has people we've done a lot of diving with.

Today we had a light load, went up to the Golden arches area and just slowly scanned the area for a couple of 78-80 minute dives... were rewarded with a good sized frogfish (here it is, check out the full belly, must've eaten recently), Leaf Scorpion, Peacock Flounder, Harlequin Shrimp, and loads of other cool stuff.

Aloha,

Steve

A little underwater video from today.

Yellow tangs from Kona Hawaii from Steve on Vimeo.

Yellow tangs on the reef. Took it with my Canon G9.

Later,

Steve

Let's switch from a big nudibranch to a small nudibranch... White Margin Nudibranchs with eggs...

Here's a pair of White Margin Nudibranchs (Glossodoris rufomarginata) laying eggs. These nudibranchs get to about an inch in length, and are one of the easier nudibranchs to find on purpose. I typically look for them on overhangs, say arches or the lip of a lava tube. It can often be found by looking for the white spiral egg mass - if the find the eggs the nudibranchs are not far away. I usually find them in groups of two or three within several inches of an egg mass.

We've had lots of fun customers on board lately. Today was fun, we had a woman and her family that were out to dive for her 75th birthday today. She hadn't dove in a few years and wanted to do it while they were here. She's pretty experienced, got 58 minutes on the first dive but was getting cold on the second dive and came up with a ton of air. The group seemed to have had a great time.

We get divers in their 70s from time to time. The "oldest" student (calendar-wise anyway, he was rather youngish physically - still very active and strong) I've ever had finished his class 5 or so days shy of his 70th birthday. Plenty of divers that age do just fine, some may need to don or remove their gear in the water due to knees and such not making it up the ladders quite as easily in their younger days. It seems a lot of divers who are still diving into their 70s and beyond are very experienced and have been diving in many places... it's a blast listening to dive stories.

It was sunny on the water today, no clouds over the ocean, but the vog from the volcano was up. The tradewinds are down for the next few days, so I'm hoping it'll clear out.

Horned helmet snails of Hawaii.....

Here's a pic from a while back. It's of a Horned Helmet Snail (Cassis cornuta). This is one of the larger shells found in Hawaii. Resembling a Conquistador's helmet, it can grow to a bit larger than a foot. Many people who've been to the Caribbean will refer to it as a "conch" although it's not... different genus of shells, Hawaiian conchs are pretty small.

We often find these on sandy bottoms, many times mostly buried. They feed off of sea urchins... this one's pouncing (it "pounces" sooo faaast, if you blink, you'll have time to blink several more times, before it finishes the "pounce" - they're generally pretty slow) on it's prey in this picture.

It was quite gray today in Kona and much of the state, the sun almost broke through early on, but we basically were under clouds most of the day. I guess we're expecting more of the same the next few days.

Another day of gorgeous weather in Kona today....

Yesterday's rains were predicted to continue on into today originally. We woke up to gorgeous blue skies once the sun came up. It was completely flat and the boat was full of good divers who were in no hurry (we're getting back to the harbor around 4:30 or later when we do the longer trips), so we decided to make a day of it and cover some ground again heading north to check out the area adjacent to the dive site we hit the other day with the same group. Cathy dove with the group, checking out a veritable swiss cheese reef of swim throughs. We've never actually dove that specific area before, although Bob's dove it as part of a one way dive, I'd like to dive it the next time we get up that way. It's quite different from the adjacent parcel of reef we dove the other day. Hopefully we can get up there again a couple times this year.

Tomorrow was originally a day off, but now it's a charter. I may have a day off later this month, still plenty of openings in April though.

The fish above is a "Rockmover Wrasse", which is the adult version of a "Dragon Wrasse" (Novaculichthys taeniourus). They look quite a bit different from the juveniles, and have slightly different habits. As adults, they've earned the name "rockmover" because they spend their entire days picking up rocks and corals and moving them around. They can pick up a pretty good sized chunk of coral, even chunks roughly the same size as they are. They're searching for small urchins and other goodies that they can eat.

Later,

Steve

Lots of whales off Kona right now....

Here's a great shot of a real attractive nudibranch that Pat took some time back. It's of a Trembling Nudibranch (Chromodoris vibrata). We don't see these critters nearly often enough, I think I have one picture from several years ago posted a couple years back on the blog somewhere.

We had a bit of a slow spell at the end of January but we're back out on the water for at least 5-6 days straight right now. It gets sporadic during the slow season, March is looking to be hopping though as I've already got nearly 20 days partially booked already.

Tuesday we went out with just a single diver. It's not something we're crazy about, but when someone books well in advance I can usually get other people on and I'm not going to cancel on them at the last minute just because I'm out of luck on a day. That single diver turns into the 2nd, 3rd or 4th diver on the boat more often than not, so it's very worth keeping them even if we have to risk going out solo every now and then. When we do have just a single diver, it does give us an opportunity to cater to them though. We did a nice one way drift dive off the airport and then went to Bob's favorite dive site (spaceship/pyramid pinnacle/pinetrees pinnacle/harlequin or whatever it's called) for the second. They were hearing whales on the dive underwater while I was seeing them topside while I was captaining (aka "sitting on the boat"). I saw about 9 different whales that day.

Yesterday we had more passengers and dove off Pawai Bay for the first dive and then popped into Crescent beach for the second dive.... lots of good stuff for the divers, at one point they had 20 or so dolphins hanging around them during the dive. It's always a thrill to see dolphins under the water.

Tonight it's a manta trip and then back to day charters the next few days. It's good to be back out there for a spell.

Later,

Steve

Still no diving for us today, but the surfers are very happy....

Here's a shot of the Keauhou Sheraton from a distance. You can see what the surf was doing today. It's pounding off the Sheraton observation deck (the old Kona Surf saltwater pool area) pretty well. It was actually down a bit today. Tomorrow I expect it to flatten out, it might be OK by morning, nice by evening, and should be pretty nice come Tuesday.

If you take a look at the photo, you'll notice a more toothpaste blue in the shallows to the right of the splashing. The last day or two that's pretty much been all along the coast. It's pretty to look at, as long as you're above the water, it sucks to dive in. I'm not sure if it's a combination of sand and air bubbles or what, but the viz is really bad when the water looks like that from a distance, and unfortunately it's been that way on most of our dive sites the last couple of days. We only need about 12 hours of relatively non-heavy surf for it to all fall out and clear up for diving.

Aloha,

Steve

Another great day of diving in Kona today....

It was very nice conditions for today's charter. We did have some wind chop pick up after the first dive started. Today we had a couple of very nice dives.... 6, yes SIX, octopus were seen between the two dives... that's darned amazing, I think the most I've seen on a day were 3 and that was a very good day. Also seen were frogfish, several razor wrasses, several divided flatworms and nudibranchs as well as many other things.
We also had a nice active group of spinner dolphins jumping and twirling all over the place as we returned to the harbor.... always fun to see.

I hope everyone's Christmas holiday was a good one. Both Pat and I had three days off (I hate to even admit that, but it's been slow for even some of the bigger dive businesses here) and Pat and I did some things around the house and relaxed otherwise. I've got charters 10 of the next 11 days so far, so it all evens out in the end. This dive "season" has been a bit weird. I've actually had a good December, but Christmas week didn't book up a month or more in advance like last year, and then I had those three days off while the rest of the week was a pretty full boat. It'll be interesting to see what the upcoming months bring.

So here's a shot of the boat from this morning. I get people inquiring about the boat, some people are concerned by the size. It's not a huge boat by any means, but it's not a dinghy or a crowded panga either, so I thought I'd post a pic. Pat's at the back end of the boat, she went out for the day with us and took some cool pictures, I'll see if I can get some out of her.

I haven't been diving the last 5 weeks or so, so that's why most of my recent pics are topside or by Pat... that probably changes in the next couple of days... Never get old if you can help it! This turning 50 thing got me into the fitness kick, and sometimes, especially when you haven't exercised in 30 years or so, it's best to break back into it a bit slowly I guess. I'm thinking crunches on a big ball did me in. I feel normal the last two days for the first time in weeks so I think I'll take it slower this time. ....Anyway, I can't wait to get back in the water again.

Tonight I get a shot at my annual cry.... "The Sound of Music" is on ABC. That one almost always does me in for some reason.

Later,

Steve

Time to fly rules.... what about driving to altitude on the Big Island of Hawaii after scuba diving in Kona?

Here's a shot Pat took of one of the white tip reef sharks that occasionally hangs out in the mouth of "suck 'em up", a lava tube we have here in Kona.

I thought I'd write a post about something that comes up for divers on the Big Island from time to time.... Driving to altitude after diving. Many visiting divers, and some that live here, don't give it a second thought, they seem to forget that not only is the Island of Hawaii BIG... it's TALL too.

For the non-divers reading this, when you go through scuba certification classes one of the things taught is the use of dive tables to track your nitrogen loading, or computer use that will do the tables for you on the dive, and the time to fly rules. I'll give a brief over-simplified version of what it's all about... Nitrogen comprises the bulk of the air we breathe, and normally it's inert and our bodies do not absorb it, but when we breathe compressed air at depth our bodies absorb nitrogen. Sudden loss of pressure, such as flying in an airplane or driving to altitude, can cause that nitrogen to fizz out of solution and cause all sorts of problems with your body. In essence what happens is similar to opening a pop bottle, the dissolved gas fizzes out of solution, but when the dissolved gas is in your blood and it fizzes out of solution into your joints and such, you're in trouble. Anyway, the easy to use guidelines you are taught in your Open Water course are to avoid this.

Most visiting divers do think about the time to fly rules... no flights within 18-24 hours of diving is common... but some think inter-island flights don't qualify as "flying" for some reason and I get the question asked of me several times a year. It's all airplanes, they fly well above the altitudes they're pressured to (generally airplanes are pressurized to an equivalent of 7000-8000 feet altitudes), so yes, inter-island flying has the same recommendations. Lots of people though tend to forget that you can drive to altitude here on the island, often times to altitudes well higher than what you'd find an airplane pressurized to. It's important to be aware of elevation changes while driving too.

Currently, I'm thinking DAN and PADI are typically suggesting you should be safely able to drive to somewhere between 1000 and 2000 foot elevations after diving without worry... don't quote me on that as I'd have to look it up to be certain. Above that elevation they're very vague. I've heard recommendations for driving to altitudes over that which are all over the board.

You can NOT drive between the Kona side of the island and the Hilo side of the island without going well above 2000 feet in elevation. The southern route will put you well over 4000 feet in the volcano area. The northern route runs through Waimea, which is at 2500 feet, and you're heading uphill when leaving Waimea, so you need to consider it to be at least 3000 feet - I don't know what the altitude peaks at on that highway. Over the top via Saddle Road, you might as well consider it to be a flight, as it approaches 7000 feet at the summit of the road. The observatories should be considered extreme altitudes, and I personally wouldn't visit them for at least a couple days after diving.

So, what do you do? The only guide I've seen on this is by NOAA. Here are the NOAA dive tables. Dive tables are only a guide, and even their no-decompression tables carry this warning: "WARNING: EVEN STRICT COMPLIANCE WITH THESE CHARTS
WILL NOT GUARANTEE AVOIDANCE OF DECOMPRESSION
SICKNESS. CONSERVATIVE USAGE IS STRONGLY
RECOMMENDED."

Anyways, to give you an idea of the time you need before heading to the other side of the island you can use their no-decompression tables and then follow up with their driving to altitude table. I'll run a relatively common, and non-aggressive dive profile run on their tables just to give you an idea.... 1st dive - 50 feet for 50 minutes, an hour and a quarter surface interval, 2nd dive - 40 feet for 50 minutes. Running that you you'll end up with a K group letter. Going to their altitude after diving chart, as a K diver you are recommended to spend at least 6 hours and 25 minutes out of the water before driving to 3000 feet, say Waimea. If the dives were any deeper or any longer, and those dives I just ran were very conservative, we often do dive days that would put you in a much higher group letter, the time you'd need to spend at sea level would be even greater.

Now in real life, there are people diving here and driving back to the other side on occasion without problems. I did hear a rumor that someone took a DCS hit driving to Waimea in the last year or two, but I can't substantiate it though. So what happens if you take a DCS hit? You're looking at a private helicopter flight over to Oahu and then a few days in the chamber is my best guess. Last numbers I heard bantied around for the cost of this (not sure if they were accurate numbers though) were fairly similar to the numbers I heard for a week's stay at the Presidential Suite at the Four Seasons... Not cheap! For me it's not worth trying to go to the other side of the island after diving. I personally won't go to Hilo after I dive 'til the next day, and if I was diving Hilo side, I'd probably rent a hotel room for the night before coming back.

Just some food for thought... before you dive and drive, you might want to pay attention to the elevation here. For most of Kona you're in pretty good shape to drive after diving if you stay below the upper highway. Above that you maybe should think about elevations and maybe spending some extra time at sea level.

later,

Steve

Ironman triathlon in Kona Hawaii is this weekend, October 11th...

It's a fairly busy week here in Kona... Ironman is this Saturday. Ironman is likely the world's most famous triathlon event, held here annually for almost three decades. I can still remember the big worldwide showing of the '82 Ironman on television where the woman who was leading collapsed just short of the finish line and was passed after what seemed like minutes of crawling (she eventually made it) which turned into a huge PR boon for the event.

The only time I've gone downtown to see the finish of the race was back when I was here on vacation over a decade ago.. lots of good energy... I was really impressed that there were people in the miles before the finish line looking at contestant's numbers on their shirts with binoculars, then looking up the names and cheering them on by name as they passed to finish the last miles of the race... pretty cool. Being the slow season in October, we're sometimes out of town that weekend, most of the times I've been here I've just avoided the traffic and stayed home. The town pretty much shuts down, at least the north end of it outside of downtown, that day. I'm debating between heading downtown for some good energy or just watching college football for the day and avoiding the crowds.

We've been having fun on our charters this week. We had our newly certified students on board yesterday and did a one way drift north of Hoover's (the northern most mooring off the Kona airport) that I led... I love that dive... lots of pinnacles, saw a flame angel, a big spiny lobster in a hole, a very cool Reticulated Frogfish (which I'll post a pic of on my next post) in a coral head, and DOLPHINS UNDERWATER ON THE DIVE!!!! Yes, I have a very few seconds of that on video to be posted later...

Here's a photo of a Zebra Moray (Gymnomuraena zebra) that we came across on that dive.

later,

Welcome to the Kona Hawaii squid blog...

Ok, so it's not a squid blog... but I did get a bunch of photos on the manta ray night dive last night. I'll be able to keep showing squid from time to time 'til I get more regular stuff in.

These shots were taken with my Canon G9 in a Canon WP-DC21 waterproof case. I didn't use any external strobes or lenses, just the base kit. They were taken at night using some light from other divers along with a handheld LED light, primarily for focusing purposes as the onboard flash is pretty much responsible for the lighting showing in the photos.

Aloha,

Steve

p.s. I haven't shown my favorite squid shots yet.

Today's picture says a lot for how the day's diving was....

It was a very good day!!!! More later... Been busy for several days now and pulled a double today, it's after midnight and I have to get up at 6 for tomorrow's charter.

This critter is a Bigfin Squid (Sepioteuthis lessoniana). It's the first one I've ever seen. They've been showing up on the manta dive from time to time, and this time I saw it and had a camera in hand... keep an eye on the blog for more on these critters.

Aloha,

Steve

We did a three tank dive day today in Kona.....

Howdy,
I mentioned the other day that I was coming into a lull and I'd try to catch up on posting during then, well, the lull basically turned into one day of trying to re-repair the damage I did last month to our water line (read the archives, I think it was the post on July 4th of this year) and then I got more bookings. Today we did a three tanker with a fun group. We dove sharkfin rock, Kealakekua Bay and driftwood. Highlights of the dives were... frogfish on two dives, a manta, tinker's butterfly and all sorts of other good stuff.

Water conditions are darned good right now, it's the time of year we look forward to.

This photo is of the mouth end of a Horned Helmet Snail (Cassis cornuta). They spend much of their day mostly buried, with the tips of their shell exposed... you can see it's "mouth" here. When something tastingly smelly goes by they'll come out of the sand (kinda slowly, they're not speedsters) to eat it. To see a pic of one stalking a collector urchin click here.

Later,

Steve