Like snorkeling Kona? Try scuba! Discover diving intro dives are fun, no certification needed...

Kona Hawaii is blessed with a lot of the best snorkeling and scuba diving in the state. There's lots of great snorkeling and lots of people love it. If you're one of those people, keep intro dives in mind. With a short briefing and practice of a few skills on and just below the surface with a qualified instructor, you can be diving in no time.

Pretty much all the dive companies offer intro dives off of their boats. Due to the fact that Kona has excellent reefs next to shore, with drop offs and both deep and shallow water near the boat moorings, it's easy to put both intro divers and experienced divers on the same boat, give them separate instructors or guides, and tour the reef without interfering with each other's dive experience.

As an intro diver you'll be with an instructor at all times. You'll be shown a video or a flip chart explaining the what's, why's and how's of scuba diving, then do some practice before diving. Once everyone's comfortable with their skills,it's time to dive!!! Whoohoo!!! You'll generally be diving the very same reefs the experienced divers are diving, but there are some depth and other restrictions. Depth limit for intros with an instructor is to 40', most all of our best fish and reef life is in the top 40' of water so this works great. 40' sounds scary for some, but generally it's the top 10-20 feet where the nerves kick in if there are any apprehensions. Once down to the bottom of the moorings, most intro divers calm right down and are comfortable in quick order.... they're usually too amazed to be nervous by that point.

My recommendation to anyone curious about trying scuba for the first time is to plan the outing ahead, leave a couple days in advance open to get some snorkeling in... snorkeling in the days prior to intro dives increases the success rate immensely... and plan on having lots of fun! Standards can vary from dive agency to dive agency, but the biggest one allows up to 4 intro divers per instructor. I try to limit it to 3 intro divers per instructor on my charters, and I typcially don't mix groups with an instructor, so if there are only 2 of you, expect an instructor for yourselves and don't worry about extra divers competing for the instructor's attention. I reserve the right, if there's only 1 student, to add another student if the opportunity arises, but I think that's happened only once in the years I've been doing intros off my boat.

I'm not sure what other companies price their intros at, but I currently charge $189 for a single, or $159 each for two or more, for intro dives (September of '10, prices could change at some point down the line). That's 2 boat dives (we typically move for the second dive), all the gear, a light lunch and beverages and such, and the instruction. Other than Hawaii's 4.166% tax, it's all included in the price.

It's a great experience for most people that are comfortable snorkelers. If you're in the water a lot on your vacation, you might want to call a dive company (pick me, pick me) and give it a shot. Advance notice is helpful, it's a good idea to call or e-mail before the trip as there is a medical history waiver that may require a physician's signature involved... once you get to a certain age it's easy to have a health history that might need a signature, better to find out ahead of time than having to play the fax game back and forth with your doctor on short notice.

This is a great way to find out if you're interested in going for a scuba certification without any time or financial committments. If you decide you want to get certified after trying intro dives, you've pretty much done the hardest part (getting underwater that first time) and the class should be much easier after the experience.

Here's an underwater photo of a spotted puffer I saw while diving for fun on my day off yesterday. I found it interesting as it was quite golden brown, compared to the usual black with white spots we usually see.

Aloha,

Steve

Big Island Scuba Diving Blog.....

I just realized my blog is 4 years old now. Initially I figured on about a post a week, well 4 years and nearly 600 posts I'm a little above the number of posts I expected to be making... that's a lot of fish pictures.

The weather on the Big Island, at least Kona side, is gorgeous right now. The state had a flash flood watch out the last week or so, and a couple islands got hit with a lot of rain, we had about 1 evening of reasonably heavy rain and that was it.

The diving's been consistently good, maybe a bit of an algae bloom the last couple days, and the water's still warm. No need for the thicker suits just yet, that'll probably occur some time in December.

Here's a shot of that rare yellow phase spotted puffer we've been seeing. I took the shot last year, but we still see this fish from time to time - it's always a thrill for us. Cathy's been leading dives here since the late 70's and it's the only one she's ever seen.

We were rained on today....

A big front came through the state today. They had a flash flood warning for the Big Island. For us that basically meant drizzle for much of the day, other parts may have had more rain, I haven't seen the rainfall totals for the state but Kona wasn't hit all that hard. Generally we see very little rain out on the ocean in Kona, rains typically fall on the mountains.

The water's really flattened out. Yesterday was flat with a light breeze, we decided to head way up north, closer to the Four Seasons resort area than Kailua, to one of our favorite sites to dive it with some divers who've been return customers with us for a while. We only get up there a few times a year, but the conditions were right yesterday. Highlights of the dive were... everything! It's a very nice dive site. The divers did manage to find 2 young frogfish, which only topped off a great dive. After that dive we headed back and went to Pyramid Pinnacle (and several other names) for a very nice dive. It features several swimthroughs, several pinnacles and plenty of nice topography, as well as a bunch of fish and invertebrate species.

The picture above was of a puffer fish hanging out in one of the caves at Pyramid Pinnacle.

Today it was nearly mirror-pond flat at Pawai Bay. Along with the rain came a north wind that basically sent us down that way as we had intro dives today and wanted flat water. We got the flat water we wanted and had great viz for our dives at two sites in the bay.

Aloha,

Steve

The burning question....

Late at night, when you're tossing and turning and just can't get back to sleep, you're probably asking yourself... "I wonder what dive boats serve for lunch?". Well, it runs the gamut. Some operators provide little, others feed you pretty well. As far as it goes for us, it's a choice of sandwiches, garden or chef salad from a local deli and a mix of individually wrapped assorted junk foods... yum, yum... along with waters or sport drinks. I try to stick with commercially prepared pre-packaged individually wrapped items, 'cause in my way of thinking dive boats aren't necessarily the most sterile of environments, and I know from experience (not on dive boats, but elsewhere) food poisoning isn't all that fun. I wouldn't consider it a veritable scu-buffet, but it tides most people over 'til they can grab a late lunch after a day of diving.

Here's a shot of some of what we try to offer.

The shot at the top is of a yellow morph of a Spotted Puffer (Arothron meleagris). This color is quite rare in the Hawaiian Islands, but more common in other parts of the South Pacific. I'm trying to get just the fish with a transparent background and I'm having troubles, I don't know if it's a blogger thing or if it's something I'm doing in photoshop incorrectly. If I can figure it out, I may try doing some similar stuff with my main website for the dive business. It's in need of a refreshing, I haven't done much with the front page in years... I'm kind of leery about doing too much and messing up my search engine positioning, but it's long overdue for a slightly different look.

later,

Steve

Arothron Meleagris - Spotted Puffer. Yellow ain't the regular color...

OK, so I can't get enough of the puffer that Cathy took photos of yesterday. Here's the regular coloration of the spotted puffers we see, it's from a photo I took about 3 years back. Quite a contrast from the yellow colored one for sure. The shot below is another pic that Cathy took as the puffer from yesterday was just inside the mouth of a cave/puka (puka is essentially Hawaiian for "hole").

Apparently the yellow coloration is more common in other parts of the Indo-Pacific, but for Hawaii it's a pretty unusual sighting. It was definitely the highlight of yesterdays outing, even though they saw a Great Barracuda, a frogfish, a couple of eagle rays, a couple groups of psychedelic wrasses, an octopus and other cool stuff.

Holy Cow!!!! Cathy came up from one of today's dives very excited....

We had a group on board today of mixed snorkelers and divers and hit a couple of spots where we can do both. When Cathy came up she was thrilled to see a fish she hadn't seen ever before in the time she's worked the dive boats in Kona (since '76, 32 years and seeing something new is still a thrill). Before she climbed back on board she asked if I happened to have my camera on board and if she could borrow it to take some photos.... yup. While she was down one of the snorkelers said they'd seen it under the boat and thought it was pretty cool, but didn't know it was anything out of the ordinary...

Well here it is....


After looking it up in Hoover, it turns out this is a rarely seen color morph of the Spotted Puffer (Arothron meleagris). Man, I hope it's still around when I'm back in the water in a week or two. Photo by Cathy.

Later,

Steve

Back from the mainland....

I just returned from the mainland. All I can say is Brrrr it's cold compared to here, at least in Oregon, especially the last week or so. I hadn't planned to go anywhere this fall, but I had a break in the charters and thought it'd be a good idea to visit my family and my wife (she's in Oregon for 6 weeks doing a practical portion of her doctorate she's been working on) while I had the opportunity. I hadn't been back in several years so it was about time.

What does one do when they go to Oregon from Hawaii... I can basically answer that by saying "I'm full of burritos". Boy do they have mexican food there these days, and boy do I need to back on my diet - I'm heavier than I've been in about 4 years, still not up to what I' have been, but it's time to turn it around. I'm not sure if I made I through a single day without some type of mexican food. I did get to see a monumental 4th quarter implosion at the OSU - UCLA football game, nothing like going from 2 points up to 30 points down in about 7 minutes. Yuck, we'll get 'em next year! Well, besides the good eats, I did get a chance to drive around and see some of the changes of the last 5-9 years. It was a relatively quick trip and if I was there for an extended time there'd be plenty do do beyond eating and football.

Now that I'm back, I'm playing catch up with e-mail and everything else. I had a charter this morning and also checked on the status of the boat. It's primed and supposedly ready to spray. There was a kid wiping all the dust and rain out of it today. Hopefully they'll spray it today, elsewise it'll just get dusty and rainspotted again by tomorrow. I'd hoped it would be beyond that and to the mechanical stages. If they spray it today, they'd need to put down the non-skid and the final touches and it's ready to go to the mechanic.

This guy is a Longspine Porcupinefish (Diodon holocanthus) also called a spiny puffer or spiny ballonfish. They're tough to get a good face shot of, I had to sit way back and zoom in on it, so the shot's a bit grainy.

Aloha,

Steve