Gorgeous weather in Kona right now.

We had a real rainy morning the other day, but it cleared up nicely and has been beautiful since.

We've had a bunch of good diving. In the past week or so the divers have seen frogfish, white tip reef sharks, dolphins on the dive, leaf scorpions, eagle rays, flame angels (I found a new spot with a trio - A customer had mentioned seeing them near a certain spot a couple winters back, I think I found the spot - they're highly territiorial so I expect to be able to find them from here on), several groups of psychedelic wrasses, garden eels and other goodies. Vis has been outstanding, with upwards of 120'-150' + on a couple of days earlier this week.

We're off to do a night dive tonight. There haven't been any mantas for a couple of weeks, but there was one last night. I'll give the divers the option of trying the manta dive or another spot for a regular night dive.

Here's a shot of a diver taking photos at an archway at Kaloko where the tiape like to hang out.

Later,

Steve

Gorgeous day in Kona today

Winter is arriving, and it's noticeable.... Brrrr.... we've been getting down into the mid to upper 60's at night where we live. It's nice and dry though, and we're still getting into the 80's during the day.

Today I'm going to head to the boat to do some cosmetic work, needs it, I'll be working on some things along those lines while we're slow in early December. We've been diving a bit since my return from the mainland. 3 manta night outings and several day trips. Latest water temperature readings had pretty much everyone coming up with 81 degrees.

We had another 5.0 aftershock last week. I was in the truck and didn't feel it, when I pulled up to the gas station they had me wait because they had to reset the pumps. As far as I know there was no damage from this quake. Everyone is still a bit on edge after the big one last month. 2 nights ago somebody started a rumor that a big quake and tsunami was predicted for the next early morning, apparently this rumor somehow had thousands of people falling for it - people were buying emergency supplies and even evacuating coastal homes in some cases.... Earthquakes CAN'T be predicted - it was all a hoax. The state is now trying to track down how the rumor got legs and actually spread across the state in a few hours.... probably some blogger or a radio guy having fun.

Above is an underwater picture of some small tiape that have taken to hanging out at Garden Eel Cove.

later,

Steve

Salt and pepper shrimp?

Last night we had a bunch of mantas, along with a couple of squid, on the night dive. Bob dove both dives, I did one the day before. Tomorrow we're starting an Open Water referral, Bob and I usually split the dives when we're training. We're still seeing roughly 81 degrees for the water temperature in Kona, so it'll be nice diving for a class.

Today I was running all over town. I had a tire go flat on the trailer last night, lucky I had the day off today to rip the old one off and pick up a new one. I had to buy yet more tools, a floor jack and a big ol' deep tire iron to be able to get the wheel off. I'm gradually aquiring something of a workshop now that I have a boat to take care of. In the process of running around, I stopped at the "Rainbow Cafe" up in the Kaloko warehouse district up above Costco and Home Depot. It's a plate lunch place with a small buffet style serving counter ready to go for a quick lunch. They have delicious shrimp. I think it's salt and pepper shrimp as it's cooked much like salt and pepper squid... fried with lots of hot pepper flakes... yum, yum. Not a bad little place, it was doing a booming local business at 11:30 this morning.

Here's a pic of a school of tiape. They tend to hang out on dropoffs in large schools and form a ribbon of fish on the reef. Once you run across a school, you can almost count on them being in the same spot in the future.

Steve

Ocean Rider, the Kona Hawaii seahorse farm....

We've had family in the last week. Pat had a day off and we all went out to Ocean Rider out at the Natural Energy Lab for their little tour.

The Natural Energy Lab is out on Keahole Point, just south of the Kona airport. It originally was a science lab where they were working on using cold water piped up from the deep to try to create electricy. Nowadays the water is more used for various aquaculture projects, although I believe they are putting in another electric research project.

One of the aquaculture projects is Ocean Rider, which concentrates on raising seahorses for the aquarium trade. They've started offering tours of the faciltiy. It's sort of interesting from an aquaculture standpoint, it's pretty much a typical hatchery setup, with more atypical creatures being raised. Not sure what my family thought, it was kind of a spendy tour, but worth it once. Probably the highlight for most taking the tour is a chance to get to stick your hands in a big vat and have a seahorse hang on to your fingers.

The pic above is of a bunch of Bluestripe Snapper (Lutjanus kasmira), known locally as tiape. These fish were introduced back in the late 50's with the theory that the original Hawaiians came from the Marquesas (although the large majority of Hawaiians actually come from later waves of immigration from other polynesian island states), the Hawaiians would love this fish as it's a popular food fish in the Marquesas. Dumb idea. It's considered to be a pest by local fishermen. They eat everything and really don't make much of a good food fish. Anyway, they are quite common in some spots and often hang out in large groups. This group is part of a group that is pretty much always under the south arch at Golden Arches.

Steve