We've had lots of mantas over the holidays and to start 2012

I took this brief video on the 23rd of December. I think there were 14 mantas that evening. It's been running anywhere from 5 to up to 25 mantas a night pretty much since then. Hoppefully it'll keep up.

Yesterday we had a blast. I had a friend that wanted to take friends out for a whale/dolphin watch. We headed up north and ran into mantas on the surface at Garden Eel Cove, then a huge school of dolphins off Makalewena. After watching the dolphins we decided to head out to sea and look for whales, about a half mile out we ran into 6-7 false killer whales (possibly pigmy killers, I can't really tell them apart at this point) and continued out to sea because we could see some splashing in the distance. turned out there was the largest school of pacific bottlenose dolphins I've ever seen out there. Usually we see 2-6 in small groups, this was dozens spread out over a good sized area. There were humpbacks whales in the mix as well. After watching that for a while we headed in to Garden Eel Cove to watch dolphins again.

We've had some gorgeous skies lately. If you check out my facebook page I've got a shot or two of the skies I took with my cell phone, it's been gorgeous.

Later,

Steve

First humpback whale of the season spotted in Kona Hawaii a couple days back!!!

Wow, this is early. I usually hear of early sightings in mid-October.

LOTS of whales in Kona right now... wish I hadn't forgot my camera the other evening...

Hi,
The other evening we were out for a night dive and during the first dive (late afternoon) there were three whales milling around about a couple hundred yards off the dive site (Garden Eel Cove). About 5:30 ish the whales started coming in closer and suddenly a baby whale breached about 60 yards (it was closer to us than some of the other moored boats were), it breached again, then an adult breached, a few seconds later the other adult breached, then all three breached at the exact same time.... the whales kept breaching one or two at a time and went up to the north end of Garden Eel Cove, then turned around and made a pass back by all the moorings. They were pretty much 60-100 yards off the moorings at all times... very close. With the continuous breachings that close, it sounded as if fireworks were going off.

Quite spectacular! This went on for about 8-10 minutes. The baby whale seemed to have a little more energy. The first breaches were full body breaches by both the baby and the adults. The adults got to where they were breaching more like the photo above (taken a couple years back) much of the time, adding in a few pec slaps for a while.

Unfortunately our divers were under and unaware of what was going on above. Three other boats full of divers that had already come up witnessed it, the snorkel boats were rounding the corner to come into the bay just as it ended.

I'd left my camera at home, bummer. We were close enough that they'd have made great photos. I've never had whales breach that close that many times. No mantas, but the night was worth it just for the whale show.

later,

Steve

Scuba diving in Kona Hawaii is FUN!!!

We had a last minute charter happen yesterday. The swells of the last couple of days dropped off pretty nicely so we were able to get some good dives in. Bob was the guide for both dives, I played Captain for the day and got a 30 minute "Captain's dive" in while the divers were having lunch and their surface interval on the second mooring of the day.

I took my wife's old Canon A620 down on the dive to try to get familiarized with it. I took a look at it while the divers were down on their first dive and sort of figured out what I wanted to do with the camera. I only took a few shots, here's a shot of an adult phase Yellowtail Coris Wrasse (Coris gaimard). I don't have many, maybe any, shots of the "terminal" phase adults on this blog prior to this photo. These fish go through a pretty radical color change over the course of their lives... they start out as red fish with white diamonds (many people confuse them for clownfish, which we don't have in Hawaii) then eventually lose the white and gain a bunch more colors. They're neat looking in all phases.

The water's still very warm for this time of year. I didn't bother with a wetsuit for the thirty minute dive, although I'd have appreciated it on a longer dive. I was seeing 77 on my computer, we've heard anything from 75-78 on the customer's computers. Yesterday's the first day in almost 2 months I've not seen whales on the water, but we heard them underwater on my dive and the group's second dive. Next month should be the really busy month, although it's been a fabulously good Humpback whale season so far.

No charter today so I'm hanging out at the dive shop 10-5 today.

Aloha,

Steve

Terriffic scuba diving conditions in Kona Hawaii today...

We had very nice day on the water today. The water was glassy flat, there were dolphins outside the harbor on the way out, we had to alter course for whales in our path on the way to Golden Arches, a couple times, underwater viz was well over 125 feet, whales were singing during the dive.... and more.

After the first dive
we had a whale and her calf come up pretty darned close to the boat. The calf was rather boisterous.... repeatedly breaching for a few minutes. I took this photo of a splash close to the boat... missed the whale itself, then ran out of space on the CF card. After deleting a few older photos I managed to get a passable shot of the calf breaching in the distance, it was quite a ways away by this time.. We moved on to Turtle Pinnacle (not a real hotspot for turtles these days, but it's still a great dive) for the second dive. Viz was a bit down in comparison to Golden Arches, but still great.

Aloha,

Steve

Today was an awesome day on the ocean in Kona Hawaii...

Today was a great day to be scuba diving here. The ocean temperature is still hovering right at 78 or so, the water was flat, viz in the 150 foot plus range, and there were whales everywhere you looked. We saw somewhere between 8 and 20 whales - we saw 8 on the way to Golden Arches, then tons more on the way back to Honokohau Harbor, many of them on the way back were likely repeats, but not all of them... lots of whale activity in Kona right now. I talked at the boat wash at the end of the day with one of my friends that does whale watches, he said it was like that all the way up to Makalawena.

Aloha,

Steve

Day off... Tinker's Butterfly fish... Blabber...

I've got the day off today, which is a good thing at this point. I've tentatively only got 3 days off between now and the 3rd of April, and I'll probably fill those if I can... you gotta work while you can get it. I went to the airport to pick up Pat last night - man is that place dead. I worked out there as a greeter for a shuttle company a couple of years ago during my slow season and the 7PM United SFO flight usually arrived full, last night it was only half full at best and we're hitting spring break.

The picture above is of Tinker's Butterflyfish (Chaetodon tinkeri). They were considered to be "endemic" to Hawaii but they've found them (or something extremely similar) elsewhere in the last few years. They're a deep water fish, at least a 100' for the most part, and that might explain why they're just now finding them elsewhere, not a whole lot of divers doing the deeper reefs in some locations.

An interesting thing happened to the camera at this dive site, and it's happened here before so now I'm thinking it's depth related. The camera (Canon G9) freezes up and shows a line of rotating blocks with numbers on it, looks much like some of the countdown clocks you see on some websites. I'm not sure what it's all about, but it quits when I get shallower. Yesterday it was at about 100', so I could only manage 4-5 shots and couldn't really get underneath the Tinkers without it locking up again. I'm guessing the housing compresses enough at that depth to press a couple of specific buttons at once and causes the screen to default to what it's showing. Guess I'll have to download the CD for the camera to find out what that screen means.... I pretty much read just the quick start manual.

It's been cool and cloudy, wet in the evenings, the last several days. We've missed the flooding that some of the other areas of the state have had, and the only effect on the diving was a swell that came in the last two days limited the sites. Today we've actually got some sun... yahoo! It's actually been foggy up mauka around Honalo to Captain Cook in the afternoons, felt like being back in Oregon... only I'd probably freeze myself numb going back to foggy and 40 degrees for days on end, foggy and 66 is almost too cold anymore.

Whales have been out in force the last few days. We could hear them on all the dives, and two days ago I was diving at "High Rock" and had gone out to the spot called "Lionfish Arch" and another name or two, and a trio of whales swam between our group and the boat - unfortunately we were keeping our eyes out towards deep water. The northwest swell was just coming up that day so viz was lowering, probably in the 60-70 foot range, the whales were probably 60-100 feet the opposite direction of where we were looking.... Man, I WANT TO SEE WHALES UNDERWATER, preferably soon. So close.

Later,

Steve

The whales are still in Kona in good numbers....

Just a quick post to let you know the blog's still alive... busy doing other stuff the last few days.

Later,

Steve

Had a whale of a day today....

Unfortunately not underwater though. We saw whales in between our dives and after our dives, and while our divers were down on dive number two, I managed to get a couple shots off.

Keep in mind,

this was done with a point and shoot camera at an extreme distance. The whales were
almost a half mile out beyond the mooring I was tied off to. These pictures were taken beyond the normal optical zoom. I've got a 2X optical lens I may have to try on the boat, but the better option would be to be lucky enough to have the whales randomly breach very close to the boat just as I was taking a picture pointed in their direction. Anyway, I'm just happy to have them coming out of the water.

Fun, fun, fun.

So people occasionally wonder how to find my blog. It's pretty easy to find just by googling the words kona, scuba and blog in one search, but I do get a kick on how people sometimes accidentally find my blog. I can look up recent search phrases, sometimes the phrases people search for are kind of fun... Here's one from the other day "crazy people diving in water from big hills"... I don't know if they were searching for cliff divers or what, but I place quite well in that search. I'm continuously surprised at how many people search for "hawaii otters", every couple of months I get someone finding my blog searching with this phrase. Once again, I come up quite well on this phrase, based on one post quite a while back, they're in for either a chuckle or a let down - if you try it and find a post you've not seen yet, give the video a look. There's been lots of others that get me wondering... I'll try to post the fun search inquiries from time to time.

Later,

Steve

I'm breaking out the candles..... KABOOM!!!!!

We've got some real loud thunder right now. The evening news talked about heavy rain on the Big Island, and we weren't seeing a drop. Well, it's been about 40 minutes and suddenly we're really getting the thunder, the rain just started a minute or so ago. We don't get lightning storms that often, but when we do it seems our neighborhood gets some power troubles so I'm preparing.

Here's another clip from the other day diving with whales singing in the background. Turn it up and you may hear them. The clip itself is of a Moorish Idol (Zanclus cornutus). These beautiful fish are the only member of their family, which has similarities to both tangs and butterflyfish in many respects.

As I'm posting, the lightning has subsided but the rain's starting to really come in. I have a charter tomorrow, one really nice thing about diving in Kona is that rain rarely effects our diving - the viz generally stays good as there's little to no runoff here.

We'll see if the power holds through the new episode of "Lost" (one of about two or three shows I watch) coming up in 40 minutes.

Aloha,

Steve

Testing...facebook video embedding... plus whale song sounds on underwater video...

OK, now that seemed to work.

Today was a great day out on the water. We had an 8-10 foot northwest swell so we decided to head south and go around the corner of Kaiwi point and dive sharkfin rock and Pawai Bay for the day, it was nice and relatively calm in there. The divers came up from the first dive very excited about all the whale singing, so when we moved over to the second dive site I took a "captain's dive" while they had lunch on their surface interval with Cathy.

Boy were the whales loud!!! I half way expected them to show up out of the blue at any time. Turn up the volume and listen between my breaths on this video and you can hear them. The sound of the whales through the camera housing doesn't do them justice, it was quite loud underwater.

While the divers were on their second dive I was up top on the boat and had a couple of whales swam to within 30 feet or so of the boat... very cool. They went right towards where Cathy had taken the group but probably cut outside when they hit the corner our group was around so the divers missed them.

This video clip is of a Lined Butterfly (Chaetodon lineolatus). These are Hawaii's largest butterflyfish species, reaching up to a foot or so in length. We typically see them in pairs, this one's partner was just a few feet out of the shot.

Aloha,

Steve

3 whales sighted underwater by our divers today....

Man I wish I was leading that dive. I was up on the boat and just as my divers went down a few whales went by. They (the whales, the divers had no idea what was coming) turned themselves around and passed outside of the divers as the divers hit the edge of the reef at "Hoover's" then turned around again and headed directly to the divers. A female and her calf went directly overhead while an escort whale passed about 50 feet outside of Cathy and the group.

All were thrilled. 2000 or so dives here and I've yet to see a whale underwater, bummer.

Anyway, it was a good day of diving. The whales were definitely the highlights, but Cathy also found a yellow frogfish she's been watching grow over the last month or two... and at the end of our second dive (at an undisclosed location) she came up and said she needed to borrow the camera again. This is what she found..... Despite not being familiar with my camera, and also in a pretty strong surge, she was able to get these shots of a Reticulated Frogfish (Antennatus tuberosus). These little guys aren't found all that often. There was one for a while at a popular dive site right outside of Honokohau Harbor a year or two back and hopefully this one will stick around for a while if it's left alone. I'm hoping to get some more pictures of this guy when the water settles down (it was a bit bumpy today later on). Here's another shot of the frogfish that shows it's entire body. These critters tend to hide deep within coral heads (they're not that big) so they aren't seen often.
In the top photo the frogfish is looking to the right - you can see it's eye and mouth pretty clearly. In the lower photo it's looking to the left, the eye and mouth are tougher to make out.

Later,

Steve

It's whale season in Hawaii...

Between dives on yesterday's charter we were treated to a momma whale and her calf on the surface. The youngster was breaching, quite cool as it was probably in the 10-13 feet in length range by my wild guess. Anyway, that got me to thinking I ought to repost a link I posted last year - here it is... Live audio feed from a sonobuoy system up in Puako - click on the link and you can hear the whales off Puako, which is up north of Kona in South Kohala.

The pic above is of a Crown of Thorns Starfish. You don't want to touch the spines on these guys as they're sharp enough to go through gloves and pack a nasty toxin that can be very painfull and will leave you a reminder in scar tissue for a few years. Crown of thorns stars are coral feeders so you'll occasionally see white patches on the coral that lead a trail to them. They're generally considered to be a pest, and in some parts of the world have caused severe damage to reefs when there's a bloom of them. In Hawaii, their only real predator is the triton's trumpet snail.. one good reason not to collect the trumpet snails, which are relatively few and far between.

Later,

Steve

The humpback whales have returned to Kona Hawaii...

Wish I had some pictures of Humpbacks, Banded Coral Shrimp will have to do. Pat took a shot of these a couple weeks back. I really liked this picture because of the second shrimp being in the background.

We've been hearing reports of whale sightings lately. We joined in on a garage sale on the weekend to get some old junk out of our garage and could see them off in the ocean off Kailua town in the afternoon.

Maybe this will be the year I get to see the whales underwater? Bob has, Cathy has, even some of my customers have on dives I've captained... I'm about due I hope.

Aloha,

Steve

Fabulous day on the water today, lots of whale action...

You couldn't ask for a nicer morning in Kona this morning. It was bright and sunny and the ocean was FLAT. We did our first dive at Golden Arches with our afternoon dive at Kaloko Canyons (some call it arches or just plain Kaloko also). We did have a west swell bump up for the second dive, but it didn't affect the diving.

I stayed up top on the boat all day. The other day I was getting to a store for a single 1.5 inch bolt at closing time and they closed the front door just as I hit the parking lot... stupid me decided to make a run for it and got about 6 steps before I felt a pop, sort of like an electrical shock or someone kicking your calf, in my calf. I hopped to the door and at least they let me in to spend my 26 cents. I didn't have blood pooling up in my foot and the pain is going away more every day so it's not a major tear, but I won't be diving 'til it heals enough that I don't have to worry about cramping up while leading a dive. I'm hoping to be back at it next week, in the meanwhile Bob gets to do all the diving (he likes it that way anyway).

While I was on the boat there were whales passing both dive sites. My divers weren't in the right spot at Golden Arches to see them, but whales passed right next to the dive site on two occasions. The Kaloko whales were more like a hundred yards out from the dropoff.

The photo above is one of my early pictures of an Achilles Tang (Acanthurus achilles). I'm running out of newer pictures I like, so I'll be going through some of my older pics taken with a Sea and Sea MX10. Most of them will have the fish ID on the photo, so you'll be able to tell the older stuff from the newer stuff.

Later

Steve

Live Whale songs from Puako?

So I just ran across this. It's apparently a live feed from a sono bouy up in Puako. When I listened, the whales were singing away like mad - I almost wonder if it's a tape as I've never heard anything that busy diving.

Here's the link: http://www.jupiterfoundation.org/live_cam.html

The live audio on the page takes a while to load, so be patient, it's worth it if they're still singing like mad.

We're seeing lots of whales off parts of Kona right now.

Yesterday evening we went down to the picnic area to the south of the Place of Refuge and there were whales right off the shore, maybe 30-40 yards off shore. I didn't have my camera or I could've had some nice tail and back shots.

Today Pat and I did a shore dive up north of Kua Bay with some friends and there were whales everywhere on the horizon.



Here's a simple little reef scene I took with my Olympus sp350 in movie mode. I took it in low resolution and Youtube compresses it even more so it's not much to look at... but turn your volume up a bit and use your imagination and you can hear the whales in the background off in the distance (no kidding). You'll hear lots of static popping, which is actually snapping shrimp in the coral heads, me breathing a lot, and something in the background that sounds like a cross between cows and cellos - that'd be the whales. Hopefully later in the winter I'll be diving where they are louder, we heard them all the dive today but it was fairly much in the background. When it's loud, it's quite impressive.

Later,

Steve