Very enjoyable diving in Kona today

As I said yesterday, we had a charter with a nice couple today. I dove the first dive, we dove right outside Honokohau Harbor at manta ray bay/eagle ray bay/naia bay (the name basically depends on what you saw last and who you work for). Whales were singing the entire dive. It's really cool being able to listen to them while you dive. This was my first dive this year I heard them the entire dive. They weren't real loud so they were likely some distance off. The Captain was watching for whales up top but apparently saw none. We saw all the usual stuff at this dive site, which is a very fishy site. Pat (my wife) joined the group for the dive and did see a Curious Wormfish (Gunnellichthys curiosus), I wish I'd noticed, we don't see them all that often. They are often confused for the ewa blenny or scale eating blenny (pretends to be a cleaner wrasse, then eats the scales of their mistaken victim).

We did Pawai Bay for the second dive. I Captained the boat for that one and saw 5 whales pass by, funny thing, they didn't really hear much in the way of whale songs during that dive.

Today the water was flat, temperature was 75 (by my computer, Pat says her's said 73, all's I know is it's down about 6 degrees sicne early December). There weren't a whole lot of dive boats out on the water today. We're in the middle of our post-holiday slow spell so not everyone's going out every day....Spring break's coming though and everyone will be hitting the water most every day.

Here's one of my favorite eel photos I took a couple years back. This is a nearly full sized Dwarf Moray eel (Gymnothorax melatremus). These guys max out about the size of a pencil. To give you an idea of size, the rock boring urchins are usually smaller than a golf ball. When I find them, their heads are usually poking out of a crack in a rock wall. They're typically very shy and will cower back inside their holes if you look at them too closely, sometimes they'll stay put though.

Aloha,

Steve

Not a whole lot going on the last couple of days.

I do have a charter in the morning, but otherwise much of the last several days has been maintenance type of things. Re-up the boat biz insurance and commercial ramp permits, do some maintenance on the boat, replace the stereo in the vacation rental, replace our over the stove microwave (large ants had moved into the electronics and it started going off and on rapidly and repeately on it's own, one of the prices of living in paradise is living with bugs and geckos, last year a gecko crawled into our laserjet and fried the machine) and such.

The rain we had I mentioned earlier lasted about a day and a half. It apparently dumped a fair amount of snow on at least one of the mountains, I haven't been out and about to check it out though. One of these years I need to get the obligatory doofy guy (me) in a swimsuit in the snow in Hawaii photo.

Today we had lunch at Senor Billy's, I beleive I've mentioned it before, the nice little mexican place up the hill. I had their "big ass burrito special" (actually two of them) for $3.99. I was surprised to find it really was fairly big and a good deal by any standards, I wouldn't have ordered two if I had believed them (my idea of big is usually bigger than most) ahead of time. I was quite full for the day. While I'm on the topic of food... I mentioned the Phillysophical Deli in a "biggest burger" post a couple of months back - Sad news, the owner passed away a few nights ago. I'm not sure what this does to the restaurant, it's been closed with wreaths on the door the last couple of days.

I played with the blog a bit to give it some more color and keep it from looking exactly like every other blog using this same template. I hope it isn't too irritating. Here's a Sailfin Tang. They're not super common, but if you keep an eye open for them you might notice them while snorkeling or diving at places like the Place of Refuge.

later,

Steve

Kona manta ray scuba diving video

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Free video hosting, video codes at www.vidiLife.com

Ok, I had this video that I took a year and a half ago sitting on my computer so I thought I'd put it on the blog. It's about a minute and a half long clip of the manta dive on a night when we had mantas. I beleive there's 5 in this video. Keep in mind I did this without the aid of video lights, and the divers who are right in the action get a much better and brighter view. We, as well as most of the boats, work with videographers who have all the gear to produce professional videos for customers who want it.

The manta ray dive is, in my opinion anyway, one of the two world class adventures (the other being a walk out to the lava flow, if active at the time, to stand next to a live river -OK, moving goop pile - of flowing lava) most anyone in reasonably active contidion can do in Hawaii. It can be done by both divers and snorkelers, although snorkelers really should be comfortable in the water.

Remember, this is only about 87 seconds out of a 40-50 minute show... it's quite amazing!!! Sometimes it's not this great, sometimes it's better. There's no guarantees when it comes to live animals. The most mantas I've personally counted at one time (we're talking in my immediate field of view) on one of these dives is 17. The video guys can check to see how may different mantas have shown by comparing spot patterns on the manta's bellies, I've heard of reports of as many as 22 showing up on a single night.

We don't always have mantas, but it's getting to where they are pretty conditioned to show up when the divers are around as plankton is attracted to the divers' lights and it pretty much becomes an all-you-can-eat buffet for the mantas.

This is likely the last video I have to share for a while. I'll try to get some short clips on dives the next couple of weeks.

Later,

Steve

Some much needed rain in Kona today.

We had our first real rain in a month or two last night, at least at our altitude. Not sure if it rained down on the shore or over in Kailua. Winter is Kona's "dry" season typically. When the ocean warms up (it's 75 right now, on the cool side) we tend to see convection rains in the afternoon and evening. During this part of year it takes actual storms to give us much rain, with tradewinds generally blowing weather in from the east, the other side of the island gets the brunt of the wet stuff.

Last night we had another manta charter for a family of 5. It was probably the calmest the water's been in a while.... glassy smooth practically on the way up. We saw 5 humpback whales on the way up to the dive site.

I did the first dive. We were hopefull of hearing whale songs during the dives but I could barely hear a little in the backgound at one point in the dive and that was it. Highlights were garden eels and Heller's barracuda as well as some good sized eels. The first dive we usually do up at the site, which is a very nice reef area, and is done in the late afternoon prior to sunset. There's lots of activity on the reef at this time as some of the nighttime fish are starting to come out of their holes and lots of others are grouping up and doing whatever it is they do (fish behavior changes about this time of day, the reef is just different) before the sun goes down.

We had 4 mantas on the night dive. I captained the boat for this one. The wind direction had us blowing directly adjacent to the dive site so I got to hear just about everything the snorkelers (our group was diving, several of the other boats had snorkelers) were saying... they were having a great time.

Here's an older pic, you'll be able to tell my older stuff because I used to write information on the pictures for my business website. This one mentions the poison spines, we're talking more than a little owee here, more like a bad spider bite where the wound goes bad, erodes away and you've got a quarter sized painful wound for months and might be picking at it for a couple of years... you don't generally want to touch these guys.

Aloha,

Steve

Turtle cleaning station video?

Ok, this is an experiment....

I took some video with my digital camera, not super high quality, but enough to give you an idea of what I see from time to time. If this works, you'll be able to see a video of one of the turtle cleaning stations I've been talking about. There were 6 or 7 turtles in the area this particular day, 4 are on the video. Not a whole lot of cleaning was going on at the time, but you'll see some of it.

Free video hosting, video codes at www.vidiLife.com

Cool, it looks as though this works, at least on IE - if any of you are on other browsers, feel free to let me know if this works. This opens up a whole lot of possibilities!

Aloha,

Steve

First big snow of the winter season in Hawaii today.

Yep, Hawaii does get snow. The news tonight said they had to close access and evacuate people from Mauna Kea because of snow.

We get snow pretty much every year on our two largest mountains on the Big Island. It's been a dry winter so this is the first this year. People often think we can't get snow because it's the tropics... but 14,000 feet altitudes can get cold no matter where you are on the globe.

Here's a shot I took last January after a real good snow on Mauna Loa, with Kailua in the foreground, probably the heaviest one since I moved here. I hadn't seen it down this far on the mountain before. We had snow on the mountain for a couple weeks after that one. The view is often blocked by clouds so I was glad I was out on the boat to catch this shot.

Later,

Steve

Six manta rays on the night dive today.

Tonight was a blast. We did a late afternoon dive up at "Garden Eel Cove" off the Kona airport, which is the home of the manta dive. I captained the boat for dive one and did the night dive with the mantas.

We had one manta looping under the boat feeding under our floodlights while we were putting our divers in. Moving on over to the site where the dive operators set up we had 2 mantas right away. There were four within about 10-12 minutes and the other two arrived minutes later. We bascically had 6 mantas for the better part of 35-40 minutes of so 'til the dive groups began to split off.

People are often surprised by this dive as they are expecting to see a ray or two or more swim by a few times and that's it - hardly the case on a decent night - Tonight we had 5 boats of divers and snorkelers sharing the 6 mantas, my guess is that everyone who dove tonight had mantas within arms length of them for a solid 10 minutes as the mantas swam from group to group, with mantas within 20-30 feet of them, well within visual range, for a full 35 minutes at least.

It's an amazing dive, and a great snorkeling event for non-divers. I'd consider this to be probably the single biggest "must do" activity in Kona for those who enjoy the water and want something more than just the typical snorkeling or dive.

Here's a photo of a smallish White Mouth Moray. These are our most common moray. Color paterns are basically spotted, but the white mouth is always there even if the spot pattern may vary from eel to eel. These guy are relatively harmless under normal circumstances. Eels have very small gill openings so they can crawl through, and back out of, coral formations. They have to actively pump their gills to breath, hence the typical open mouth that some people think might be a threatening behavior.

Aloha,

Steve

Dancing with the stars....

OK, I threw that title in there as an experiment to see if I get clicks on this specific post strictly based on the title. When I first heard of the show, I thought to myself, "how lame can television get?", but I gotta admit I am strangely compelled to watch that show if it's on and I'm home (it's on tonight) ... could it be because ballroom dance class was one of the better grades I got in college?

Back to Kona and diving. We had an even bigger little earthquake yesterday over off the east side of the island yesterday, it was a 4.7 and apparently it was only felt on the Kona side depending on where you were at the time. I was on the "highway" ( what passes as a highway here on the west side of the island - two lanes, one each direction) so I didn't feel it, my wife Pat didn't feel it at the hospital either, but others elsewhere in the area did.

I had charters the last two days with a fun group who've been diving together off and on for years. It's aways a kick to be with a laid back group of people who know each other, not that every other day isn't fun too. We're planning on an afternoon/evening charter tomorrow.

Here's a pair of reticulated cowries. You sometimes find them this close together, but not often. If you find one, look around, you might find another within a few feet away in a crack in the rock. Many cowries mate for life. It is important that if you find one and you feel you want a souvenir, if you are a person who picks things up, not to move it. Cowries follow their mate's slime trail, if you pick it up and don't put it down in the exact same spot, you may have broken up a happy couple. I try to avoid picking up cowries that haven't obviously moved on to the great sea shell home in the sky.

Later,

Steve