Bandit Angels from Kona Hawaii....

Here's a couple of Bandit Angels (Desmoholocanthus arcuatus) from a dive the other week. Hawaii only has a limited number of angelfish species on their reefs, most of which are dwarf species ranging to only 2-4 inches in length, Bandits however reach about 7 inches in length. These guys are not real common, but we've got a couple of spots where there's a good shot at seeing them.

So the latest on the boat is... it's still being worked on. Longest 3 weeks of my life... Anyways, it's really starting to shape up. It sat once again for a short while but we've got someone working on it now. We're fabricating new hatch covers, moving fuel lines/vents/etc, finishing the interior grinding/sanding/fiberglassing and such and it should be ready for paint hopefully sometime next week. After that it'll need about 6-10 hours of work - that's probably a week in mechanic's time - and it'll be done. I've got all my charters pretty much set for the rest of the month on my friend's boat and then hopefully I'll be able to hit the ground running after a couple days of runnning it. Pat and I will probably be in the poor house when the final bills hit, but the rebuild beats building one from scratch. When it's all done you'll likely be seeing a big post with lots of pictures... early on I thought I'd post pictures while it was all being done, but frankly it looks pretty horrible when you are in the middle of it.

Other Kona news. The NEW HIGHWAY is open - sort of. They've been working on a new highway coming into Kailua, starting at about the harbor, for about a year and a half. The new section opened up about a week ago, and they promplty redirected all traffic on to it and have torn up the existing highway to rebuild it, so we're still operating on basically a 2 lane road (one in each direction) for a while. At least you can tell what the plan is though.

Gotta hit the hay, I've got a charter in the morning. Later,

Steve

This is a test... google map image of Honokohau Harbor public ramp area....

View Larger Map

People are always wondering how to meet the boat and I have to give out directions all the time. I've realized you can do a lot with google maps and figured I'll see if I can link an image here before I mess with it on my business website.


Cool... it works! You can zoom in and out, you can grab it and slide it one way or another to see what's off in other directions, all the usual google map stuff. Neat toys on the internet these days... One could keep busy for a while just looking at the coastline satellite image. For those of you unfamiliar with google maps, assuming you have an image above, click on the minus at the top left a couple of times and the picture will zoom out a bit, then you can run your cursor over the image and you'll see a hand icon, click on it and drag your mouse, or you can click on the directional arrows at the top left, and the image will move with it and show more... you can zoom in or out at any time, kind of a neat way to get a feel for the area.

I'll update more tomorrow... haven't been posting much lately.

Aloha,

Steve

Frogfish seen while scuba diving Kona Hawaii.

Here's a young frogfish, maybe 3.5 inches long or so. These guys start yellow and then tend to change colors to blend in with their envirnment. I wish I had a camera with a working flash when I took this. I may break out one of our older cameras to use 'til I can get the current one fixed.

So I haven't posted in a bit. Lots of stuff going on, but little action on the boat renovation until this week. The interior cosmetic work is now coming along quickly and I'm thinking it may be ready for all the electrical in a couple of days. I'm trying to find someone who can re-sew the seams on my canopy in fairly quick order. The old ones were falling apart so now's the time to take care of it. Pat's got a pretty good machine, but it can't quite go through several layers of sunbrella material, as well as the piping on the edge.

We've had some very nice dives. As far as water temperature goes, we're still seeing mostly 79-81 degrees on the dives. My personal highlights the last couple of weeks include this frogfish. Probably the best find, although I have no photographic evidence as I didn't have the camera that day, was a "family" of 4 Green Lionfish (Dendrochirus barberi) all on one coral head. They ranged in size from around 2 to about 4.5 inches in length. We don't see them too often, and usually just one or two at a time.

I'll try to get back in the habit of posting a bit more.

Aloha,

Steve

Kona Shore Diving....

Pat and I both had days off yesterday, so we decided to go for a little shore dive and relax for the morning. I'm still seeing water temps of 79, I'm hoping for it to bump up a little more over then next few weeks, primarily so we're not freezing while diving in January and February after the winter cool down.

This is a Blackside Hawkfish (Paracirrhites forsteri). They're pretty good about posing and not running off on you when you want to get a shot off. Hawkfish, as I've undoubtedly mentioned before, basically perch around all day waiting for small prey to get close enough to swoop down on. I came oh so close to getting a shot of a hawkfish with a tail sticking out of it's mouth some time back, but it took off at the last moment.

Have a great day!

Steve

Suddenly our house seems very quiet.

This was a very sad day for Pat and I. Our German Shorthaired Pointer passed away this afternoon, about 2 weeks short of her 15th birthday. She's had a rough go of it the last few months, giving us several scares, but kept plugging along. We'll miss her greatly.

We've got friends and family who read the blog, I thought they might want to know.

Steve

So here's the hull extension on the dive boat.

This is the engine mount/hull extension on the boat. The gunwale area above the blue tape has yet to be worked on. Hopefully things will start to move along more quickly now. The boat is supposed to go back on the trailer tomorrow and the engines will go on. Then starting next week all the electrical work will be done and supposedly the fiberglass guy is coming back to finish off the interior, then it'll be time for the interior paint job. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it'll be ready to break in by the first of next month.

Later,

Steve

We now return to our normal programming....

Please take a brief look a few posts down and you'll see pictures of a "Dragon Wrasse". Those pictures were of the juveniles. This is the adult phase. They go through a transformation of both appearance and habits as they grow. The adult version is referred to as a "Rockmover Wrasse", for it's habit of digging around and literally picking up and throwing rocks around. They spend most of their adult lives foraging under rocks looking for goodies to eat. They can easily lift a rock that is their own size... kinda fun to watch.

Now that all the natural disaster activity has passed, I'll be back to posting primarily about diving, with some local info tibits every now and then. Kona saw nothing weather-wise out of Hurricane Flossie, had no tidal wave from the earthquake in Peru, and no damage from the Hilo side earthquake of the other day... other than school closures and the economic impact of closures and cancellations all over, it's been life as usual the last few days.

Take care all,

Steve

Wow, that was fast. They just broke in and announced the Pacific tsunami warning center has issued an all clear.

Good news, and it only took about 15 minutes.