Here's an underwater video of squid on the manta ray night dive in Kona Hawaii. It was taken with a Canon G9 camera...

Bigfin Squid in Kona Hawaii from Steve on Vimeo.

Hi there, here's a short video clip I took on the night I got the underwater photos of the squid I've posted earlier. They change color almost constantly. They seem quite curious about the goings on of the night dive. I took a bunch of pictures in a few minutes time on that dive, and a few of them turned out, so I've got a bunch of color variations on the picture's you'll see on the blog.

I wish we could find these all the time on the night dive, they seem to be showing up more often as time passes, but for now it's really a special event for us.

Aloha,

Steve

Now that's a houseplant!!! So how many of you have a ficus tree in your home or office?

We've had them in our place over the time. One of the things we didn't realize before we moved over here was how many of what we consider to be "house plants" grow wild here in Hawaii.

One of the common ones around is the ficus tree. We have a pretty good sized one in our backyard that I've been interested of getting a shot of with me under it... but then I saw one at a house of a person that Pat knows and knew I just had to get a shot of it. That little blue blob under the tree is me. Considering that I'm a bit over 6 feet tall, that makes the tree fairly good sized.

Ficus trees are in the fig family, and many of the figs banyon. They'll send down "air roots" which eventually hit ground and become a secondary trunk and spread the tree out. This picture actually doesn't do the tree total justice as I'm standing in front of it from the narrow end, it's trunked out more in the other direction.

This is the same type of tree that many of you may have sitting in a corner in your home or office.... just think, with a little care you could someday be living the life of the Swiss Family Robinson!

Busy, busy, busy...

Bob, Cathy and I have been keeping busy with charters.

The day of the manta ray charter that I took the recent squid photos I just blogged we also did a morning trip. It was a rather spectacular morning of charters according to our passengers... schooling barracuda, a manta ray, 5 or 6 eagle rays, and 30-40 dolphins swam with them for several minutes.... all on the first dive. The second dive was at one of our favorite divesites, often called pyramid pinnacle or harlequin or pinetrees pinnacle or any other number of names, and it was almost a letdown in comparison - and it's a great divesite.

Kona conditions report - Water temps have been fluctuating in the 77-80 degree range the last couple of weeks, kind of odd to see that much fluctuation in any direction but up this time of year. The vog has generally been pretty low the last couple of weeks and we've had some gorgeous weather.

Here's one of our resident geckos. This one likes the coffee maker, and we can find it laying on top of it much of the day and evening.

Later,

Steve

Welcome to the Kona Hawaii squid blog...

Ok, so it's not a squid blog... but I did get a bunch of photos on the manta ray night dive last night. I'll be able to keep showing squid from time to time 'til I get more regular stuff in.

These shots were taken with my Canon G9 in a Canon WP-DC21 waterproof case. I didn't use any external strobes or lenses, just the base kit. They were taken at night using some light from other divers along with a handheld LED light, primarily for focusing purposes as the onboard flash is pretty much responsible for the lighting showing in the photos.

Aloha,

Steve

p.s. I haven't shown my favorite squid shots yet.

Today's picture says a lot for how the day's diving was....

It was a very good day!!!! More later... Been busy for several days now and pulled a double today, it's after midnight and I have to get up at 6 for tomorrow's charter.

This critter is a Bigfin Squid (Sepioteuthis lessoniana). It's the first one I've ever seen. They've been showing up on the manta dive from time to time, and this time I saw it and had a camera in hand... keep an eye on the blog for more on these critters.

Aloha,

Steve

Honey, someone's stuffing tic-tacs in the electronics...

So I'm turning on the light in the bathroom and I hear a rattling noise from the switch... hmmmm, what could that be. Well 20 seconds with a screwdriver reveals this...

Gecko eggs, lots of 'em. We've had an explosion of Gold Dust Day Geckos the last year or two in the house, and we've probably got these in lots of our sockets. Looks like time for a cleanout. Still don't quite know what the rattling was from.

Later,

Steve

Seven-Eleven Crab.... Hawaii....

I was looking back through some photos I've taken in the last several months and realized I've never posted a picture of a Seven-Eleven Crab (Carpilius maculatus). These guys can get to a pretty good size. People don't generally harvest these critters, but I've heard rumors the big claws are pretty good eating. We see them from time to time... we've seen them out in the late afternoon prior to reef dives in a few spots, but most of the time they're holed up somewhere. Supposedly they have 7 or 11 spots on thier back (this one you can see a bit of a twelfth, close enough I guess).

Later,

Steve

Best hamburger in Kailua-Kona Hawaii?? I went to Splasher's Grill for lunch today...

I went downtown today. I've often wandered past a restaurant that has been voted in the local paper as having the best burger in town. I'm usually kind of dubious of those reader poll "best of" reviews, as in the past I've seen some pretty mediocre hamburgers win the award. Anyway, I went in to them to give it a try.

Splasher's Grill is located across from the Kailua sea wall, it's kind of tough to top the view from thier seats. The pic at the top is my attempt at blending 3 pictures into a panorama (this is my first attempt, didn't quite work but you get the idea). Splasher's has several hamburgers to choose from, all feature a half pound of angus beef, along with your choice of fries or salad. Well after I ordered I realized they have spicy waffle cut fries as an option (not sure if it's extra or the same price as regular fries), I'd have gone for that if I knew as they're one of my favorites and not found commonly here. I chose the day's special, a mushroom avacado and chedder burger at $8.99. . While waiting for my burger I was treated to a large pod of dolphins across the way in the bay. There were plenty of ooohhs and aaahhs as the dolphins came quite close in today. The burger was just dandy, and between it and the fries I was quite filled. Splasher's burgers run in the 9-11 buck range and well could be among the best on the west side of the island.

For more restaurant comments/reviews, click on the "restaurant review" link in the labels below.

Later,

Steve