Turtle Pinnacle - Turtle cleaning station in Kona Hawaii....

Turtle Cleaning Station Kona Hawaii from Steve on Vimeo.
Today's diving was good. Cathy did the first dive, at Golden Arches, and reported viz approaching 200 feet, mentioned it was warmer too. I did the second dive at Turtle Pinnacle. As we approached the dive site we were in very deep water (I didn't have the sonar set up, but we were off the reef and in deep water, probably 150-200 feet) and could still see the bottom. We pulled up to Turtle Pinnacle and probably had 135 feet or so of viz on the reef. This site is not one that's known for it's viz, so conditions were excellent today.

Turtle Pinnacle is a turtle cleaning station. Turtles will swim to there and solicit a cleaning from tangs (surgeonfish). In it's heyday, you could generally count on seeing several turtles there. The last few years it's been more hit and miss. We had two turtles at the site today. One was there for a cleaning, the other looked like it was just looking for a ledge to tuck under for a sleep at the time.

The turtles will often lay down and spread out for a good cleaning. The video above shows classic swimming cleaning behavior. This can get fun if there's several turtles wanting to be cleaned. It's almost as if they get jealous... turtles will swim over to a swimming turtle being cleaned and cut in tight trying to steal their fish!

Later,

Steve

Just a picture...

Aloha!

South Kona Hawaii vacation rental near Kealakekua Bay...

As you probably notice, I'm pimping our vacation rental a bit this post. It's been running full and I just looked at the availability calendar and noticed we've got lots of availability yet for this summer. We're located down in Captain Cook between the upper highway and the water, on the road that goes down to the old wharf that people use to launch their kayaks to paddle over to the Captain Cook Monument. We like to think it's a nice spot. It's roughly a 25-45 (traffic can be slow on school days in the morning) minute drive into Kailua, so it's away from the touristy crowds. If you are curious, you can check it out here.

I've got two days off in a row, the only time this month. We've been pretty busy, that's a good thing. Yesterday I put together a quick e-mail newsletter to send out to the mailing list. I've ignored putting out a newsletter for about a year... I can't bring myself to take the time to write one up send one out when there's not a whole lot new going on - I can do that here. Today I've got another project in mind that will keep me busy for the day.

The fish above is a Titan Scorpion (Scorpaenopsis cacopsis). This one's probably about 15-18 inches in length. They can sit right out in the open and blend in with the surrounding rock and coral.... they're tough to spot, and just as tough to photograph to where they show up in the photo. They're one of the "stonefish" you hear about, with venomous spines. This particular one seems to like a specific rock outcropping at one of the sites we dive, but it's so difficult to spot we only find it every now and then, usually in the same general area.

Later,

Steve

Here's an Oval Mushroom, or Razor, Coral....

We see these corals from time to time while on dives. They're not overly common and many divers don't notice them. The species name is Fungia scutaria. They're interesting in that they are not sessile, they are unattached and can move around a bit to where they get the conditions they want. Divers occasionally notice them when their tentacles are retracted and invariably think they're dead, I really discourage touching them as unless it's bone white, it's alive. Another reason not to touch the corals, dead or alive, is that Hawaii has a law making possession of many corals illegal, so it's not a good idea even if it's passed on the the great reef in the sky.

This is the first photo I've got of them with their tentacles out quite nicely. Back in my aquarium days we used to keep these in our reef tanks, they'd really come out nicely under the proper lighting. I'm not sure where the source was, I suspect the Philippines and other areas south of here, but some of them had remarkable coloration.

Maybe I've been wrong all along....

Yesterday I was doing the navigation portion of an Advanced Open Water certification. Part of what we have to do for that is run a 100' course while counting kick cycles and timing it. We have a 150' line on the boat for this so I took it down for the students to follow. I'd guessed at the viz to be 70-80 as it was a mediocre day... well, 100' of the line out and I could still see my divers, barely. I guess I'll have to call it 70-80 feet of "good" viz, but viz was more in the 100' range. Now I'm tempted to take the line down on a good day just to see what the viz really is. I've always called some of our better days as 100'+, but I'm now betting it's actually much better than that.

So you're probably looking at the picture above and wondering what's interesting about it... it's a wire coral in front of my hand (I had to give the camera something to focus on)... but that's not the interesting part. The interesting part is what's on it. It practically takes a magnifying glass, but if you saw this particular wire coral while underwater you might notice there are not one, but two, Barred Wire Coral Shrimp living on it. Here's the slightly closer view with the shrimp circled. These little guys are tough to spot. I'd noticed one on this particular coral several months back, then decided to check on it a few weeks ago and noticed a shrimp of a different size than I remembered. Last week I decided to pop a quick picture of it, I thought there were two shrimp on it at the time (they tend to crawl to the opposite side of the coral when you get close enough to investigate) and the pic confirms it.

Now I'm wanting to break out my closeup lenses and external strobe and see if I can get a picture of one. They're much larger than the Siphopteron Quadrispinosum I took a picture of the last summer (I'm thinking I posted pics last June or July) with the closeup setup, so there's potential for a good picture if I'm lucky.

later,

Steve

Scrambled egg nudibranchs? Fried egg nudibranchs? Whatever.... they're neat looking no matter what you call 'em....

We're winding down on a real busy spell, I may actually get a planned day off come Friday and Saturday if the phone doesn't ring for those days. We've been doing lots of diving this month, I generally do the second dive of the day while Cathy's been doing the first... if we alternate dives, the customers get two slightly different style of guided dives during the day, kind of a yin/yang thing, Bob comes back tomorrow, so we'll be able to spread the diving out between us some - guess that'll make it more of a rock/paper/scissors experience at that point.

I was able to sleep in today, not that it really happened, as we're doing the night dive today. The mantas have been showing up in good numbers up at Garden Eel Cove for the last little bit.

Water conditions have been consistently good for diving the last little bit, and the water temperature has inched up a degree or two making it much more comfortable... Yahoo!!!

Aloha,

Steve

Sure you thought it was oysters.... where pearl necklaces really come from....

Just kidding. This is one of the many types of sea cucumber we have here in Hawaii. Sea cucumbers are quite common here, and are a sign of a healthy reef. They are sort of the vacuum cleaners of the reef, with tentacles in their mouths that sweep through the sand picking up sand and detritus. As the sand passes through they digest whatever they can, this is one we found "caught in the act" of redepositing the sand back on the reef.

I'm not big on scatological references, but we do have customers asking what that "string of pearls" was laying on the reef on occasion, so I thought I'd post the picture as it answers that particular question.

We had a tidal wave watch today...

We were pulling on to the mooring for our second dive today, and the boat leaving mentioned there was a tidal wave watch in effect from a big bang down in Tonga. After a bunch of phone calls we found it had been announced that there was no threat by then... phew... relief. We've only had a few of these in the time I've been here, but it wouldn't be fun to have a tidal wave materialize.

Here's a shot of a group of aholeholes, also known as Hawaiian Flagtails (Kuhlia xenura). There's a batch of them living off the edge of the lava at Pyramid Pinnacle, they've been in the same spot for years. They tend to be found very shallow right up in the surge, and are mylar shiny.... fun to watch on sunny days.

later,

Steve