A Kona Hawaii Scuba Diver blabbers on

So I'm eating a tostada... and then it comes to me...

2009-07-13T20:30:00.005-10:00

I haven't been blogging much the last month and a half as I've been real busy with Wanna Dive. I mentioned earlier that I've rented out a spot across from the harbor for an office/storage/classroom/meeting spot/place to hang my T-shirts.Here's a refresher look at the space.
I wanted to set up the spot in a way that I could display my shirts and whatever else I may have at some point. Originally I wasn't really thinking of painting it, just washing the wall and hanging some slatwall or gridwall. I was looking at one of the fishing charter stores in the area and saw bright red slatwall, found it curious and asked Pat of her opinion, and what would she think if I put in a sheet of slatwall and painted it red with a diagonal white stripe to do the dive flag thing... she said go for it. That's about all I planned at the time - white walls, a sheet of slatwall looking like a dive flag.... then I got to thinking, I'm gonna have this gosh-awful red thing on one wall of a not freshly painted white room. YUCK! I'm gonna have to paint the whole thing.

This was a couple of weeks ago and the swell came up huge and we decided to take a day off. I figured I'd head up to the Waikoloa resorts to take a look at what new retail establishments are doing these days (Pat has learned I like looking at stores when we travel - something about retail display intrigues me, it has since the days I owned a pet store long ago). I was hungry, then recalled that a couple of Mexican restaurants in town had somewhat wild color schemes. It was tostada time at that point... yum yum... in the course of eating the tostada I was really enjoying the color scheme... so you know what that means, of course... I had to drive across town to eat something at the other Mexican restaurant I was thinking of... It's taco time now... in the course of eating the taco I was really enjoying the color scheme...

Luckily it only took 2 restaurants to make my decision... tropical/Caribbean colors... or I'd have been eating yet again. So after picking up a bunch of paint chips at Home Depot, I had a basic plan. Of course I still get other ideas popping into my head. This shot is of what has happened so far.

I should be receiving my slatwall and a couple other fixtures tomorrow, then it's off to more painting of garish colors.

Aloha,

Steve

Orange Cup Coral from Kona Hawaii....

2009-07-13T20:13:00.002-10:00

I did a dive last week at Pawai Bay out on the Kaiwi Point end. There's a bunch of cup coral on a large formation near the point and the current was screaming when we were down so the polyps were out bigtime.

We had a huge southwest swell during the last half of June. I'd heard people mention it was one of the largest in decades but I hadn't thought much of it 'til this dive. Everything on the west end of the dive was as normal, but in one area of the site there was noticeable damage.... large lobe coral formations were sheared off and tossed out of place, often upside down. Wow. The area between Carousel and the Body Glove mooring had quite a bit of breakage. I'm wanting to check out the reef more inshore and to the south to see if it was damaged also. All of our sites that weren't directly in the path of the swell are fine. Quite interesting, it's amazing how much power a little surf has.

later,

Steve

Happy 4th of July!!!!!!!!!!

2009-07-04T07:51:00.005-10:00

Here's a Leaf Scorpionfish (Taenianotus triacanthus) I found under a coral head at Turtle Pinnacle a couple months back.

Pat's family flew in last night so we've got a full house for a few days. I've got today off, with charters the next few days. I've got a big project ahead of me... the "office". I've rented a spot out near the harbor where I'll be able to keep my gear (the business has pretty much been living out of the truck and garage for several years), hang my T shirts, and meet customers that want to meet or try gear on ahead of time. I've got no immediate plans for retail, no immediate money anyways, so it'll be "Open by Accident", I mean "Open by Appointment", only. I'm heading off shortly to start filling holes, sanding and washing the walls in preparation for a more funky paint job... gloss white's kinda boring... there used to be a travel company office in this spot, I'm shooting for a different look. I'll post a walk through tour once I'm done - Someone asked the other day when I'm moving in... my answer was "over the course of the next 8-10 months". I'm hoping to have it looking like an official spot in the next 2-3 weeks of working between charters though.

Whale shark today!!!!!

2009-06-29T21:26:00.005-10:00

We had a light load on board today, did dives at Black Hole and Sand Chute. "Black Hole" sounds more exciting than it actually is, but it's an all right dive. Sand Chute can be pretty good, especially when big things are swimming by. Today the bay off the Kona airport, where Sand Chute happens to be, was loaded with dolphins. Our divers did manage to get a brief glimpse of them underwater in the distance, but it was very brief.

On the way back we were rounding Keahole point and I noticed something on the surface. I thought it was a manta ray for a moment... then saw the spots....WHALESHARK!!! I hit the brakes and we ended up right next to it. It swam about 18 inches off our port side. Little guy, maybe about 12 feet long or so. Smallest one I've seen here. We're scrambling to get snorkels on masks and such and it made one more pass right next to the boat and was gone. We spent 20 minutes or so looking for it... bummer, it didn't stick around. This was still the highlight of the day, it's always a treat to see them, even if it's from the surface.

Here's a nice Yellow Margin Moray shot.

Steve

Time for a Hawaii underwater nudie photo...

2009-06-27T22:28:00.003-10:00

Here's a shot of a Gold Lace Nudibranch (Halgerda terramtuentis). Looking up the scientific name, I just learned something new... this nudibranch is apparently only known from the Hawaiian Islands... cool, another piece of trivia. I was down doing a "Captain's dive" a week or two ago and saw this one under an arch.

The surf is really up right now. We've had a big south swell for several days now, and it seems to have peaked (hopefully) the last 2 days. We've got turquoise looking water all along the coast right now... people think it's pretty, but for divers it kind of sucks... it basically is light reflecting off all of the sand in the water, not clear water showing off it's beauty. I didn't go out today, but I had a buddy today that went out and said he had to do both dives at Kealakekua Bay and the viz was horrible - considering the sand is nearly 90 feet down at that spot, for it to be kicked up enough to make for horrible viz says something. Tomorrow's a big marathon/triathlon event in Kona, between that and the surf we're taking the day off. I'm hoping for better conditions come Monday... the weather report says the surf's coming down.

So, sort of big news for me - I signed a lease yesterday. I've been operating out of my garage and pickup truck for years, now I'll have an "office" in town where I can hang my T-shirts and store my gear. It's near enough to the harbor that it'll be quite handy. I've been wanting to have a spot to meet customers ahead of time to try gear on and sign papers to maybe speed up our morning pre-dive rituals. It's not a big spot, but big enough for my needs at this point. I'll have more information as time goes on... today Pat and I were looking at paint chips, it's currently gloss white, I'm looking to spice it up a hair if I can clear it with the landlord.

That's it for now.

Aloha!

Steve

Good fun scuba diving today.....

2009-06-22T19:51:00.005-10:00

We had fun today. Went up to "Hoover's" for the first dive, ended up at Kaloko for the second dive. At about 60-65 minutes into the second dive, customer Mel found this fish... nice find. It's a Devil Scorpion (Scorpaenopsis diabolus). This one wasn't all that large, maybe 7 inches or so. They are essentially one of the stone fish, and have a knack for blending in to their surroundings. Mel said she saw it move as she went by... what is noticeable about them when they move is the back side of their pectoral fins, they're extremely bright, looking like a brightly colored butterfly when they skip along the bottom.Here's a quick shot of the back view. You can only see the color open up right when they move, and I just barely caught part of it, but you get the idea.

Later,

Steve

Great scuba diving in Kona Hawaii today....

2009-06-20T20:49:00.004-10:00

Here's a Harlequin Shrimp (Hymenocera picta) feeding on a Blood Star. These little shrimp feed on the tube feet and legs of starfish. They are occasionally found deep in antler corals. When we find them we consider ourselves lucky, they often stay in the same coral head for long periods of time so we've got a shot at finding them repeatedly.

We're at the start of a long stretch of days of diver charters. Today we were at High Rock for the first dive. I captained and the divers came up quite happy... great viz - 150' plus, along with lots of critters. Cathy said if the pinnacle wasn't in the way they could've probably seen the boat from the north arch (we're probably talking 200-250 feet or so)... man, that's clear. Between dives we moved down to Golden Arches and I hopped in for a Captain's dive, the surge had come up by then and the water was a bit milky, but probably still in the 125' plus visibility range. I didn't bother putting on my wetsuit... it's running 80 degrees for water temperature right now. It was a good day.

Later,

Steve

Here's Lookin' at ya....

2009-06-18T23:07:00.005-10:00

I don't think I've posted this squid shot from last year before.

We were seeing squid again on the manta dive a couple of times the last few months... they're always fun. We did the manta night last night, no squid but it was a great time for all. The manta dive has been hopping still, maybe a bit more up and down the last few weeks, I'm only aware of one or two no-show nights since late February.

I've got tomorrow off, then comes another two week minimum stretch without days off. I'm trying to set my manta outings to strictly Monday or Wednesday or Friday from here on out, and then likely go out on whichever two of those days gets booked first. I get people asking why I don't run it every night... well, I work 7 day charters a week when it's busy, and with two night dives thrown in on top of it that means for an awful lot of shifts for the three of us to cover. Most of the dive operators doing it more than 2-3 times a week are the bigger companies with multiple boats and/or employees.... I'm not there just yet.

We've had quite the south swell for a while, but it appears it's going down for at least a while. With the swells came warmer waters... YAY!!! Bob had water temperature readings of 81 degrees on both of his dives last night... I can't belive the water's actually warmed up about 7-8 degrees since April, that's a big jump.

Aloha,

Steve

A few days off...

2009-06-14T13:01:00.004-10:00

We've been quite busy for a while and I've got a few days off right now, with the schedule getting hectic again in a couple of days. We've had back to back south swells the last couple of weeks, so the dive charters have been spending lots of time at spots outside the harbor and up near the airport, with a few dives in the north pine trees area, but the southwest facing sites have been pretty much off limits for a while. We've been able to find flat water by avoiding the sites facing southwest. Yesterday I was kind of glad to have the day off as the surf was probably as big as it's been.

On Monday evening I ordered an enlargement just to see how it'd turn out... it had arrived by Friday afternoon. It's BIG. I'm not sure if I want a BIG picture of an eel hanging prominently around the house... likely to be office material. It turned out great though, I wasn't sure if the detail would show up in the white, but it's fine. Here's a shot of the pic with me next to it just to give you an idea of how JumboGiant.com does with their enlargements.

Aloha,

Steve

Sloppy, choppy water today between a big south swell and the wind... but the diving was great!

2009-06-08T21:20:00.004-10:00

Today we had a couple of intro divers on board. Neither of our intros had ever scuba dived before so we went in search of calm water with good viz. We had to go up to the airport, north of Keahole point to find very good water for intros. Several spots between town and there were pretty OK, it's just that with intros we have to do skills on the mooring line and it's tricky to do them with new divers while they're holding on a line tied to a bouncy boat. The intro divers had a great time. Highlights of the day were mating octopus and a nice juvenile frogfish and lots more.

I haven't been taking a lot of photos lately, busy with students or larger numbers of customers, also was out for a while with a back/rib problem that has resolved itself. This photo above was one of an eel on a late afternoon dive spring of last year. Tonight I decided "what the heck" and ordered a copy of this photo from www.jumbogiant.com. This is a company I heard about several years ago, they do enlargements at a very reasonable price. The copy on this post is about 56K in size, the one I uploaded to them (took several minutes) was about 5.5 megabites in size. I ordered a 24"X36" photo luster print using "best crop". I figured I'd challenge them a bit with this photo, see where they crop it, as well as the fact that there's a bunch of white to deal with, to see how they do. The guys in town that do prints would charge pretty good money to do a giclee print of that size... Jumbo Giant charges $19.95 plus about $9 in shipping, about a quarter of what the photo enlargement shop I visited last week charges locally... so I thought it would be worth a shot. I'll let you know how it turns out, and how fast it gets here (just ordered it 20 minutes or so ago).

Been real busy lately.. I had 6-7 days off in early May but the month filled up after that, I have another 6-7 day stretch next week with nothing, but the phone's been ringing again and I've got 1-2 charters a day 'til July 3rd except for that little stretch. It'll probably fill in too though,if it does that'd mean only 1 day off this month.

Kona Water Temperature News: I've been whining about how cold the water was this year... well, about the first week of May things started warming up and haven't stopped... we're up about 7 degrees the last 5 weeks. The water is now sitting at a pleasant 79 degrees, touching 80/81 on our computers at times. YAHOO!!!!

Do you twitter? I've been playing around with it the last month or so. I picked up a new phone that takes OK pictures and has internet, so I can send them to twitter from the boat. In theory I could answer mail from the boat, but that involves figuring out how to set up my e-mail accounts on the phone... too much thinking for me right now. Anyway, I manage to update conditions several days a week via the phone on twitter, if you are interested, you can find me at http://twitter.com/wannadivesteve

Aloha for now,

Steve

When should you reserve your scuba diving charters... How soon is too soon???

2009-06-02T18:06:00.005-10:00

I get people asking me if it's OK to book ahead from time to time... the answer to that is that I'd prefer it, I suspect that's the same for most if not all dive operators. I've had people book ahead as far as 14-15 months or so, but those are rare. Right now I've got numerous charters partially booked through September, September itself is starting to look fairly busy, but most people seem to be booking a little closer to actual dates than in years past. It's usually fairly easy to slide into an open spot on relatively short notice if there are only one or two of you in most cases, but with larger groups it can get dicey if you wait too long.

All in all it's somewhat of a guessing game. I usually recommend to people that they try to book when they feel comfortable that they know they definitely are planning on diving... during busier seasons it sometimes takes several phone calls to find space with someone if you wait too late.

I thought I'd mention this because I had a surprisingly busy May and had to turn down last minute bookings (by last minute, I mean last few days or longer) several times due to a full or mostly full boat. I'm not discouraging last minute calls, definitely give me a call (808-937-1175) if you're looking at diving last minute, but I'm definitely encouraging a little lead time if you plan on diving for sure.

Here's another shot of a turtle getting cleaned by surgeonfish/tangs at a cleaning station.

Later,

Steve

Wow. You couldn't ask for better weather or skies in Kona the last several days...

2009-05-22T19:58:00.003-10:00

The tradewinds died out and were replaced by north and northwest winds the last few days, it blew all the vog out and the skies have been clear and bright. Today was partly cloudy but still absolutely beautiful.

I had the day off today, start another stretch of diving tomorrow. It looks as though June will be quite busy at this point.. lots of charters started, now I just need to add additional passengers on the dives to fill things in.

Here's a frogfish from one of our recent dives.

Aloha,

Steve

Old dogs can learn new tricks????

2009-05-21T20:18:00.006-10:00

We've been real busy this last week, dives every day with a couple of night dives thrown in on top... I'm due for a nap.

Among the passengers this week was a fun couple that were relatively new to diving (less than 50 dives) who passed along something they'd heard about to Bob and I (I'm in the 2K dive range and Bob, who's logged every dive he's done, is at 4900 and then some) that we'd never heard before - not that we can remember anyways, we're both over 50 - You can talk to your buddy underwater by... now this is cool... sticking your regulator on top of his/her forehead and talking through it. Well, it looks stupid, and you better clue your buddy in ahead of time that you might try it, but it does work to some extent. You've got to use few words, and avoid words that are tough to say with a reg in your mouth (I tried the word "big" and it didn't come across, but "huge" was something the customer I tried it with clearly understood). Apparently someone they dove with said it was a Navy Seal trick.

Now I really doubt I'll be using this often, but in rare cases that we have to communicate it's an option.

Here's a photo of something I find interesting... We had a mild junk line off of Eel Cove the other week (currents sometimes make a line of things caught in them) and we found this visor floating off the dive site. Take a look closely... it's got it's own eco-system going. Any time you find something floating in the ocean, there's no telling what else may have been attracted to it and is living around it. In this case it's a bunch of little fish that have taken up residence on the hat. I've seen the same or similar fishes around Oceanic White-tip Sharks and some big jellyfish we see on very rare occasions. I don't know what they are called, but I've even had them show up next to my divers when I've led blue water dives. Most anything floating out in the open will eventually have other life surrounding it apparently.

Later,

Steve

Whoohoo!!! Summer seems to be coming....

2009-05-13T19:41:00.005-10:00

Wow, what a difference a few weeks makes... the water temp has risen to a point where it's quite comfortable for those of us who dive here nearly every day, and the water's flattened out most of the time lately (not that it was all that big of surf earlier). Water temp today was a very comfortable 75/77.

Earlier in the week we were able to go south to the Red Hill/Kealakekua region, and yesterday we were able to go way up north to a spot that we pretty much only go with "regulars" - don't feel slighted if we don't get there with you, it's just that it's different and once you've been to 30-40 dive sites we here want to start showing our "regulars" something new. It's fun for us to dive something we don't see all the time so on occasion we try to cover some distance when the boat has people we've done a lot of diving with.

Today we had a light load, went up to the Golden arches area and just slowly scanned the area for a couple of 78-80 minute dives... were rewarded with a good sized frogfish (here it is, check out the full belly, must've eaten recently), Leaf Scorpion, Peacock Flounder, Harlequin Shrimp, and loads of other cool stuff.

Aloha,

Steve

Water temperature in Kona Hawaii is bumping up... making for some great scuba diving...

2009-05-10T20:13:00.003-10:00

Aloha,
Back to diving again every day for a while... the month has turned into a fairly busy one and June's starting to fill with charters.... plenty of space still on most days.

Here's a shot of a Bandit Angelfish (Apolemichthys arcuatus - the genus on this fish has changed at least twice since I first saw them back in my aquarium shop days). We found this one on Friday. Hawaii only has a very few species of angelfish, and this is by far the largest (reaches 7 inches or so). We saw a pair of them but I couldn't really get any good shots with both of the fish in them. On the Big Island, we typically see them below 60 feet or so, more likely below 80. In the older islands further north, say Kauai and to the northwest, they apparently are shallower and seen more often.

Today the water was very flat and we decided to head south to the Red Hill area for dives. We dove at "Ridges" and "Henry's Cave". Bob led the first dive and I led the second. Good conditions... the water's really warming up the last 2 weeks, it's roughly 76/77 now suddenly. I shed the shorty I was layering with and just went with my full suit and was fine. Out at depth on the edge of the reef we probably had roughly 150 foot of viz. A manta ray swam beneath us as we descended and one of the divers saw two turtles in the distance. Other cool stuff was a pair of Flame Angels, a real good sized (child's fist sized roughly) yellow hairy hermit crab that had taken over a beautiful triton trumpet snail shell, a three foot (pretty small) or so long whitetip reef shark and other goodies. Surprisingly we didn't see much in the way of shrimp or nudibranchs, seems to be the case down south lately when we've been there for some reason, even though both sites appear to be topographically good candidates for them.

A little underwater video from today.

2009-05-08T22:31:00.002-10:00

Yellow tangs from Kona Hawaii from Steve on Vimeo.

Yellow tangs on the reef. Took it with my Canon G9.

Later,

Steve

To wear, or not wear a snorkel....

2009-05-07T18:28:00.005-10:00

Yup, I wear a snorkel. I did a heckuva lot of shorediving when I first started diving, and after a few hundred dives it got to where I feel odd without one. If you go to a scuba message board and bring up snorkels, it'll raise a crazy amount of debate... it's a hot topic for whatever reason and there are people who are rabid pro or con. I figure to each his own. In our case, we come up and down at the boat, so there's no real need for a snorkel in most cases... but they can be handy if doing a drift dive or for people who are prone to not following the guide and getting themselves lost (sort of a peeve of ours, rarely happens, I can only think of 2-3 times in 10 years of doing this, but it disrupts the dive when it does).

So if you asked me how the month is looking this time last week, I'd have said pretty mediocre. It's our "slow" season and last week I had all of 6 charters lined up for the rest of the month with little phone action... that changed suddenly a couple days ago... I've got 20 charters lined up so far with more interest. Should be a reasonably busy month after all. Funny how it seems to go in spurts.

I've been out of the water for 5 days now... it'll be nice to get back in tomorrow. I'm hearing it's warming up a bit, so it'll be curious to see what the temperature is.

Later,

Steve

Man, the Kona manta ray night dive is still going strong....

2009-05-05T21:15:00.005-10:00

The manta dive has seen 15+ mantas a night for the better part of almost a month and a half now. It's a spectacular event for divers and snorkelers. We did three of them last week, in addition to some day outings - made me tired... I'll use that as my excuse for not posting in that time (but it's more likely that I just haven't had much to say during that time). Going out on the night charters and then having to come back the next morning (or not, depending on the schedule) takes it out of me. I normally hit the hay around 10:00-10:30, after a manta dive it's more like 1am and I don't feel normal for a couple days... what ever happened to the good ol' days when 4 hours was plenty of sleep as long as it wasn't every day? It's our slower season right now so I've got a few days off before it all starts again.

I just got an e-mail that the Manta Ray protection act has made it through both the State House and Senate and is now waiting on the Governor to sign it. The mantas have been unprotected here and there's been a few attempts to get them protected so someone won't come in and harvest them all. Kona is the one place in the world that you know exactly where the mantas are likely to be 30 minutes after sundown, so that raises the risk of them being taken efficiently if someone were to decide to target them... this should help keep that from happening.

The pic above is of a Redstripe Pipefish (Dunckeroampus baldwini). Pipefish are related to seashorses, the males carry the eggs on their undersides, unlike the male seahorses which carry their eggs in a pouch on their bellies.

Reading in John Hoovers new book , which happens to be probably the best book on Hawaiian fish available right now, I just noticed that these particular pipefish were endemic - I didn't know that before tonight. They are typically found in pukas (Hawaiian for "holes") or cracks in rock formations. They're small, maybe 5 inches long in total, and quite slender so they're tricky to point out to other divers. We've got a few of them stashed at a few dive sites so we do get to brief our divers and show them from time to time.

Man, is our shower ever hot!!!!!!!!!!

2009-04-27T20:22:00.004-10:00

We've got solar hot water at home, so what this means is that it's been real sunny here in Kona the last several days. You almost couldn't ask for better weather. Lots of blue skies, flat water, and great viz (although today was down a bit even though being very flat - some kind of plankton bloom had the viz down).
We've been busy with a class and several certified divers the last several days. Yesterday was a long day for us, with dives in the morning and the manta dive at night. There were 20 mantas on the dive last night! The divers were STOKED! I've got dives in the morning, and we have two more night trips scheduled for later in the week... the manta dive has been very successful all month, hopefully it'll continue for a while.

The shot above is of an Arc-eyed Hawkfish. These fish are very common, you'll find them on coral heads, and are fairly easy to approach and get a picture of. I wanted to get a shot of one on a coral head, rather than a closeup shot on this picture.

Later,

Steve

Wow, now is certainly a good time to look into flying to Kona... hint, hint, hint...

2009-04-20T15:14:00.005-10:00

Just checking air prices right now I'm seeing prices in the 320-360 RT range to Kona from all over the western US. This time last year it was starting to really climb, hit nearly 900-1000 or so by mid-summer. Hopefully flight prices stay low for a while. (Edit note: it was brought to my attention that prices are bumping up around mid-June. Must be that summer surcharge. The prices I'm seeing aren't like last year at this point anyways).

The diving conditions have become pretty good. No major swells right now, viz was great yesterday. The vog's clearing out right now... yahoo,it's been a bit thick lately. I can see the horizon from my house, according to the horizon distance/elevation calculator I just looked up that means we've got visibility of at least 38.6 miles topside right now. We'd been unable to see the horizon from this elevation for several days due to the vog.

Here's a pic of a Blood Star, also called a Spotted Linckia (Linckia multifora). Hawaii isn't loaded with large starfish like back in the Northwest US where I come from. We do see this one fairly regularly, but you rarely seem them over 4-5 inches or so across.

Later,

Steve

Let's switch from a big nudibranch to a small nudibranch... White Margin Nudibranchs with eggs...

2009-04-16T20:20:00.005-10:00

Here's a pair of White Margin Nudibranchs (Glossodoris rufomarginata) laying eggs. These nudibranchs get to about an inch in length, and are one of the easier nudibranchs to find on purpose. I typically look for them on overhangs, say arches or the lip of a lava tube. It can often be found by looking for the white spiral egg mass - if the find the eggs the nudibranchs are not far away. I usually find them in groups of two or three within several inches of an egg mass.

We've had lots of fun customers on board lately. Today was fun, we had a woman and her family that were out to dive for her 75th birthday today. She hadn't dove in a few years and wanted to do it while they were here. She's pretty experienced, got 58 minutes on the first dive but was getting cold on the second dive and came up with a ton of air. The group seemed to have had a great time.

We get divers in their 70s from time to time. The "oldest" student (calendar-wise anyway, he was rather youngish physically - still very active and strong) I've ever had finished his class 5 or so days shy of his 70th birthday. Plenty of divers that age do just fine, some may need to don or remove their gear in the water due to knees and such not making it up the ladders quite as easily in their younger days. It seems a lot of divers who are still diving into their 70s and beyond are very experienced and have been diving in many places... it's a blast listening to dive stories.

It was sunny on the water today, no clouds over the ocean, but the vog from the volcano was up. The tradewinds are down for the next few days, so I'm hoping it'll clear out.

Wow! One of our divers spotted a Tuberculosis Nudibranch on the manta ray night dive the other night....

2009-04-15T08:56:00.005-10:00

This is what I was so excited about on the night dive with 20 manta rays the other night. Customer Peter found this after we'd peeled off for a short night dive at the end of the manta show. It's a Tuberculosis Nudibranch (Dendrodoris tuberculosa) or a very close relative not in my book. I've heard of them being seen up in the shallows at the manta dive site in the past, but I've never seen one. This one was actually in more like 25-30 feet of water out towards the edge of the reef. I'm glad I had the camera in hand, although it took a while to get the settings right and I missed the good angles on it. They're a good sized nudibranch, this one was probably almost 6 inches long.

It's partly sunny today, but kind of hard to tell because the vog is very thick right now in the Captain Cook area. It's thicker than usual the last couple of days. Up in Kailua it's rarely this thick, in Captain Cook we're right at the spot where the winds sort of eddy around the island and the vog ends up. My eyes are itchy, but then again I was out under the house yesterday hauling off some old building materials the previous owners had left... could just be dust, not the vog, causing the irritation.

Yesterday we had a nice little earthquake. I missed it... bummer (after that one a couple Octobers back, any little shake gives you a nice adrenaline shot)... I was in the garage and didn't feel it being at ground level, Pat upstairs in the house felt it quite noticeably. It was a 5.0 centered off the volcano on the other side of the island, pretty shallow so it wasn't as noticeable here as some of that magnitude.

Here's a young frogfish from the other day....

2009-04-14T16:18:00.003-10:00

Aloha,
We've got a couple days off, start up again on Thursday, and I've been working our vacation rental prepping it for our next guests. I thought I'd post a quick picture of a juvenile frogfish. I'm thinking it's probably the same one I found several weeks ago, but it's a few hundred feet removed and about 4 times larger than it was then if it's the same one. Cathy told me she'd seen it in a particular area about two weeks ago so I checked a couple days back and it was still there. I'm hoping it's settled in for the next few months so we can watch it grow... we had three or four last year we were able to watch grow from nickle size to softball size or more.

The manta ray night dive in Kona Hawaii is hot right now... here's a quick video clip...

2009-04-13T14:28:00.003-10:00

Untitled from Steve on Vimeo.
We did this dive Saturday night. 15 or so mantas were at the site when we arrived, it was 20 by the time we went back to the boat.

This is always a great time when there's even one manta showing up, more is gravy... this was lots and lots of gravy. We spent pretty much the entire dive watching them, did a short pass of the reef at the end and saw something that REALLY excited me (not that the mantas didn't, but one of our divers found something I'd yet to see, and I had the camera in hand), more on that in the next post.

Later,

Steve

Lots of scuba diving lately, experimenting with Facebook and Twitter as well...

2009-04-11T11:50:00.003-10:00

Aloha,

We've been pretty busy diving since the tail end of February, although I've got a slower spell the next week and a half if things don't change radically. I took this photo at Turtle Pinnacle sometime in the last few weeks. The tangs are doing a good job of cleaning turtles when they show up.

Lately I've been experimenting with Facebook. I still don't completely get it, but I have gotten back in touch with a few old friends and customers... kinda fun. My page is here on Facebook - I don't get some of their security settings, so this may not work for you, if you are a Facebook member you can always do a search for Wanna Dive Kona and it'll come up. I'm not really putting a lot on there at this point, just trying to update it every now and then for now.

I also have joined Twitter... now this one I think I "get" even less... for now at least, I didn't get the whole blogging thing at first either. I've pretty much decided I'm just going to post mostly weather and/or diving conditions for Kona on a frequent basis, maybe other stuff I find interesting. I'll try to update water temperature, surf and underwater visibility conditions every day or two (or whenever.. I hate to make promises on that in case I take some time off) as there may be people interested in that sort of stuff. To find me on Twitter, do a search for wannadivesteve and that should get you there.

Tonight we're doing the manta dive, it's been hopping the last little bit, with manta numbers in the high teens showing up apparently. Tomorrow it looks as though we're diving for Easter. Pat's got the day off and it's a light load so she'll be coming along... at least we get to see each other some on the holiday.

Later,

Steve