A Kona Hawaii scuba diver blabbers on

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Did a three tank dive trip today...
2008-03-27 07:22:00
Today we did a three tank dive trip up north. We did Kua Bay and Makalawena dives along with a dive closer in to town. Kua Bay is a very nice dive, especially when you've done all the closer in dives. Makalawena is an exceptional dive (I don't want to describe it 'til I dive it... let's just today's divers said there were about 10 swimthrough archways within 100 feet of the boat) we'll probably start doing more often as the weather and swell conditions improve. I'd heard about the Makalawena dive but had never actually done it. Today's group was a bunch that had dove with Bob over the years so he did the diving, but I managed to snorkel the site and could tell it's really quite something. It's a bit of a haul up there so I'm trying to figure out how to work it charge-wise since I often just go out with two or three divers and that trip would make a break even charter into a money loser between fuel and extra time.Speaking of pricing... just a note to anyone who's t...
More About: Hawaii , Today , Tank , Trip , Dive

3 whales sighted underwater by our divers today....
2008-03-26 08:09:00
Man I wish I was leading that dive. I was up on the boat and just as my divers went down a few whales went by. They (the whales, the divers had no idea what was coming) turned themselves around and passed outside of the divers as the divers hit the edge of the reef at "Hoover's" then turned around again and headed directly to the divers. A female and her calf went directly overhead while an escort whale passed about 50 feet outside of Cathy and the group.All were thrilled. 2000 or so dives here and I've yet to see a whale underwater, bummer.Anyway, it was a good day of diving. The whales were definitely the highlights, but Cathy also found a yellow frogfish she's been watching grow over the last month or two... and at the end of our second dive (at an undisclosed location) she came up and said she needed to borrow the camera again. This is what she found..... Despite not being familiar with my camera, and also in a pretty strong surge, she was able to get these shots of a Re...
More About: Hawaii , Today , Divers , Whales , Underwater

Hawaii volcano update....
2008-03-25 09:03:00
This is a Potter's Angelfish (Centropyge Potteri), one of the dwarf angelfish species we have. They're a tough one to get a shot of because they dart into the coral as soon as you get reasonably close to them.The volcano has been particularly active the last couple of weeks, first spewing great amounts, several times the usual, of sulfur dioxide into the air, then having it's first explosive event, along with large amounts of ash now, since the 1920's. No major danger yet, although they've considered evacuating nearby communities due to toxic gasses. All of the sulfur dioxide has brought tremendous amounts of VOG (volcanic fog) to the Kona side the last 8-10 days or so, although it was a hair less thick today and yesterday in comparison to earlier.
More About: Hawaii , Update , Volcano

Happy National Corndog Day!
2008-03-22 20:11:00
Yep, that's right, today is National Corndog Day. It all started back around the early 90's when a couple drunk basketball fans in Corvallis, Oregon (where I lived the 20 years previous to moving here - I don't know the guys though) realized they were hungry... It sorta took on a life of it's own after that, Google it for more history.Pat and I are celebrating it by not eating corn dogs, although going down to the Roadhouse Cafe in Kainaliu to see if they have one of their delicious Louisiana hotlink pastry wraps (they bill it as a corndog for adults) sounds tempting.Yesterday was a fun day of diving. The water was flat in the morning so we headed down south towards the Kealakekua Bay and Red Hill area. We dove "Chimney", which is a cool site with a vertical lava tube that starts at almost 50' of depth and once you are in it goes straight up to just shy of the surface - it's not a site for people with ear or buoyancy issues as you have to get negative and head straight back...
More About: Hawaii , Happy

3 tank boat dives in Kona Hawaii
2008-03-20 21:46:00
The standard morning dive outing in Kona tends to be a two tank outing, diving one tank at each of two locations. Some operators do offer a three tank day on occasion. I'm not aware of any at this point that offer a regularly scheduled 3 tank trip, but several will do it when there are enough customers to make a go of it.We did a three tanker yesterday. Our first dive was up north above the airport at a spot a handful of us go to on occasional basis. It's a great live boat dive with both deep and shallow reefs so we can do a deeper multilevel dive and still do a long dive. Highlights of that dive were a manta ray right off the bat, and the reef structure of the dive... lots of grand topography.Our second dive was at Pipe Dream, which is right off the westernmost point of the island on a large dropoff. There are a number of large pipes in the water. The one pictured above is basically a 6-8 foot diameter culvert that begins at about 60' of depth and goes down to about 120'...
More About: Hawaii , Tank , Boat

It's not the photographer... it's the camera....
2008-03-14 21:40:00
Well in general it's usually the photographer, not the camera, that makes for a good photo... but a good camera doesn't hurt. I lent out my camera to Cathy under the boat and without any practice she got some good pictures of that puffer several posts back. I lent my camera (Canon G-9) out to my wife after her batteries pooped out on the first dive and she comes up with this right off the bat. Oooh, I've been trying to get a good shot of a Hawaii an Flame Angel for a long time and she gets it five minutes into the dive with an unfamiliar camera. OK, it wasn't the camera... it was her... and some luck - these fish are very flighty and usually dive into the coral the moment you get close enough to get a shot. Anyway, Pat really liked the camera (largely because of the large 3" LCD screen) and I wouldn't be surprised if we have a second Canon G9 in the household soon.We've got a ton of diving coming up for about a month straight because of spring break stuff. It pretty much ...
More About: Camera , Photographer

Places to stay, finding a vacation rental in Kona, Hawaii and elsewhere....
2008-03-13 23:03:00
I get inquiries through my business about places to stay when coming over here fairly frequently. Kona has lots of hotel options, what many people do not realize is how many condo, home and apartment options are available. Many people put up their unoccupied residences (there are a ton of part timers here) for rent through vacation rental services. There are many companies that do this, as well as many websites where the owners themselves list rentals. We are big fans of www.VRBO.com. We list our rental on it and have used it several times to book rentals for our own vacations. In many cases, if you are going to a resort/tourist area you can often find apartments or homes for comparable or lower pricing than many hotels. We just used it again to reserve a spot in Vegas for the dive show this fall... to my surprise, there are actually a few strip properties avaialable on VRBO.com. We were able to book a unit at the MGM Signature (their luxury condos behind the hotel) for about...
More About: Las Vegas , Rental , Hawaii , Vacation , Places

The Kona Classic 7 - an underwater photo and video festival, competition a
2008-03-10 07:07:00
There's an annual underwater photography event that's been held here in Kona for several years now that's supposed to be fun... so I thought I'd plug it.This year it'll be held from May 24th through the 31st. Official sponsors for the event are Jack's Diving Locker, Kona Honu Divers, and Bottom Time. The event includes a week of diving along with seminars, photo critiques, social events and a competition with great prizes. It's a great opportunity to learn and develop some underwater photography skills. There will be several well known photo pros involved, who will be rotating on the boats of the official sponsors during the diving portion of the event as well as being present at the evening and social activities.I'll be joining in on the fun myself as I've always wanted to do it but usually I've taken part of that week off to go elsewhere (slow season). It'll be a fun event and if anyone wants to join me on my boat I will be honoring the diving prices they've set u...
More About: Video , Photo , Competition , Classic , Festival

Manta ray night snorkel in Kona Hawaii - swim with manta rays...
2008-03-08 09:18:00
Wierd little video of people snorkeling with manta rays from Steve on Vimeo. We've been pretty busy lately, I've got a lull coming for several days before the spring break rush kicks in for about a month. Last night we did a manta dive. About half of our group was divers and the other half snorkelers. I posted plenty on this before, but this is a video of what it looks like to the boat Captains during the dives. The divers are down below in about 32-34 feet of water and the mantas spend their time between the divers on the bottom and the snorkelers on the surface. If you look real hard, you'll see brief instances where there's a real bright spot directly under a group or two of the snorkelers on the left side of the video about half way in... that's actually a manta ray doing belly rolls a foot or two below the snorkelers. It was kind of a bumpy night, so you'll notice the water isn't glass smooth, but it wasn't big surf by any means either. The video doesn't do th...
More About: Hawaii , Night , Manta , Kona , Swim

Surf, Sand and Stars Buffet at the Four Seasons in Kona Hawaii
2008-03-04 10:30:00
Surf, Sand and Stars Buffet at Four Seasons Kona Hawaii from Steve on Vimeo.We went out for our big meal of the year this weekend. We went to the Four Seasons for their Saturday night beach buffet. It's a spendy (75/78 bucks or so a head) and very delicious meal. I'm getting old, so I restrained myself and only had 10 lobster tail halves, a couple pieces of steak, a bunch of lillikoi pork ribs, a pile of steamer clams, a few salads (I didn't know fried chicken could be a salad, but they had fried chicken salad... and here I'd been overlooking salads all this time) and a few deserts (the chocolate souffle was delicious)... I skipped the sushi table altogether. It's a delicious dinner, and even the kids at the place had fun... they break out a fairly sizeable telescope after dark.Sometimes the video on the Canon G9 surprises me. I decided to see if it could handle the relatively low light at the buffet and it did just fine.
More About: Surf

Scuba diving and protogynous hermaphrodites in Kona Hawaii...
2008-03-04 00:29:00
Now there's a phrase that's probably not gonna be googled a lot. Something few people know is that several species of fish are actually hermaphroditic. In the case of these fish, Psychedelic Wrasses (Anampses chrysocephalus), they all start as females that form a harem under a dominant male. If the male ever disappears, then the dominant female will change sex and become a male. Protogynous hermaphrodites go from female to male. The reverse is true in protandrous hermaphrodites. I suspect there are some Hawaii an fish that might do that, but you'd have to ask a marine biologist... but there are some recognizeable fish elsewhere that do just that. The most common ones I can think of are several of the clownfish (everyone seems to know them as "Nemo" these days) species. They start as male, and then the most dominant member becomes female as needed - this insures that if two young clownfish find each other they can successfully pair up and mate. Back in my aquarium shop day...
More About: Kona , Scuba Diving , Diving

Spinner dolphins in Kona Hawaii...
2008-02-27 07:50:00
Here's a shot of some spinner dolphins right outside of Honokohau Harbor. Several days a week we might see a resident pod that hangs out in front of the harbor and a few other spots. When they are in, you have a fair chance of seeing them on nearby divesites... way cool!!!
More About: Hawaii , Dolphins , Kona

Arothron Meleagris - Spotted Puffer. Yellow ain't the regular color...
2008-02-14 01:21:00
OK, so I can't get enough of the puffer that Cathy took photos of yesterday. Here's the regular coloration of the spotted puffers we see, it's from a photo I took about 3 years back. Quite a contrast from the yellow colored one for sure. The shot below is another pic that Cathy took as the puffer from yesterday was just inside the mouth of a cave/puka (puka is essentially Hawaii an for "hole").Apparently the yellow coloration is more common in other parts of the Indo-Pacific, but for Hawaii it's a pretty unusual sighting. It was definitely the highlight of yesterdays outing, even though they saw a Great Barracuda, a frogfish, a couple of eagle rays, a couple groups of psychedelic wrasses, an octopus and other cool stuff.
More About: Color , Yellow , Regular , Puffer

Holy Cow!!!! Cathy came up from one of today's dives very excited....
2008-02-13 04:53:00
We had a group on board today of mixed snorkelers and divers and hit a couple of spots where we can do both. When Cathy came up she was thrilled to see a fish she hadn't seen ever before in the time she's worked the dive boats in Kona (since '76, 32 years and seeing something new is still a thrill). Before she climbed back on board she asked if I happened to have my camera on board and if she could borrow it to take some photos.... yup. While she was down one of the snorkelers said they'd seen it under the boat and thought it was pretty cool, but didn't know it was anything out of the ordinary...Well here it is....After looking it up in Hoover, it turns out this is a rarely seen color morph of the Spotted Puffer (Arothron meleagris). Man, I hope it's still around when I'm back in the water in a week or two. Photo by Cathy. Later, Steve
More About: Hawaii , Holy , Holy Cow

It's whale season in Hawaii...
2008-02-08 20:41:00
Between dives on yesterday's charter we were treated to a momma whale and her calf on the surface. The youngster was breaching, quite cool as it was probably in the 10-13 feet in length range by my wild guess. Anyway, that got me to thinking I ought to repost a link I posted last year - here it is... Live audio feed from a sonobuoy system up in Puako - click on the link and you can hear the whales off Puako, which is up north of Kona in South Kohala.The pic above is of a Crown of Thorns Starfish. You don't want to touch the spines on these guys as they're sharp enough to go through gloves and pack a nasty toxin that can be very painfull and will leave you a reminder in scar tissue for a few years. Crown of thorns stars are coral feeders so you'll occasionally see white patches on the coral that lead a trail to them. They're generally considered to be a pest, and in some parts of the world have caused severe damage to reefs when there's a bloom of them. In Hawaii , their o...
More About: Season , Whale

Sometimes, when you are checking out the underwater world.....
2008-02-05 21:05:00
....The underwater world is checking you out too!
More About: World , Hawaii , Underwater

Back to work...
2008-02-01 08:17:00
I've got charters from today through Monday (OK, well I have the Superbowl off so far) at least and there's no way I'm not working them. I seem to be getting around just fine, just aches quite a bit.Today's charter was fun. It was just one person, he booked several days well in advance, and I'm not going to cancel on him just because of not getting other customers for the day. He got to see some VERY COOL stuff.... Dragon moray, Magnificent Snake eel, Great Barracuda, 2 (holy cow) male Whitley's boxfish, as well as having a group of passing Spinner Dolphins descend to right over his head... I wish I was leading the dives. Bob is off to Thailand for some diving, so Cathy's leading all the dives 'til I'm back in the water.This was a nice little coral head. If you take a look on the right side of the head you'll see an Arc-eyed Hawkfish patiently waiting for something small to swoop down on. It's easy to pass coral heads by, but if you take the time to look down in the...
More About: Work , Back

Scuba Diving in Kona Hawaii.....
2008-01-28 05:22:00
Hi again, The last post was sorta commercial, but hopefully informative for some, so I thought I'd bump it down a post. I really don't post many pics of divers doing their thing. Part of it is I don't want to infringe on anyone's privacy and lots of times I take pictures with divers in them I'm close enough to really tell who they are, and more often than not, when I take a shot from a distance it comes out crummy to where I can't photoshop it well. Typically they get tons of red in them after the fixes, these I took out as much red as I could. I'm hoping with the RAW function on the Canon G9 (which I really didn't use on my Olympus sp-350) I'll be able to get a relatively accurate color of the deeper scenes. Diving in Kona is different from many places in that nearly all of our dive sites have both deep and shallow water. We can take the group down the dropoffs (which usually start at about 35-40 feet and drop to beyond recreational diving depths) for a while to exp...
More About: Hawaii , Scuba Diving

Starting Underwater Photography - Underwater Housings for Digital Cameras
2008-01-25 22:28:00
Aloha, I get a fair number of inquiries about which camera to get for starting out with underwater photography, so I'll chime in with a few of my thoughts here. Many people think you have to get a dedicated underwater camera, while this may be the best for some people, it isn't the only way to go. Oftentimes you can pick up a great new camera, with all the bells and whistles, and it'll have a corresponding manufacturer designed underwater housing that is good to about 130-140 feet or so. In many cases you can even find a housing available for a digital camera you may already own. There are housings avaiable for many Sony, Nikon, Olympus, Casio, Canon and Fuji cameras already on the market, and they seem to be committed to supporting housings in the future. there's probablay a couple others I have forgotten. Below are some examples available at Amazon.com. You can refresh the page for more examples, or I suspect do a search for specific cameras and housings when you get to ...
More About: Photography , Hawaii , Digital Cameras , Cameras , Digital

OK, so I saw a cool underwater video today,,,
2008-01-25 11:10:00
It was linked on a message board I check. Click here to go to the video page. It's basically about invertebrates, some spectacular deep sea stuff and shallow water cephalopods (squid, cuttlefish and octopus). It's very interesting, and if you watch all 5 minutes of it you'll see why we don't see octopus on every dive even though they're probably out in the open.This is a nice nudibranch I think I posted another picture of way back in '06. We see them on occasion here and typically call them Strawberry Nudibranchs, but I do think there are a couple closely related species that get called that. This one in particular confuses me because it has characterics of both a Pustulose Phyllidia and a Rosy Phyllidia. Aloha, Steve
More About: Video , Hawaii , Cool , Today , Kona

testing an animated gif...
2008-01-24 11:34:00
OK, if you click on it, it works, but otherwise no go. I might be able to load in in the sidebar or header though, getting too late to experiment with that. I just found out photoshop cs3 will work on videos. I'm trying to create an animated GIF for an avatar.
More About: Testing , Animated

NOAA survey says Big Island has most live coral...
2008-01-23 22:46:00
Here's a link to an online version of a news article I saw last week.... on their recent coral survey of the Hawaii an Islands. It basically says the Big Island has live coral covering 57% of it's shallow coastline. The print article I saw also mentioned the bulk of that was on the west side (Kona ,Kohala) and the other islands average somewhere in the mid 20s percentage-wise in coverage.If any of you are interested in some of the specifics of the survey, you can click on this link to get to an interactive map of the islands and check out maps of coral structure around the islands.The picture above is of a day octopus I took at Pawai Bay the other week. I couldn't quite get the focus on him I wanted, he wasn't interested in sticking around and posing. A little personal health update- Saw the doctor yesterday and he's thinking tears at the top of the hamstring and down behind the knee, but nothing that won't heal over the next little while - that's good news as surgery is re...
More About: Survey , Coral

One of my best pics of a Scrambled Egg Nudibranch...
2008-01-22 08:11:00
This was taken with the Canon G9 using RAW. When I've taken shots of these guys with my other cameras, or with this one without using RAW, it's been tough to get the right exposure. Photoshop CS3's RAW editor allows you to change over all exposure, and cut back on things that are too highlighted, as well as other goodies. It worked quite nicely with this particular pic, some of my others were still not really salvageable.Sorry, not much to update on the diving conditons as I've been flat on my back for 3 days with a torn hamstring. Now that the swelling is down to where both legs are the same size I want to see a doctor that works with muscle tears who can say if it's a stage 2 or stage 3 hamstring tear as I do have some knotting in the muscle, but it may just be residual swelling. I'm hoping it's a stage 2 as no time's a good time for a stage 3 and a stage 2 tear should heal up enough in the next week or two to get me back to work. Three days without checking my e-mail...
More About: Hawaii , Ouch , Cram , Ranch

Boy, do I do my share of dumb things....
2008-01-18 03:27:00
Yesterday Pat and I were going to go out on a little holo holo adventure on the boat.... ended up spending a large part of the day at the ER. I'm mostly in bed for the next few days with a torn hamstring. Ice, ibuprophen, hydrocodone and lots of sleep are what I have to look forward to for the next day or so. I get a new set of crutches out of the deal though. I'm hoping I'm only on them for a few days and can get back to walking speed shortly.I hobbled to the computer to check my mail, and as long as I'm up I thought I'd try posting a short slideshow. I downloaded some free software off the internet to do it, my big gripe so far is I can't figure out how to check the progress of it while editing, it seems as though it's gotta be posted just to look at it, I'm probably missing something. Anyway... lots of fish pics to look at, most of them are on the blog somewhere. It can take a while to load, so be patient, and I'm not seeing a "turn off sound" button so my apologies to a...
More About: Hawaii , Dumb , Share , Things

Hawaiian Angelfish....
2008-01-15 22:34:00
The last post was sort of a lead in to this one. I went for a short Captain's dive on the charter during the surface interval yesterday (since Cathy's also a licensed Captain, it's legal, as a licensed Captain must remain on board at all times on charters) and managed to get my first decent shot of a Fisher's Angelfish (Centropyge fisheri). Hawaii has basically four angelfish that you might find while diving - Flame, Bandit, Potter's and Fisher's - and a couple of other species that can be seen by researchers in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands. Our angelfish species are basically dwarf/pygmy species, although the Bandit (pictured a couple posts below) is a "large" angel species, and are typically shy and dart into the coral when you try to photograph them.The Fisher's angel only grows to about two inches in length, typically lives in rubble below 60' or so and darts into the rubble on approach. It's probably something most divers won't see unless they're specifically l...
More About: Kona

Moorsh Idol (Zanclus Cornutus) is one of our more popular reef fish...
2008-01-15 07:12:00
People are always saying they saw a pretty angelfish while snorkeling or diving. The fish they're probably talking about (pictured) is more closely related to a surgeon/tang, and similar to butterflyfish. The angelfish we do have here is nothing like the typical freshwater angelfish you find at the aquarium store.... But then again, who's in charge of classifying these fish anyway? They're probably wrong.... how come saltwater angelfish look nothing like freshwater angelfish? Later, Steve
More About: Fish , Hawaii , Popular , Reef , Idol

Whoohoo!! I got to dive today....
2008-01-12 06:45:00
... and my sinuses held up.We had some crazy surf come up two nights ago. About 10PM it started pounding enough we could hear it fairly well from the house (we're two miles up the road from the coast, maybe at least a mile in a direct line), our friends at the bay said it shook their house. Yesterday was blown out, some of the dive companies went out, but I had nothing scheduled, I'm glad I didn't have to make the call. This morning things had settled down enough to get out of the harbor and make it to Pawai Bay, off the Old Airport Park, where the diving conditions were actually pretty OK from the boats.I played Captain on the dives and was able to do a short dive in between dives once we reached the second mooring. Pat (my wife, who was onboard since it was a very light load today - only one customer) joined me for a few minutes on the dive.Pat noticed a pair of Bandit Angels (Apolemichthys arcuatus) down at 70-80 feet. We went down to take photos. I'm rather proud of t...
More About: Hawaii , Today , Dive

Taking photos underwater can be a bit of a challenge...
2008-01-08 22:35:00
I've been wanting to get a "good" shot of one of these guys for a long time. This isn't it quite yet. So many of the fish dart about so much that it's tough to get them focused. The closer you are the tougher it is, too far out then the flash doesn't get enough light to the subject.... this photo has just a bit too much movement for my tastes. One of these days!!!This is a juvenile Yellowtail Coris Wrasse (Coris Gaimard). On occasion, people not familiar with the Hawaii n fish will mistake it for a clown fish (Hawaii doesn't have clown fish, I believe we've just a tad to cool of a water temperature for them to reproduce successfully). Typically we'll see the Yellowtail Coris in this coloration up to about 3 inches or so. As they grow, they will lose the white stripes, start adding blue and develop a yellow tail. If you take a look through all the archives, or click on the "wrasse" label below, you should find a shot or two of larger specimens. Aloha, Steve
More About: Photos , Kona , Challenge , Underwater

Speaking of Neti Pots....
2008-01-08 20:54:00
Quick post. I thought it funny to see this as the top link on Yahoo this morning after my mentioning it two days ago. NY Times neti pot story My sinuses do feel better already. Hopefully I'll be back to diving in the next few days.
More About: Speaking

Camera RAW and underwater photography with my Canon G9
2008-01-06 22:52:00
So I'm sitting at my computer and wanted to look at a document and see that I had a couple of RAW pictures in the file that I hadn't looked at. I thought I'd updated Photoshop lately and maybe they now support the RAW format my camera uses, I opened Photoshop and the pictures do now show.For those of you who don't know what RAW is, basically consider it as a "digital negative" which holds all the information the camera sees at the time, no JPEG compression and such. Not all cameras offer RAW, but it's becoming more common in the higher end point and shoot cameras these days. It takes up a lot of memory compared to JPEG, but if you have an editor to open it (without the editor, you will see nothing as computers don't automatically recognize RAW) with, it'll do a lot of things easily that are tough to do in JPEG (at least tough if you are like me and not a Photoshop whiz). The picture above is this picture after a quick trip through the RAW editor in Photoshop. With the RA...
More About: Photography , Camera , Canon , Hawaii , Kona