Scuba Diving Vacations

I went' to Quizno's yesterday for their first day open in the midst of lots of errands. Kona's grown since I moved here in very early '99.... Home Depot, Lowes, Jamba Juice, Bubba Gump's, Hard Rock, Outback are the notable chains that have appeared in that time that I can think of. Already had a Walmart, Safeway and a Costco, but otherwise not a whole lot of major chains other than McDonalds, Taco Bell, Starbuck's, Subway and the like. Kona's growing, but we still have a single 2 lane road which acts as THE highway for the entire west side of the island - we're still small by mainland standards, but at least we have a traffic problem.

We had a manta ray for the night dive the other night. It was a full moon and there was plenty of plankton, but just the one manta. Some say the full moon affects whether the mantas show, but just when you think there's a pattern, there will be a dozen on a full moon.

We had a two tanker go out this morning. Oahu had a huge west swell yesterday and I was worried it might affect us. It did wipe out the diving at several of our dive sites, but there was still good diving to be had off the Pine Trees area at Lone Tree Arch, Skull Cave/Suck 'em Up and that area. We probably had 70'+ viz for the day. I was with a student and saw a whitetip shark, octopus, a few different nudibranchs and such. The other group did see a Hawaiian Stingray. I've yet to see one in 6 years of diving/working here, they're rarely seen. We've got a private charter going out tomorrow, hopefully we've seen the heaviest of our surf. It's a group that went out with me last 2 years and it was a rough water day the last time.

Here's another angle on the frogfish. It's tough shooting in available light, much of him was in the shadow. He moved a couple minutes later and faced into the light for the pic I posted earlier.

later,

Steve