Scuba Diving Vacations

Today was the best water conditions we've had in a couple of weeks. It was glassy smooth in several areas early on. We had a couple of women on the boat doing intro dives. They had a great time. My co-worker today also is a Captain/Instructor, so he got the honor of the first dive and I did the second.

Viz was great. The temp is starting to inch down with the last several swells.My computer was reading 77 the entire dive and the analog thermometer on the pressure gauge was in the 75 range. Something kind of interesting MAY have happend while underwater. I dropped off one of the divers at about 36 minutes and then continued on with the other diver as she had plenty of air. We were at "Turtle Heaven", aka Turtle Haven and probably a couple of other names, which is outside the harbor and near a fair amount of boat traffic. While heading back down I heard a loud boom/roar followed by a rumble and all of the fish in my line of sight dropped strainght down about 3-4 feet for just a moment. I figured it was likely one loud diesel engine boat coming in. When I arrived home my wife asked if I noticed the earthquake at 1:17 - that would have been around the time. Well, I can only speculate. Nice 63 minute 40 foot intro dive though.

I don't carry a camera on intros and OW classes so nothing from today. Here's one from yesterday. It's a parrotfish, a Bullethead I think, busy eating coral. Parrotfish eat coral, sand comes out the other end of the fish. You can hear them scraping and crushing the coral if you pay attention. Depending on who you listen to, a single parrotfish can produce up to a ton or two of sand a year. Yep... for those of you who sunbathe when in the tropics, you're likely laying on stuff that's passed through a fish. It's my first decent parrotfish pic. Hooray for a nicer camera and manual white balance. Parrotfish are tough to get a good photo of. Even the pics in "Hawaii's Fishes" by John Hoover (One of the very best Hawaii fish ID books) aren't all that great because of the difficulties of taking blue on blue pictures.

Later,

Steve