Scuba Diving Vacations

We finally got a shot of much needed rain, but not enough to really green things up, I'm hoping it starts up againg this evening. We ofen have our dry season during the winter in Kona, this has been the driest in a could of years. I'm probably going to have to water plants and part of the front yard for the first time in 2 or 3 years soon.

Our last charter was with a fun group. The weather was strange. When we came out of the harbor there was a north wind and a bit of chop, so we went south to get out of it. As soon as we got around the point, the wind couldn't decide which was it was coming from. We took a mooring spot and did first dive. The wind was coming in from all directions, with the boat switching directions on the mooring every 5-10 minutes or so. By the time the second dive was going we'd moved to another mooring and the wind had decided to come in from the South. I Captained so I got to enjoy the surface chop. The dives were still quite nice, with good viz. Highlights were Bandit Angels and a little yellow frogfish, apparently not all noticed the frogfish.

Here's the black phase of the Yellow Longnose Butterfly. This apparently happens nowhere else in the world but Hawaii, and is most common in South Kona. We have dive sites on our longer charters that we can pretty much guarantee seeing these guys. Nearer to town they do not seem quite as common, but they are still found fairly regularly. I'm not sure if they've yet determined why some will go into a black phase, it's one of those things where if you put the fish in an aquarium, it'll turn yellow again in short order.

Later,

Steve