Scuba Diving Vacations

Last night we did the manta dive up off the Kona airport. Three mantas showed for the dive, spending the first part of the dive with the divers and then moving up to the snorkelers. I was leading the night dive, when the mantas moved off we went on a tour of the reef. One of the other DMs wrote me a message that there was a big nudibranch off the deeper end of the site. We went and checked it out and found a big Clumpy Nudibranch ("Clumpy" is the actual common name of this species), roughly 5 inches by 7 inches in size. Pat took pictures, I'm hoping she'll let me post one. We also saw a couple species of lobster and tons of shrimp on the dive as well as a few other goodies.

We've got another night dive tonight with a group snorkelers that contacts me whenever they have family coming into town. They tried it several years ago, thought it was fantastic, and continue to do it when family is in town and the mantas are showing.

Here's that Reticulated Frogfish (Antennarius tuberosus) I promised in the last post. These small angler fish (you can see it's lure in the center of it's forehead) tend to hide in coral heads, and look like a cone snail with encrusting coraline algae growing on it. We're always excited to find these.

Later,

Steve