Here's a pair of Bandit Angelfish. These are the only "large" angelfish you'll likely see in the main Hawiian Islands, as most of our angelfish are dwarf species. They reach up to about 7 inches and are typically found only at depths of 60 feet and below in Kona. I've heard they're found shallower more frequently over on Kauai. They're endemic to the Hawaiian Islands as far as I know, you won't find them anywhere else.

We're always happy to see these guys.

In the past few years we've seen the Kona diving scene change over time. A few longtime operators have gone and others have come in, the boats seem to be getting bigger and are carrying more divers. Things constantly change.

At the risk of being tacky, I'd like to invite any former Dive Makai customers who are looking for someone to dive with to at least check out my web page, reviews on Scubaboard and Undercurrent and such, to see what I have to offer. My wife and I were dive customers (I worked in it as well) prior to being dive operators and had gone out with operators such as Mike Severn's and Ed Robinson's on Maui, and Dive Makai over the years prior to starting the boat biz and wanted to try to pattern our business after those operators to some extent. There's no such thing as running it exactly the same, but I suspect that divers who enjoy those companies will enjoy diving with us.

Wanna Dive is a small company - very small. There's essentially 3 of us running 7-10 charters a week when we're busy. We run a 6 pack boat, never more than 6 customers on board, and we aren't always full. We'll run with just 2 divers on the day dives, and don't skimp due to a light load.

About the diving... We try to give a good fish and dive site briefing prior to each dive, discussing the things we're going to see on the dives, then it's time to dive.... We dive slow. I've been doing this for 11 years, and my other two crew have been doing this 15-30 years, over time you learn slow is better. We're always looking to spot interesting critters to show you, and carry rewriteable slates to identify the various critters we're all finding. Dive profiles are computer driven, with the bulk of the dive time being spent in maybe 25-40 feet of water, making for long dives. We drop customers off at the boat as they approach 500psi, and then continue on with the divers who are better on air. Longish dives are posible, as long as you are within NDL times and have plenty of air you can stay down... within reason I guess, if you're outlasting the DM by a lot at some point we need to cut it. Between the three of us, we're usually good for 80-95 minutes worth of bottom time at most sites.

Anyway, please feel free to check us out or ask any questions you might have. There's several good operators in Kona, the trick is finding the one that suits your needs.

The photo at the top is of a flame angel we saw on one of yesterday's dives (saw three of them actually). Back a decade ago we were lucky to run into one or two a year. Since about '05 they've really been on the upswing and we see them relatively commonly nowadays.

Aloha,

Steve

Flame angelfish from Kona Hawaii from Steve on Vimeo.

Today's dive charter had great diving conditions. Cathy led the first dive and I did the second. On the second dive we did a one way dive (moor, put the divers in, then dive in one general direction and have the boat follow the bubbles and pick up the divers at the end of the dive) over an area I hadn't actually dove in one single dive before. We saw Flame Angelfish (Centropyge loriculus) in a couple of spots on the dive.

Flame angels are a fish I'm quite familiar with from my days in the aquarium trade a couple decades back. We generally had Philippine flames in those days, the Hawaiian ones seem to be a bit deeper red. When I first moved here, the flame angels were few and far between. I'd see maybe 2-3 a year, mostly on shore dives I did, and almost none on the dive sites commonly frequented by the boats. Back in 2000 they established FRAs (fish replenishment areas) along 30 percent of the coastline on the west side of the Big Island. I don't know if the flame angels were heavily targeted by aquarium collectors (they're tough to catch because they dart into the coral) and whether that had a huge effect on the population, but around 2005/2006 we started seeing them more frequently, and now it seems we see them on the majority of our dives. They are no longer an uncommon sighting.

These are one of my favorite fish, they're very tough to get a decent shot of because they're so prone to darting off or into the corals the moment you're ready to take a shot, so I took a quick video of one just so you'd get an idea of how this fish acts.

I've got a pretty full dive charter tomorrow... it's time to snooze....zzzzzzzzz

Aloha,
Back to diving again every day for a while... the month has turned into a fairly busy one and June's starting to fill with charters.... plenty of space still on most days.

Here's a shot of a Bandit Angelfish (Apolemichthys arcuatus - the genus on this fish has changed at least twice since I first saw them back in my aquarium shop days). We found this one on Friday. Hawaii only has a very few species of angelfish, and this is by far the largest (reaches 7 inches or so). We saw a pair of them but I couldn't really get any good shots with both of the fish in them. On the Big Island, we typically see them below 60 feet or so, more likely below 80. In the older islands further north, say Kauai and to the northwest, they apparently are shallower and seen more often.

Today the water was very flat and we decided to head south to the Red Hill area for dives. We dove at "Ridges" and "Henry's Cave". Bob led the first dive and I led the second. Good conditions... the water's really warming up the last 2 weeks, it's roughly 76/77 now suddenly. I shed the shorty I was layering with and just went with my full suit and was fine. Out at depth on the edge of the reef we probably had roughly 150 foot of viz. A manta ray swam beneath us as we descended and one of the divers saw two turtles in the distance. Other cool stuff was a pair of Flame Angels, a real good sized (child's fist sized roughly) yellow hairy hermit crab that had taken over a beautiful triton trumpet snail shell, a three foot (pretty small) or so long whitetip reef shark and other goodies. Surprisingly we didn't see much in the way of shrimp or nudibranchs, seems to be the case down south lately when we've been there for some reason, even though both sites appear to be topographically good candidates for them.

We're busy for the next little bit with a student and several certified divers. Today we had a rather strong north wind from a front that was passing by, didn't do anything to the diving but it made it look kind of rough 'til it settled down mid-day. Conditions have been pretty reasonable, we had a bit of a swell last week, but Thursday was really the only day that it made for crummy conditions. I've not personally been in the water since Wednesday, tomorrow that'll change as I plan on working with the student. Cathy said it feels as though it's cooled off the last couple of days, so it'll be curious to see if I'm noticing it or if it shows cooler on my computer. We're getting into that time of year where if a big north swell comes in the temperature drops a degree or so.

We had a fun group on the other day. I thought I'd mention it because the entire boatload was very good on air. I'm thinking the shortest dive for any in the group was in the 70 minute range, and we had two divers hit the 100 minute mark (that's real good on air and we don't see that all too often) on one dive.

Blogstuff... I added a little mapping widget on the sidebar. If you click on the map you get a larger map and can see where clicks are coming from. It's kind of interesting to see where people are popping in from, and sort of amazing that that type of information can be tracked.

So here's another Flame Angel (Centropyge loriculus). I took this one using the long zoom/no flash diffuser and hope for the best method I mentioned several posts back. These guys are generally so shy you can't get within 5' of them without spooking them into the coral within seconds. Recently I found one that seems rather unphased by close company with divers, but I didn't have a camera in hand that day. I'm hoping it's there the next time I visit. Flame Angels have a very small territory and once you find them you can almost count on seeing them at the same spot (I really mean spot, often within a foot or two) an a frequent basis. If we brief Flame angels, that generally means we know exactly where it's going to be.... I've got a flame angel at one frequently visited site that I've been watching since early 2005 that I've seen all but 3 or 4 times I've been there since finding it. We're coming across more of them all the time as there seems to be a bit of a bloom of them lately.

Later,

Steve

Ironman is over and the town emptied out quite quickly. Pat and I were running errands today and drove through town and it was about as empty as you'll see in on a late afternoon.

We had a pretty good swell come in during yesterday's dives. Today it was coming in real good from the north, it's supposed to be coming down tomorrow. We'll just dive some south facing dive sites and stay clear of the north facing ones for an extra day.

I've been trying to get a decent shot of a Flame Angel (Centropyge loriculus) for quite some time. They're really tough to get a photo of because they are very shy and flighty and will dart into the finger corals if you approach them or swim above them. They used to be pretty rarely seen a few years back, but they're seen quite a bit more often these days.

I saw 5 of them on my dive yesterday. I saw this one towards the end of the dive and decided to try something... in underwater photography, the general rule is get as close as possible, get as little water between you and your subject as possible. As this is really really difficult to do with Flame Angels I decided to take a different tack. The Canon G9 camera has a pretty darned powerful flash, and you usually use the diffuser to help it light up your subject as the flash is very directional and won't get good coverage when shooting close. I decided to not use the diffuser and see if the flash was strong enough to light up the Flame Angel at a longer distance with the camera really zoomed in. The first of these pics was taken at the usual distance before removing the diffuser, I was just lucky to see it for a moment and get a shot off. The second one was taken at a distance of about 5 feet without the diffuser on the flash. This is about a 2 and a half inch fish so the camera was really zoomed in for that shot, but it worked OK. I'm thinking Pat actually has some better pictures of one, but these give you a great idea of how colorful this little fish is.

Later,

Steve

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.

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 Hawaiian 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 starts tonight for me and then I'll be quite busy for a while. On Sunday evening we're doing something that really isn't done all that often here... just a regular night dive. I had some people who wanted to skip the manta thing and just get out on the reef. Few operators here actually offer that as the manta dive is what Kona's known for even though the traditional night diving can be awesome here. I'm looking forward to it.

Later,

Steve

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 looking for them... once you know where to look you can see tons of them at many dive sites. This is a fairly accurate color for most of the one's you can see, but sometimes there are individuals with brighter coloring, more blue, deeper reds and a brighter yellow on the tail. Anyway, I was happy to finally get this shot.

This pic was taking at Pawai Bay. It's a great spot in that it was one of the first refuges (no colleccting) here and there's lots of life. On yesterday's dives we were able to hear the whales - they've started to sing again - as an additional treat. We were just coming off a big overnight swell, but it was quite diveable yesterday. Water temperature is currently 75 degrees.... brrrr.

'Til next time,

Steve

... 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 this one.... it's tough to explain to someone UNDERWATER that you want them in the photo, and they need to align themselves so they are behind a moving fish while you take a shot - especially when you've never tried it or talked to them about it before. I found out something new about the Canon, with the underwater housing, if you forget to use the flash diffuser, the flash works differently - lotsa backscatter if there's much particulate matter in the water (mostly cloned out in photoshop in this case) and sort of only lights up a band on the photo. In this case it worked out in that the band that was lit up went through the fish and my wife.

Anyway, conditions were actually pretty nice down in Pawai Bay today. Highlights of the dives were a manta ray, tons of raccoon butterflyfish, pyramid butterflyfish, a couple of free swimming octopus, the Bandit Angels, trumpet fish of various colors, and more.

Kona water temperature report. Things have cooled off since I last dove, prior to the sinus issues. I saw 75 today, down from 79 in early December.

Later,

Steve