Untitled from Steve on Vimeo.
We did this dive Saturday night. 15 or so mantas were at the site when we arrived, it was 20 by the time we went back to the boat.

This is always a great time when there's even one manta showing up, more is gravy... this was lots and lots of gravy. We spent pretty much the entire dive watching them, did a short pass of the reef at the end and saw something that REALLY excited me (not that the mantas didn't, but one of our divers found something I'd yet to see, and I had the camera in hand), more on that in the next post.

Later,

Steve

I just returned from another manta ray night dive up off of the Kona airport. There were 4 to 5 mantas tonight, it was a good show for all on board. We haven't been seeing squid the last few times out, I'm glad I had the camera with me the night this group showed up... I still have more shots I'll post later.

Aloha,

Steve

Bigfin Squid in Kona Hawaii from Steve on Vimeo.

Hi there, here's a short video clip I took on the night I got the underwater photos of the squid I've posted earlier. They change color almost constantly. They seem quite curious about the goings on of the night dive. I took a bunch of pictures in a few minutes time on that dive, and a few of them turned out, so I've got a bunch of color variations on the picture's you'll see on the blog.

I wish we could find these all the time on the night dive, they seem to be showing up more often as time passes, but for now it's really a special event for us.

Aloha,

Steve

The other week we were trying out a spot I'd never dove before (pretty cool spot) up north of the airport. This spot is north of the day use moorings so we were anchored in a sand patch next to the reef. I went to check the anchor at the end of the dive and noticed several of these little critters in the sand. I wish I had my closeup lenses on at the time, I'd love to get a good shot of these, this particular shot is really cropped and enlarged. This is a Siphopteron quadrispinosum, a type of nudibranch we see here (if you take notice anyway... they max out at a few millimeters in length) from time to time. To get a rough idea of their size, take a dime out of your pocket and look at Roosevelt's ear and it'll be pretty close to the same size as a good sized one. I've got a picture of three of them in the blog last June, take a look through the June '07 archives to see it. I'll have to keep my eyes open in the sand patches the next little while.

Tonight we did a reef night dive with some customers we have dove with already. Cathy dove it while I sat up top, she had great fun with it and came up quite excited... lots of neat stuff to see. Many of the dive operators here are rather invested in the manta dive and you hardly see anyone doing straight night dives on the reef any more here, we're trying to do them when we can get a group of interested divers as the straight night dives are really good and great fun for us (the crew) as well. It's a nice changeup to the manta dive, and so many things come out at night that you don't see during the day that it's quite exciting if you're a critter fan.

Hawaii fish video from Steve on Vimeo.
Here's a few minutes snippet I took with my Canon G9. I hadn't been diving it much the last year, but back when I dove it a lot I'd been down on nights when 15-17 mantas showed up quite a number of times. Tonight there were many more, I figured 25 would be extremely conservative, and 30-32 more likely. I talked to the videographer afterwards and she said she saw 26 she knew (the video people typically take a slate down and list the ones they recognise, they all have different spot patterns) and said there were several others she didn't know... figured there were 30 minimum. We'll see how many there were in a day or so when all the videographers compare notes. Last night they had 28, which tied the previous record showing, but there seems to be a secret manta network... these fish must somehow communicate to each other when and where the feeding's good and there was a very good amount of plankton in the water tonight.

Happy, happy, happy,

Steve

These little critters are something I can usually (OK, often anyways) find on our night dive at the manta site up north if the night dive gets longer because the mantas don't show. I have a shot from years ago with my old mx10, but hadn't seen one with any of my digital's in hand. I did a night dive for fun last week and found this one. They're pretty small and often overlooked. I'd like to get a different angle on them some day so you can see the horns more readily.

Aloha,

Steve

Sailor's Eyeballs? What in the heck is that all about? Well, look at the picture to the right and you'll see a shiny bluish thing, that's a sailor's eyeball, also called "sea pearl" by some.

I first heard of these things watching a Jacques Cousteau special when I was a kid, and forgot what they were until I noticed one on the reef years later diving out here. Turns out they are fairly common. What's interesting about them, from a biological standpoint, is that they can range upwards of nearly 2 inches in diameter, yet they are a single cell organism - the world's largest single cell organism. Most single cell organisms are going to require a microscope for you to see, not this thing.

They are shiny and fairly tough/firm to the touch. They sort of remind me of some sort of oily plastic bubble stuff you blew on a straw when I was a kid in the early 60's.

We did the "no" manta dive tonight. Bob said the plankton was pretty poor, but the night dive itself wasn't all that bad. We had some pretty rough water the last couple of weeks, combine that with bad plankton levels and it's not a real wonder they weren't around.

later,

Steve

We did another night trip last night. We're back to the slower season so we've been going out a hair less frequently. I've got intro divers tomorrow daytime and then almost a week off (assuming no phonecalls in the meanwhile) with charters on 7 of the last 9 days of the month.

The water last night was quite sloppy, and it made for a bumpy trip, but the diving was still great. It was a great manta show, Bob lead the dives (they saw 3 mantas on the first dive) and said with 10 mantas on the second dive it was a great time. I think all the divers had their heads bumped several times by manta rays.

There were 3 squid on the dive. I'm pushing 2000 dives here, with about a couple hundred of them being night dives, and I've yet to see a squid. We've had a pair of them showing up off and on for the last month, I missed them one night I was down, and apparently there were three on Monday and last night. I'm hoping they keep showing up. If there's food for them on the dive they'll probably keep coming in. Last night they apparenlty were out of the edge of the reef, on occasion they've actually come to the dive site and hang out with the snorkelers a few feet under the surface.... COOL!

Here's a couple of little shrimp from a night dive I did a few weeks back. This is one of those cases of things that are tough to get a good photo of... clear or light colored on a light background... but they turned out reasonable.

Later,

Steve

Actually, Bob did the dive and I sat up top playing Captain. We had 5 or 6 mantas on the night dive on Thursday. It's been consistantly running about that many the last week or so. Water temperature has still been running in the 80 degree range.

I have a dive tomorrow morning, so this post will be a short one, time to hit the hay. I just wanted to get back in the habit of updating at least every 3 days or so.

Here's another picture of a Banded Coral Shrimp (Stenopus hispidus) from a night dive some time back. Here's a little factiod about them I don't think I've mentioned... I learned this back in my aquarium days. They really don't like each other. Actually, we do find them in mated pairs in the wild quite often, but if you randomly put two together in an aquarium they often will battle. I remember one customer of mine had bought one and then later picked up an Arrow crab, which is a long spindly crab from the tropical Atlantic and Carribean. They apparenlty don't like each other either. He said the crab took off the shrimp's primary claws... Later, when the shrimp molted and regained it's claws (after a molt, as soon as the exo-skeleton hardens up they're apparently good as new) it returned the favor and took a few legs off the crab. This apparently went back and forth for a couple of molts each until they apparenltly found a workable peace arrangement. The customer actually got quite a kick out of it, I never sold that combination again though.

That's it for now.

Steve