I drove to Hilo to have the tailgate of my truck linexed, insurance paid for it since I was rear-ended a month ago, and Pat and I decided to make a day of it. For the most part we had a sunny trip over to the east side of the island, man is the Big Island gorgeous when it's sunny. I haven't been to Hilo in the sun all that often.

Downtown Hilo seems to be a little busier than I last remembered it. It's got a bunch of shops on the main drag to check out. We stopped in at Sun and Sea Hawaii, a nice little dive shop that's been in Hilo for about 3 years or so. From what I can see, Nautilus and them are about the only game in town for dive shops there. Pat and I stopped at Cronies bar and grill for a couple of beers and to try out their "broke the mouth" size "works" burger. Twice the meat (1# total) and twice the toppings... lot's of cheese, bacon, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, sprouts... that's a lot of stuff. I had to resort to a knife and fork. Pat and I split it since we'd just eaten a couple hours earlier but I wanted to try it, it was good.

The big yellow blob at the top of the post is a Siphopteron Quadrispinosum. It's one of our local nudibranchs. Back 10 years or so, when I was first made aware of them, I used to spot these guys from 8-10 feet away. The last few years I haven't been so lucky... they max out at about 3 millimeters in length, and my middle aged eyes are having a tough time focusing on something that small anymore. My guess is that a portion of the people I've pointed them out to over the years thought I was just pointing at sand and was a little bit crazy to be fixated on nothing. I've tended to notice them in the late spring and early summer, so if you're diving along over a sandy area and see a hot yellow grain of sand, you might want to look a little closer to see if it's one of these.

Later,

Steve

It's about time to make this post again. It's that time of the year where it's busy in Kona and elsewhere. I've been getting lots of phone calls the last few days from people that I just can't help out because they've either been beaten to the punch and I'm full, or they're calling so late I don't have the ability to set up charters or add on enough passengers to make a charter worthwhile.

I got a couple of interesting phone calls this week:

One was from a person who flew over to this island, for one night, specifically to do the manta dive. Unfortunately for tehm, they waited 'til they arrived to try to arrange for the manta dive. From the list of operators that had turned them away, it appears everyone was either full or not going out. I gave them the list of every one I knew of that might possibly be going out that night, hopefully the found a ride and weren't disappointed. I had a similar call the next day, but at least they had one extra day available to go and I was able to take them.

I received another phone call from someone who had seen that I'm one of the few, if only, charters here that goes out with only two divers, problem is they wanted it in a time frame that made it very unlikely for me to even break even (not to mention they said they were open to either of two days, until they found out I already had someone on board the other day). I'm happy to guarantee charters for two divers if they can give me at least a week to try to book on top of it... when that happens, more often than not I'll get an extra body or more on board to make it worthwhile, so it's worth guaranteeing the dive. When people are looking at booking within a week, hopefully they have a flexible schedule and can join in when there are existing charters. I even guarantee charters for singles from time to time (most are long time customers I consider to be friends, or it's during a busy time for me and I'm quite sure I've got a good shot at booking on top) Historically, 90% of my business is booked a week to months in advance...It's July and I had two inquiries yesterday for February and April (didn't book yet, but I bet by November I'll have a couple of firm bookings for late winter or spring)... I've historically been getting very few short notice bookings, as the new shop starts to generate more traffic, that'll change and the issue may never come up again.

From what I've seen over the years, many companies on occasion do a last minute scramble to cancel or reschedule charters with people who've already booked because there weren't enough to make the charter a go at a profit. I try not to go there by either guaranteeing my bookings, or not taking them if it's what I'd consider to be realistically too short of a time period to book enough to make it worthwhile. Luckily most of my weeks have enough charters already going out that last minute couples or singles with flexible schedules can get out with me.

Anyway, from what I've seen, there are lots of people scrambling to find spots with local activities (not just scuba) on short notice right now. I've been there myself when I've travelled, but my recommendation is to try to arrange the activities you really want to do at least a week in advance, it'll likely save you some phone calls and frustrations.

The photo above is of an Imperial Shrimp that lives on a Spanish Dancer Nudibranch. I was lucky to spot this one, we don't see either of them often enough.

Aloha,

Steve

Here's a wonderful photo of a Longnose Hawkfish we've been watching over time sent to me by one of our customers. These are one of my favorite fish back from my aquarium shop days. I don't happen to have a photo of one, I'm thrilled they got this fantastic shot.

This post will be unlike others I've done. I was looking at their photos and thinking about how much variety of critters and types of diving we typically do over the course of 3-4 days... and thought I'd give you just a taste of it from a customer that was on the boat for 4 charters. We try to mix up the diving when we have people on for several days. The photos here are unedited and posted at a low resolution to save some space.... it's just a few of the many photos they took, don't even have shots of the whaleshark or dolphins they saw underwater on one dive... Thanks for the photos Roman....



















There are tons of critters and sites to see when scuba diving, it's easy to pack a lot of variety into a few short dives in Kona.

Aloha,

Steve

My wife Pat took this nifty picture of a nudibranch some time ago. I don't have a picture that looks like it. I thought it might be some kind of nudi I'm unfamiliar with as it doesn't quite look like the typical scrambled egg nudibranch, a look at Keoki Stender's Phyllidia page has a shot of a juvenile scrambled egg nudi (fried egg nudi) that looks very similar. I guess it's a juvenile that hasn't developed as much yellow spotting. Very cool.

I had a double scheduled for yesterday, diving in the morning was good, but we had big winds pop up this afternoon and met our customers for the evening. It was getting pretty sloppy and we decided to reschedule for Saturday evening. The winds of this strength aren't common in Kona and should settle down by today or Saturday.

I saw on the manta report yesterday that 20 or so mantas showed up on Monday night. That's a bundle of action. I've got a manta ray night dive charter tomorrow and another one or two scheduled for next week. Hopefully it'll keep up with lots of mantas for those outings.

We're crazy busy next week. I've got 8 charters currently scheduled, and 6 of them are full. It'll be interesting to see how spring break diving pans out for all of the dive companies in Kona. The last two years it hasn't been as busy as it had been in years earlier. I'm thinking people are starting to travel a bit more than they have lately once again. I've got bookings into June and inquiries into August so far. I used to have a good portion of my bookings 3-6 months out, the last two years it's been more like 2-6 weeks ahead of time with a lot of last minute calls. I'll be referring a bunch of the last minute people elsewhere next week most likely. If other operaters are experiencing the same thing it might be tough to catch a dive for the last minute bookers this spring break. After next week I open up again for now.

Yesterday we had some strange winds in Kona. It was blowing in heavily from the north at the harbor in the morning, so we headed a bit south to Casa Caves and it calmed down for a very nice dive. We don't seem to visit this site often enough, it's got the cave and a very nice reef out front, the topography's a bit different than our other sites and the finger coral reef is a great example of that type of reef for Kona. By the end of the dive the wind had done a 180 and switched to fairly strong from the south and things were getting pretty choppy, so we headed north and found the conditions to be quite good in that area... go where the wind ain't I guess, it worked this day anyway.

Here's a photo of a Goldlace Nudibranch. We see them from time to time. I took this underwater photo a couple days back. Yesterday Cathy and a couple of others popped into the cave at the end of the first dive and spotted 6 of them in a grouping. I've never seen that before, wonder if it's some sea slug sex thing?

After about 5 months of working nearly every day, we're back to having days off again. It seems like I'm hardly working at all, but we're still having around 20 dive charters a month right now. I've been spending a lot more time in the office/shop these days.

Today I have a confined water session with a student. I'd pretty much gotten away from teaching the full certification course the last couple of years because the confined water stuff was hard to schedule. We've been sticking primarily to referral certifications, where you do your classwork at home and then come here for the diving portion of it (I still think this is probably one of the best ways to learn if you only intend to dive while traveling). I'm looking at getting back into it to where we're teaching the full course here at this point. One of the pools I've used in the past is generally available in the evenings, so I'm planning on scheduling the academic and pool work over 3 evenings... it won't be for everyone, some people want a faster course... to where we can do a good job of it and not rush. This will be more like it was back on the mainland, with a few evenings worth of classes and two days of diving rather than trying to cram everything real fast into 3 days.

We've had some very good diving the last little bit. We had a fun father/son group on the boat the other day. After the first dive the son came up and said he saw more on that dive than in a whole week of diving off Florida... I liked that comment. I think they dove somewhere in the Keys, not sure where. I haven't dove Florida, don't know how we compare, every place is different.

Here's a Gold Lace Nudibranch (Halgerda terramtuentis) from some time ago. We generally find these on slight overhangs.

Aloha,

Steve

S

Here's a shot of a Gold Lace Nudibranch (Halgerda terramtuentis). Looking up the scientific name, I just learned something new... this nudibranch is apparently only known from the Hawaiian Islands... cool, another piece of trivia. I was down doing a "Captain's dive" a week or two ago and saw this one under an arch.

The surf is really up right now. We've had a big south swell for several days now, and it seems to have peaked (hopefully) the last 2 days. We've got turquoise looking water all along the coast right now... people think it's pretty, but for divers it kind of sucks... it basically is light reflecting off all of the sand in the water, not clear water showing off it's beauty. I didn't go out today, but I had a buddy today that went out and said he had to do both dives at Kealakekua Bay and the viz was horrible - considering the sand is nearly 90 feet down at that spot, for it to be kicked up enough to make for horrible viz says something. Tomorrow's a big marathon/triathlon event in Kona, between that and the surf we're taking the day off. I'm hoping for better conditions come Monday... the weather report says the surf's coming down.

So, sort of big news for me - I signed a lease yesterday. I've been operating out of my garage and pickup truck for years, now I'll have an "office" in town where I can hang my T-shirts and store my gear. It's near enough to the harbor that it'll be quite handy. I've been wanting to have a spot to meet customers ahead of time to try gear on and sign papers to maybe speed up our morning pre-dive rituals. It's not a big spot, but big enough for my needs at this point. I'll have more information as time goes on... today Pat and I were looking at paint chips, it's currently gloss white, I'm looking to spice it up a hair if I can clear it with the landlord.

That's it for now.

Aloha!

Steve

Here's a pair of White Margin Nudibranchs (Glossodoris rufomarginata) laying eggs. These nudibranchs get to about an inch in length, and are one of the easier nudibranchs to find on purpose. I typically look for them on overhangs, say arches or the lip of a lava tube. It can often be found by looking for the white spiral egg mass - if the find the eggs the nudibranchs are not far away. I usually find them in groups of two or three within several inches of an egg mass.

We've had lots of fun customers on board lately. Today was fun, we had a woman and her family that were out to dive for her 75th birthday today. She hadn't dove in a few years and wanted to do it while they were here. She's pretty experienced, got 58 minutes on the first dive but was getting cold on the second dive and came up with a ton of air. The group seemed to have had a great time.

We get divers in their 70s from time to time. The "oldest" student (calendar-wise anyway, he was rather youngish physically - still very active and strong) I've ever had finished his class 5 or so days shy of his 70th birthday. Plenty of divers that age do just fine, some may need to don or remove their gear in the water due to knees and such not making it up the ladders quite as easily in their younger days. It seems a lot of divers who are still diving into their 70s and beyond are very experienced and have been diving in many places... it's a blast listening to dive stories.

It was sunny on the water today, no clouds over the ocean, but the vog from the volcano was up. The tradewinds are down for the next few days, so I'm hoping it'll clear out.

This is what I was so excited about on the night dive with 20 manta rays the other night. Customer Peter found this after we'd peeled off for a short night dive at the end of the manta show. It's a Tuberculosis Nudibranch (Dendrodoris tuberculosa) or a very close relative not in my book. I've heard of them being seen up in the shallows at the manta dive site in the past, but I've never seen one. This one was actually in more like 25-30 feet of water out towards the edge of the reef. I'm glad I had the camera in hand, although it took a while to get the settings right and I missed the good angles on it. They're a good sized nudibranch, this one was probably almost 6 inches long.

It's partly sunny today, but kind of hard to tell because the vog is very thick right now in the Captain Cook area. It's thicker than usual the last couple of days. Up in Kailua it's rarely this thick, in Captain Cook we're right at the spot where the winds sort of eddy around the island and the vog ends up. My eyes are itchy, but then again I was out under the house yesterday hauling off some old building materials the previous owners had left... could just be dust, not the vog, causing the irritation.

Yesterday we had a nice little earthquake. I missed it... bummer (after that one a couple Octobers back, any little shake gives you a nice adrenaline shot)... I was in the garage and didn't feel it being at ground level, Pat upstairs in the house felt it quite noticeably. It was a 5.0 centered off the volcano on the other side of the island, pretty shallow so it wasn't as noticeable here as some of that magnitude.

We're winding down on a real busy spell, I may actually get a planned day off come Friday and Saturday if the phone doesn't ring for those days. We've been doing lots of diving this month, I generally do the second dive of the day while Cathy's been doing the first... if we alternate dives, the customers get two slightly different style of guided dives during the day, kind of a yin/yang thing, Bob comes back tomorrow, so we'll be able to spread the diving out between us some - guess that'll make it more of a rock/paper/scissors experience at that point.

I was able to sleep in today, not that it really happened, as we're doing the night dive today. The mantas have been showing up in good numbers up at Garden Eel Cove for the last little bit.

Water conditions have been consistently good for diving the last little bit, and the water temperature has inched up a degree or two making it much more comfortable... Yahoo!!!

Aloha,

Steve

Here's a great shot of a real attractive nudibranch that Pat took some time back. It's of a Trembling Nudibranch (Chromodoris vibrata). We don't see these critters nearly often enough, I think I have one picture from several years ago posted a couple years back on the blog somewhere.

We had a bit of a slow spell at the end of January but we're back out on the water for at least 5-6 days straight right now. It gets sporadic during the slow season, March is looking to be hopping though as I've already got nearly 20 days partially booked already.

Tuesday we went out with just a single diver. It's not something we're crazy about, but when someone books well in advance I can usually get other people on and I'm not going to cancel on them at the last minute just because I'm out of luck on a day. That single diver turns into the 2nd, 3rd or 4th diver on the boat more often than not, so it's very worth keeping them even if we have to risk going out solo every now and then. When we do have just a single diver, it does give us an opportunity to cater to them though. We did a nice one way drift dive off the airport and then went to Bob's favorite dive site (spaceship/pyramid pinnacle/pinetrees pinnacle/harlequin or whatever it's called) for the second. They were hearing whales on the dive underwater while I was seeing them topside while I was captaining (aka "sitting on the boat"). I saw about 9 different whales that day.

Yesterday we had more passengers and dove off Pawai Bay for the first dive and then popped into Crescent beach for the second dive.... lots of good stuff for the divers, at one point they had 20 or so dolphins hanging around them during the dive. It's always a thrill to see dolphins under the water.

Tonight it's a manta trip and then back to day charters the next few days. It's good to be back out there for a spell.

Later,

Steve

I was driving down the highway today and had to check out the Kona Commons because they'd opened up the parking lot. There were probably 50 cars out front and Petco was open. What a nice store. I'm not just talking nice because I like pet stores, but nice because I like looking at well merchandised stores. 10 years ago I was in lower level management for Petco, going back and forth between a couple of stores in Oregon, this store is big and laid out very nicely. My only gripe right now is I'd probably switch what looks to be a help desk right up front with their second register island 'til they slow down... it was crazy busy and it put a lot of people in one corner... but then again, I'm no merchandising guru and it sure looks like they did a great job on this store. Their official opening is Friday and this weekend, but they're doing just fine sales already. It's definitely nicer than any of the Petco's I've been in over the years.

I'll probably go equally as ga-ga over Sports Authority if they've upgraded their layout over the other stores I've been in (granted I don't get out much... I've pretty much only been in one in Oahu and maybe another one in years, they've always been good, but if the newer stores are upgraded like Petco has done, wow). The small note on the door of Sports Authority says it opens Thursday the 9th. Office Max is set to open on the 17th, it looks a little less ready to go at this point but the merchandise is coming in. Circuit City went from a hole in the ground last month to where it's got the building shell (not sure if it's roofed yet) and is starting to look like a Circuit City.

The highway looks fairly finished to Makala from Honokohau Harbor, south of there it's a mess as expected. They've shut off the access to Kaiwi for a few weeks to rebuild that intersection, so the Makala exit is quite busy with people turning down to the old industrial area.

Here's a pic of a Scrambled Egg Nudibranch (Phyllidia vericosa) I took the other day.

Later,

Steve

And yesterday afternoon we could color it kinda green. During the first dive yesterday (Golden Arches)the viz wasn't so great, but not all that bad. It was a three tank dive day so we went quite a bit north for our second dive, and it wasn't too bad for viz. On the third dive we came back in to the Pine Trees area to do Aquarium and Suck 'Em Up... now that dive had poor viz. It was down to maybe 20 feet or so by then. We had some kind of unusual algae bloom or coral spawn or something. I've seen really heavy algae blooms diving twice since I moved here in '99, it usually lasts for a couple of days.

It was a fun day of diving though. The sky north of Kailua was clear, with little vog and beautiful "puffy" clouds in the distance.... I should have taken a picture, it was gorgeous. We could see Maui from the water. The water temperature has bumped up nicely, I saw 79 degrees my entire dive. The seas were very flat and we were doing a three tanker with a couple of very good divers from Oahu so we took them to a special spot we don't make it to often due to water conditions, distance and such. I got to dive the second dive so it was a blast for me, Cathy dove the other two dives. I'm betting the divers were tired... first dive 77 minutes, second dive 100 minutes and the third was 60 something (the divers were getting cold at that point, despite the extra shorties we threw on them... nearly 4 hours underwater dims your furnace).

Speaking of color, the photo at the top of the post is a closeup of a Fried Egg Nudibranch, one of our most common sea slugs here. Here's the full photo, it wasn't one of my best efforts, but in good focus for the cropped version.

I thought I'd post another interesting blog... I earlier posted a blog from Saipan, this one's from an obviously enthusiastic California Diver and has a bunch of local shots, both above and below. Some people knock cold water diving, but there's a lot of color if you can get past the freezing. I'm looking forward (well sort of anyway) to one day doing some cold water diving again now that I have more of an eye for little stuff than I had back in the day when I was diving in Oregon.

Aloha,

Steve

With new photos.... I saw the tiny nudibranchs again, only this time I had my Inon closeup lenses attached to the camera housing. We dove the site that we were at the other week where I saw these guys. Bob took the divers out and I mentioned to look for these. Only one of the divers noticed them, but as soon as he said they were there I figured I had to hop overboard for a few minutes once Bob was back on board (a USCG Captain must be on board at all times).

I was down at the anchor looking around and I didn't see any and was beginning to wonder if the diver who said he'd seen them all over was just humoring me before I saw the first one, then suddenly I saw them all over. Once you see one, then suddenly you see them easily. I may have been generous in saying they're as large as Roosevelt's ear on a dime, they're probably smaller.

From a distance it looked as though they were on nothing but sand, but when I was taking pictures I kept noticing blurry areas. Turns out there was lots of clear algaes or other stuff layering the sand, the second photo does a good job of showing some of the stuff there.

I've finally got my closeups of these, whoohoo! Now if I really wanna have an interesting time, I'll have to grab my camera and do a night dive and really scrutinize about 1 square foot of sand. I did that one time without a camera years ago and found a scorpionfish and a few other critters that were near the same size as these guys.... there's lots of life we overlook.

Later,

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.

I liked this photo from today. We had just one diver who's been with us for a couple of weeks, so we decided to do a couple of drift dives. I dove the second dive... lots of cool stuff.... dolphins underwater, a manta ray, a bunch of nudibranchs, a large spiny lobster, an octopus... all around good dive.

We found this Gold Lace Nudibranch towards the end of the dive. I probably took a dozen photos of it before I got this pic... either out of focus, rhinophores tucked in, gills tucked in, ect... it finally spread out and I got an in focus shot at the same time. I took this with my Canon G9 with Inon closeup lens and the Ikelite AF-35strobe. The closeup lens really does a good job of letting you get a decent macro shot, this guy was about an inch and a quarter to inch and a half long and the photo is uncropped. Without the lens I'd have to cut out a lot of the picture in post production to get the nudi to fill this much of the frame.

Aloha,

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

Yep, that's right, today is National Corndog Day. It all started back around the early 90's when a couple drunk basketball fans in Corvallis, Oregon (where I lived the 20 years previous to moving here - I don't know the guys though) realized they were hungry... It sorta took on a life of it's own after that, Google it for more history.

Pat and I are celebrating it by not eating corn dogs, although going down to the Roadhouse Cafe in Kainaliu to see if they have one of their delicious Louisiana hotlink pastry wraps (they bill it as a corndog for adults) sounds tempting.

Yesterday was a fun day of diving. The water was flat in the morning so we headed down south towards the Kealakekua Bay and Red Hill area. We dove "Chimney", which is a cool site with a vertical lava tube that starts at almost 50' of depth and once you are in it goes straight up to to the opening which is just shy of the surface - it's not a site for people with ear or buoyancy issues as you have to get negative and head straight back over the edge and down once you hit the top or you can end up on the rocks. After that we hit a dive site called "Ridges", which neither Bob nor I had ever dove (Cathy mentioned it as a cool dive the other week, so we thought we'd try it) but the group was into exploring it with Bob while I stayed up topside to enjoy the worsening weather conditions. Everyone liked the site for it's topography and reef structure.

The ride home was a wet ride.... a fairly strong northwest wind had come up in the afternoon and the surface chop was a terrific mess. The boat rides much better these days with the extended hull, so the ride was actually fairly smooth but spray tended to blow back at us on occasion... 'time to head to Walmart and look for a bunch of 2 buck ponchos in case we get caught in the weather again. Surprisingly, despite slowing down for the weather, we made it home, in horrible conditions, in about the same time I used to be able to get there at top speed in beautiful conditions before the boat rebuild... we're really pleased with how it turned out.

The nudibranch above is a good sized Pustulose Phyllidia (also know as a Strawberry Nudibranch) that Pat took a photo of the day she borrowed my camera. There were a bunch of them out that particular day and this was probably the best shot.

Don't eat too many corndogs today... save something for Easter tomorrow.

Aloha,

Steve

This was taken with the Canon G9 using RAW. When I've taken shots of these guys with my other cameras, or with this one without using RAW, it's been tough to get the right exposure. Photoshop CS3's RAW editor allows you to change over all exposure, and cut back on things that are too highlighted, as well as other goodies. It worked quite nicely with this particular pic, some of my others were still not really salvageable.

Sorry, not much to update on the diving conditons as I've been flat on my back for 3 days with a torn hamstring. Now that the swelling is down to where both legs are the same size I want to see a doctor that works with muscle tears who can say if it's a stage 2 or stage 3 hamstring tear as I do have some knotting in the muscle, but it may just be residual swelling. I'm hoping it's a stage 2 as no time's a good time for a stage 3 and a stage 2 tear should heal up enough in the next week or two to get me back to work.

Three days without checking my e-mail was interesting.... nearly a thousand offers for genital enlargements, Russian girlfriends and drugs at cheap prices - I didn't win any international lotteries this weekend though, bummer. I did manage to read one interesting newspaper article the other day though, I'll link it on the next post if I can find a link... It'll give me something substantiative to write about.

Aloha,

Steve

Just touching bases... we've been really busy the last 10-12 days or so. The diving has been pretty good, there were a few predicted swells that really didn't cause much surf here in Kona. I've got a night dive tonight. We were skunked on the dive last week, but apparently there were seven mantas on the dive a couple of days back.

The photo above is of White Margin Nudibranchs (Glossodoris rufomarginata). We see them quite often on overhangs, archways or caves. Pat took it on a dive at "Golden Arches". The best way to spot them is to look for their spiral shaped egg masses, if you see an egg mass the "parents" are generally nearby.

Aloha,

Steve