I took this brief video on the 23rd of December. I think there were 14 mantas that evening. It's been running anywhere from 5 to up to 25 mantas a night pretty much since then. Hoppefully it'll keep up.

Yesterday we had a blast. I had a friend that wanted to take friends out for a whale/dolphin watch. We headed up north and ran into mantas on the surface at Garden Eel Cove, then a huge school of dolphins off Makalewena. After watching the dolphins we decided to head out to sea and look for whales, about a half mile out we ran into 6-7 false killer whales (possibly pigmy killers, I can't really tell them apart at this point) and continued out to sea because we could see some splashing in the distance. turned out there was the largest school of pacific bottlenose dolphins I've ever seen out there. Usually we see 2-6 in small groups, this was dozens spread out over a good sized area. There were humpbacks whales in the mix as well. After watching that for a while we headed in to Garden Eel Cove to watch dolphins again.

We've had some gorgeous skies lately. If you check out my facebook page I've got a shot or two of the skies I took with my cell phone, it's been gorgeous.

Later,

Steve

I had the morning off, kind of a lucky thing as there was an accident last night in Kealakekua that knocked over a telephone pole and the drive into town is taking forever. I took the liberty to drive a bit down the road to Ho'okena Beach Park for a bit of snorkeling, figured I'd try the camera.



I shot about 8 minutes of video while I in just for the heck of it. It's not spectacular, but it'll give you an idea of what the place is like. The color is much nicer through eyeballs, the video doesn't do it justice. I shot this video starting about 30 feet off the beach in 30 inches of water then swam to the right around the old pier. There's lots to look at right in close there.



Ho'okena is a small beach park in south Kona. It's got fairly nice facilities, camping by permit, some concessions run by a non-profit, and even handicap access to the facilities. The parking lot is sand, so be careful where you park it, AWD or 4WD might be handy if you're not watching where the tires are.



The beach is exposed to high surf in the stormy months, so the reef isn't as nice as some other places, but there's still lots of fish so there's plenty of decent snorkeling. There's some pretty nice shorediving there as well, but you'll probably need to do several dives there 'til you figure it out. My first shore dive there with my wife, Pat, was kind of lame. I decided to continue to explore it and found some pretty interesting diving over time.



I'm headed into the dive shop shortly. We have a manta dive going out with a couple of divers and snorkelers tonight.



Aloha,



Steve

I hadn't had the camera underwater in ages and thought I'd do a short Captain's dive between dives up at Garden Eel Cove. We've had a pretty good south swell the last little bit, and this day it was huge and the bay off the airport and right outside the harbor were the best bets that day, we were training students so we opted for good conditions and did both dives up north off the airport.

Garden Eel Cove is a very good example of Hawaiian hard coral reef. It was protected by Keahole point back when Hurricane Iniki came through a decade or so ago and it still has lots of old growth coral. You can see all the hard corals on the dropoff in the video. Unfortunately the video doesn't do it justice... largely blue, when you're actually diving it you get to see all of the browns and golds of the corals and the color of the fish.


Later,

Steve

I thought I'd give a try at a video review of a product we're carrying at the dive shop. When I went to DEMA last year I saw the Cressi Travelight BCDs and was favorably impressed, figured when I started to carry BCDs in the shop it'd be something I want to stock.

The Cressi Travelight BCD folds up nicely into a smallish bag, small enough that you can probably fit it in most carryon bags. Nowadays with how the airlines are charging for that extra suitcase, it's nice to see dive manufacturers putting out some lighter more compact gear without sacrificing features. The Travelight comes in the standard sizes, has large zippered pockets, integrated locking weight pouches, trim pockets, rear and right shoulder dumps, a large padded spine pad for comfort, plenty of D rings to hook things on, etc... all the features most people look for in a BCD. Weight-wise you're looking at about 5-6 lbs all told. It also has a decent lift capacity for warm water diving, not huge but not bad.

I was surprised once I looked up some reviews of the product. It fares quite well as a BCD. Scuba Diving magazine's scuba lab gave it "Editor's Choice" and "Best Buy" designations. I've seen other good recommendations as well. It's well worth looking into if you're looking at a new BCD to travel with.

Aloha,

Steve

Went scuba diving... dolphins swam by from Steve on Vimeo.

Whoohoo!!! Hawaiian Spinner Dolphins!!! When you are scuba diving in Hawaii it's a real treat to see these guys underwater. It doesn't happen all that often, but we get lucky often enough to say it's not that unusual. We do see them on the surface on a quite regular basis, often several times a week, when we're out diving in Kona.

This was a particularly good day for us, I happened to have the camera along at the time. You can clearly hear the dolphins in the video and if you listen, you'll hear the whales singing in the background. It was February when I took this, that's just coming into the height of the whale season off Kona. We hear humpback whales quite often on our dives that time of year.

Later,

Steve

Thought I'd mention the manta dive is going off again right now. We went out again last night and had umpty-ump mantas on the dive and are going out again with a full boat of divers tonight and Monday night. I've had a couple different companies call me to see if I have room the next few nights, they're running full too. Maybe the busy season has finally hit Kona.



I've probably posted this before, but the manta ray night dive never gets old. This video only has about 25-30% of the number of mantas that have been showing up the last couple of nights, but it gives you an idea of what it can be like.

Later,

Steve

Manta rays visit scuba divers in Kona Hawaii from Steve on Vimeo.

We went north of Honokohau Harbor up to the Kona Airport site for the manta dive last night. Our divers saw one manta ray on the afternoon dive, that's always a good sing. On the night dive it was obvious there were several rays that had shown up - all the snorkelers from the other boats were squealing with delight.

There were 7 or 8 mantas hanging around and everyone had a teriffic time. Here's a short video from a while back on a night there were a few mantas at the dive. It looks like there were only 4 or so in this video, once the numbers get up a bit higher it can be a manta madhouse.

Hopefully it'll keep busy with mantas through the Christmas season. We're looking to be pretty darned busy... Ive got today off, then my next empty day is the 5th of January.

Aloha,

Steve

Haven't posted in a bit. Here's a quick video I took while playing around between dives for a minute. We've been having back to back swells come in so the viz has been a bit down on several of our dives, call it 70-80 feet on the bad days in some spots, more in others. The video makes it look worse than it was, it was a cloudy day and the quality's not quite what it should be.

Later,

Steve

Quality's not real good on this, I haven't figured out how to successfully upload a full size file to Youtube yet. I took a drive down Alli Drive some time in July and set the camera on the dash. Here's a little video from about the Royal Kona Resort to the King Kamehameha Hotel, that's pretty much the main business sector tourist-wise in Kailua. Hopefully it'll give you somewhat of an idea of what it's like here, it's a cute/quaint seaside town.

I've been real busy doing charters, not much time for anything else the last two weeks. Water conditions have been terriffic except for an occasional unexpected south breeze popping up.

I should be getting back to posting new fish photos again soon. Took advantage of the busy weeks and paid off my camera, the housing's on order... I may have to get it wet this weekend.

Later,

Steve

Untitled from Steve on Vimeo.

Just thought I'd throw in a little manta video from a year or so ago since the manta dive off the Kona airport is hopping right now. We've had numbers in the teens the last several nights - that'sa lot of manta rays in one spot! We've got 3 manta charters running next week, as well as a slate of pretty full day dives.

The next few weeks are looking pretty busy, it's that last of the summer crush I guess. Water temperature is still holding at 78/79. We've had a bit of a south swell this weeks, limits a few of the sites somewhat, but there's still plenty of great spots to dive that are free from the swell and have great viz. I'm hoping that swell has raised the water temp a degree or two. It'd be nice to see 80 degrees or more for a while this year, last year I only saw it once on a dive. Some years we get a few months in that range in the late summer through fall.

later,

Steve

I went down to the dive site just outside the Place of Refuge National Park today and shot a quick video of the entry spot. This is probably one of the best overall shoredives in the state.... ease of access, easy entry, very nice reef right close in, deep water and shallow reef, lots of life. It's tough to top, although there are a number shore dives here in Kona and Kohala that are in the running for competition as the State's best shore dive.



One of these days I'll get the camera housed and get some clean video and pictures of it underwater. At the end of the clip there should be video links to old stuff of mine and other videos done by others of the location.



Later,



Steve

Went scuba diving... dolphins swam by from Steve on Vimeo.

It's uncommon, but every now and then we're lucky enough to have dolphins swim around us on dives. A couple days back we were out on a dive up at Makalawena and the moment we entered the water we were greeted with the sounds of whale songs. A couple minutes later I heard the dolphin sounds and looked over my head to find this pod approaching. On the first clip the dophins were right there, this is zoomed out wide, they were probably within 5-8 feet of me at one point. It was a pretty good sized pod and I was lucky enough to be carrying a camera, I think this is the first dive shots of dolphins I have.

We've been real busy with charters this month, busiest February in at least a couple of years, if ever, for us. Next month is looking good at this point and Pat and I are working on a plan to open the shop portion of our Kona dive business for regular hours on weekends starting about the middle of next month. It'll take a while, but eventually we'll have the shop open full time - it's by appointment or luck at this point as we're open around our charter schedule.

I'm in the shop today for a half day, I've got a manta ray night dive night dive meeting up at 3:15 this afternoon. Last night they apparently had 10 mantas up at Garden Eel Cove, hopefully it'll be another great show tonight.

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

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

Turtle Cleaning Station Kona Hawaii from Steve on Vimeo.
Today's diving was good. Cathy did the first dive, at Golden Arches, and reported viz approaching 200 feet, mentioned it was warmer too. I did the second dive at Turtle Pinnacle. As we approached the dive site we were in very deep water (I didn't have the sonar set up, but we were off the reef and in deep water, probably 150-200 feet) and could still see the bottom. We pulled up to Turtle Pinnacle and probably had 135 feet or so of viz on the reef. This site is not one that's known for it's viz, so conditions were excellent today.

Turtle Pinnacle is a turtle cleaning station. Turtles will swim to there and solicit a cleaning from tangs (surgeonfish). In it's heyday, you could generally count on seeing several turtles there. The last few years it's been more hit and miss. We had two turtles at the site today. One was there for a cleaning, the other looked like it was just looking for a ledge to tuck under for a sleep at the time.

The turtles will often lay down and spread out for a good cleaning. The video above shows classic swimming cleaning behavior. This can get fun if there's several turtles wanting to be cleaned. It's almost as if they get jealous... turtles will swim over to a swimming turtle being cleaned and cut in tight trying to steal their fish!

Later,

Steve

The other day I decided to set down the camera on a rock and swim away for a couple minutes before returning. It's a neat coincidence that a spotted eagle ray swam through the video right before I came back in the scene.

I need to figure out how to do a custom white balance with the G9, I've just never tried since I've been shooting all my stills in RAW and can adjust them after the fact. I'm guessing the video will look pretty sharp once I can figure out how to get white balance right at depth.

If you enlarge the video (by clicking on the box in the lower right when you put your cursor on the video) it's almost like being there. No whales were singing near the site on that day, bummer.

later,

Steve

OK, now that seemed to work.

Today was a great day out on the water. We had an 8-10 foot northwest swell so we decided to head south and go around the corner of Kaiwi point and dive sharkfin rock and Pawai Bay for the day, it was nice and relatively calm in there. The divers came up from the first dive very excited about all the whale singing, so when we moved over to the second dive site I took a "captain's dive" while they had lunch on their surface interval with Cathy.

Boy were the whales loud!!! I half way expected them to show up out of the blue at any time. Turn up the volume and listen between my breaths on this video and you can hear them. The sound of the whales through the camera housing doesn't do them justice, it was quite loud underwater.

While the divers were on their second dive I was up top on the boat and had a couple of whales swam to within 30 feet or so of the boat... very cool. They went right towards where Cathy had taken the group but probably cut outside when they hit the corner our group was around so the divers missed them.

This video clip is of a Lined Butterfly (Chaetodon lineolatus). These are Hawaii's largest butterflyfish species, reaching up to a foot or so in length. We typically see them in pairs, this one's partner was just a few feet out of the shot.

Aloha,

Steve

Well, the surf came up big in Kona yesterday and today. I'm looking for it to be heavy through maybe Sunday. We ended up canceling the charters both yesterday and today after looking at it. There were probably 3 "diveable but yucky" moorings left yesterday, but it would have involved timing the exit to the harbor and praying the winds predicted for later in the afternoon didn't come early, so it was better to call it. Today's basically the same, but they're expecting 10-25 mph south winds to come up today, which would really make for a poor time on the water.

We've actually got it pretty good on the Big Island. We had some beach closures on the west side yesterday, but aside from the surf and high winds on the north end of the island, it's been great weather. The other islands are shutting schools and parks and setting up emergency shelters today as they expect to get the brunt of the bad weather.

I hate canceling for weather/surf, as I like money coming in, but sometimes you've got to look at it and allow for the fact that if you know a large portion of your typical guests are going to have a miserable time because of it, it might be best not to go out. If it's flat out unsafe I cancel, if it's just plain nasty but doable, I try to give people the option.... there was one time I had two customers and I gave them the option on a night trip, they insisted we had to go and spent the evening throwing up - most of the time people are happy to pursue other activities when it's that nasty.

So I'm trying a new video thingy today, I'm using Blogger's Google video hosting just to see how it looks vs. the Vimeo and Youtube videos I've used in the past. Here's a quick video of Magic Sands Beach, also called Disappearing Sands Beach or La'aloa Beach park, in Kailua. Much of the year it's a nice sandy boogie boarding beach, when the surf gets real high, all the sand is pulled out and it's a big rock pile.

later,

Steve

I hope this keeps up for a bit.


Untitled from Steve on Vimeo.

We had dolphins just outside the harbor, whales on the water on the way to the first dive, whales about a third of a mile outside the divesite on the second dive (they weren't singing, so the divers were unaware of them but I got a good look), and the divers saw a lot of good stuff on their dives.

Aloha,

Steve