.... and checked out one I'd completely underexposed. I kinda like it, so I thought I'd pass it along. You'll need to click on the pic in the blog to enlarge it to really see it as it's very dark.
OK, I was just looking at today's pics...
Nice day on the water.
We did a couple of dives today. I lead the second one. Highlights of the dive for me were a trio of Bandit Angels, 2 different flame angels (a smaller one at 60' and one that's a fairly reliable sight at a spot in 22' or so) a white tip shark, a group of 8 firedart fish, lots of blue trevally and a group of 3 Bigeye Jacks which I rarely have noticed. The boat which was leaving the mooring reported seeing a manta ray on their dive.
Here's a mediocre picture of one of the Bandit Angels. They weren't cooperative today. I've see some that you could approach to within a foot or two, these ones were tough to get within 5 feet of. Hopefully some day I'll have a real good shot of them, but this will give you an idea of what they are like. Hawaii has 4 species of angel fish that we frequently (if we are lucky) see - Flame, Bandit, Fisher's, Potter's - of which the Potter's is by far the most common. The Bandit, topping out at about 7 inches, is the only species of relatively large angel fish we have here, the others are considered to be dwarf angel fish, maxing out at roughly 2-4 inches depending on the species.
Tomorrow I have both morning and evening charters planned. My day should start around 7am and at around 10pm or so. So far Wednesday is planned to be a day off, unless I get calls.
Have a good evening.
Steve
Happy New Year to all!!
We had some huge surf yesterday and it's still up today so I cancelled the dive. It should settle down enough to go tomorrwo. I've yet to hear of any predictions for the next swell, so it hopefully will be business as usual for a bit. Today will be spent cleaning the vacation rental as we have guests coming in tonight.
Well, I blew it bigtime the other day. I woke up with sore sinuses so I figured my other crew member would do the dives. When I put the camera in the housing I noticed a bit of lint on the o-ring. Rather than take the time to clean it up and re-house the camera I decided to leave the camera home.
Man- O -Man, am I regretting that now. We had a 35 foot whaleshark offshore for over an hour. Boats were coming an going for at least that long. We spent probably 20 or so minutes on it. It was quite inquisitive, going from boat to boat and checking things out. After my other crew got his fill, I donned my gear and went down to about 15' depth for 5 or 6 minutes to watch. At one point the shark turned and came right to me head on, I had to lean back to keep from getting bumped. Pretty cool seeing a 3-4' wide mouth 3 inches from your face. It wasn't open so I didn't get a look inside to see if it resembles a manta's mouth. It's interesting that an animal so large has eyeballs roughly the size of a quarter.
Well, hopefully there will be other opportunities in the coming weeks. I've heard of 4-5 sightings in the last 3 weeks or so, but none where so many boats got to spend so much time with the sharks.
Here's a helmet snail. They feed on collector urchins. When we find one of these snails we can offer them an urchin. Sometimes they go for it.
Happy diving!
Steve