Scuba Diving Vacations

So I need to respond to a phone call I received last night which involves a specific inquiry I've been asked once or twice a year lately. The gist of the inquiries involve a specific online scuba training program offered by a specific business, not scuba certification agency, whose name I shall not mention. This business has a website promoting inexpensive online training that will give you a referral form for your open water course that is good "anywhere". BEWARE of such claims, do your homework. I told the guy on the phone to be careful, as I have been warned by PADI about a specific shop offering such a program - that indeed was the shop he'd run across.

There is a legitimate online open water training program offered by SDI (one of the large training agencies - by training agencies I mean structured organizations which produce training programs and have shops and instructors specifically affiliated with them worldwide - not an individual business), but so far this is the only one and I believe they make no clamis that ANY Instructor will honor it, it's an SDI program.

Most all of the scuba certification agencies do offer some sort of computer based self study, such as CD ROM or DVD instruction, SDI offers this and the online option.

I do know for a fact that PADI (the world's lagest scuba training agency) has at least at one point instructed their Instructors not to accept the referrals from the particular business this post is about. I corresponded with them about this last year and they said they had lawyers working on getting these guys to knock off with their claims.

So this post is not a plug for SDI, just a warning that if you are looking into online open water scuba training, do make sure that it is backed up by a specific recognized training agency with affiliated shops and instructors worldwide which offers that program. Also do remember, that most all agencies offer self study programs via book, CD or DVD... you have lots of options for legitimate dive self-instruction.

OK, rant over.

So here's another surgeon fish. I know it as a Naso Tang (Naso literatus) from the aquarium trade. It's also called Orangespine Unicornfish, Lipstick Tang, and probably another name or two. Notice the prominent twin set of orange spines on these guys. Surgenfish are primarily herbivores and spend their days scouring the reef of algae.

Several years back while on an intro dive just outside of the harbor, I saw a veritable river of these guys grazing it's way down the reef in a big school. I'm not talking a dozen or fifty, I'm talking a 6-8 foot wide and 80-100 foot long school of these guys, I figured at the time 600-900 of them in the school and I could've been underestimating the numbers. I can't think of a time that I've seen more than 8-10 together in all my other dives here. I guess it was ono of those one time occasions, I wish I had a camera of some type in hand. It's still one of the more amazing encounters I've had here.

Have a nice day,

Steve

OK, it's blabber time. Hawaii is blessed in that it's comfortable to barbeque here year round. Tonight I am making beer can chicken. The ingredients are simple... Chicken, beer cans, spices, smoking chips for the barbeque and either onions or apples.

I generally soak my chickens in a brine of soy sauce (sold here by the gallon for a coupld bucks), black pepper and garlic poweder. I mix up a concoction of spices: I use cumin, chili powder, garlic powder, black pepper, red pepper flakes, basil flakes an anything else that strikes my fancy at the time. Soak the chicken, spice it up, stuff an open (we're not making beer bomb chicken) beer can up it's rump and an onion or apple quarter down it's neck and barbeque it. Smoking chips make it all that much better.

Use your choice of beers, preferrably it should be one that you would enjoy the leftovers if you buy more cans than chickens. You could also try soda cans, although I've yet to make a taste test trial. It is VERY important to cook the birds over indirect heat - I've fried numerous chickens to the point that they were charcoal through and through. Once I figured out to heat the other side of the grill only, it got much better.

This chicken can turn out very good, or very bad. On a good day, it's way up there as far as chickens go, on a bad day you might as well eat burnt toast and drink some chicken broth, you might enjoy it more. On a good day, the beer, or whatever you use, steams the inside of the chicken and flavors it a bit, while the smoke and barbeque heat cooks it and flavors it from the outside. It can be very good... I'm ignoring mine right now as I write, I hope it turns out....

.... Ahhh, it turned out




Later,

Steve

It was another day off today. I've got a lot planned for the last half of the month, but it's quite slow right now. I'll get the occasional call the next little bit and fill in some days. I had someone call this morning and we set up some intro dives for Friday. Anyway, today was a fundive day for me. Another trip down the hill to take some photos. I didn't get anything spectacular, but managed to take a couple of photos which'll probably show up on the blog some day. I had high hopes of being able to record some whale singing, but no such luck.

This is a Unicorn Tang (Naso unicornis), also known as a Bluespine Unicornfish, from today. Tangs are a member of a family of fish also known as surgeon fish. They are named so because they all have some type of "scalpel" for defense where their tail joins their body. Scalpels will vary from species to species, some are obvious, such as the large blue blades of this fish, while some are retracted and only come out for fighting.

Here's a little Unicorn Tang story for you... When I was a kid, I think right before the ninth grade, my family went to Maui. We ended up at a beach and my sisters and I went snorkeling. At some point I went off on my own and saw a Moorish Idol and dove down to follow it. I was probably 8-12 feet down and followed it around a truck-sized rock, turned around and suddenly there was this 18 inch fish (it seemed bigger at the time) with a horn on it's head looking straight at me from about 12 inches away.... All's I could think at the time was "that coulda been a shark"... I was on the beach in 30 seconds and didn't go deeper than my waist the rest of the day.

Speaking of sharks... A NOAA researcher saw a great white shark up off Kohala recently and it made the papers. Here's the link to the local paper's article, you may need to sign up..
http://westhawaiitoday.com/articles/2006/02/01/local/local01.txt

Sharks are not really a problem here in Kona, even if we see them. Our water's so clear there aren't cases of mistaken identity. Kona has 2 verified shark attacks EVER, both happened about 2 months after I moved here - 1 was a boogie boarder after sundown, the other was a swimmer quite aways offshore at dusk - not the best times to be on the surface of the water splashing around. Both victims survived, but I do think the kid on the boogie board nearly lost his arm.

I love ending posts on a happy note!

later,

Steve