Scuba Diving Vacations

We've had family in the last week. Pat had a day off and we all went out to Ocean Rider out at the Natural Energy Lab for their little tour.

The Natural Energy Lab is out on Keahole Point, just south of the Kona airport. It originally was a science lab where they were working on using cold water piped up from the deep to try to create electricy. Nowadays the water is more used for various aquaculture projects, although I believe they are putting in another electric research project.

One of the aquaculture projects is Ocean Rider, which concentrates on raising seahorses for the aquarium trade. They've started offering tours of the faciltiy. It's sort of interesting from an aquaculture standpoint, it's pretty much a typical hatchery setup, with more atypical creatures being raised. Not sure what my family thought, it was kind of a spendy tour, but worth it once. Probably the highlight for most taking the tour is a chance to get to stick your hands in a big vat and have a seahorse hang on to your fingers.

The pic above is of a bunch of Bluestripe Snapper (Lutjanus kasmira), known locally as tiape. These fish were introduced back in the late 50's with the theory that the original Hawaiians came from the Marquesas (although the large majority of Hawaiians actually come from later waves of immigration from other polynesian island states), the Hawaiians would love this fish as it's a popular food fish in the Marquesas. Dumb idea. It's considered to be a pest by local fishermen. They eat everything and really don't make much of a good food fish. Anyway, they are quite common in some spots and often hang out in large groups. This group is part of a group that is pretty much always under the south arch at Golden Arches.

Steve

These are a really cool little shrimp. I took an underwater photo of them at an undisclosed location sometime in the last few weeks. I think many of the dive ops know of this particular pair, but everyone keeps it quiet.

These are Harlequin Shrimp ( Hymenocera picta or Hymenocera elegans, depending on who you read) aka Clown shrimp. They are one of the most unique and colorful shrimp we see. I first came across these guys in the aquarium trade. They eat nothing but starfish, unless maybe the occasional feet off urchins. Back in the day when I was keeping and selling marine fish we would see these on occasion. People would actually set up an aquarium for them and another for starfish, then throw a starfish into the shrimp tank 'til they manage to rip off a leg then pull it out. Several days later they'd throw another starfish into the tank while the earlier victim recovered. Starfish can grow back limbs, so theoretically, several relatively inexpensive starfish could keep a pair of Harlequin Shrimp going indefinitley.

In Hawaii, these shrimp likely feed off blood stars (I think I have one pictured somewhere in the archives) and the occasional linkia star. We had a pair of Harlequins near an arch just north of High Rock for several years that various DMs used to feed blood stars on a regular basis. One year we had particularly large surf and the spot they were living at was damaged and we never saw them again.

Several years ago there was a teacher at one of the local high schools who actually bred them, had a web page, and sold them. He apparently fed them crown of thorns stars. These are huge stars, so I bet one could feed a pair for a looooong time. I haven't looked at that site in years. If I can find it again, I'll post it here.

In other news... I recently started a mailing list. It's an opt in system and tonight I sent out a bazillion confirmations, one to most everyone who's contacted me over the years... I hope nobody was offended. If you are reading this and you've contaced me before and receive the message... just ignore it if you aren't interested, or sign up if you are curious, you can opt out at any time. For anyone else who's curious, I have a link on the right side of the blog where you can opt in for my Wanna Dive mailing list. I won't be giving the info to anyone else, and likely won't be putting out an e-mail more than 3-4 times a year I suspect. I don't want to bombard anyone with SPAM, I get 150-300 pieces of junk mail a day myself I have to filter through. It gets to be bothersome because occasionally I probably miss legitimate e-mail.

later,

Steve

Aloha,

These guys are found at depth off Kona by the thousands. This short eel video was taken in a single spot, there are acres of these guys at this location.

Hawaiian Garden Eels (Gorgasia hawaiiensis)are a plankton feeding eel which spends it's life buried in the sand with it's head sticking out feeding all day long. According to divemaster/instructor/boat captain Bob, these guys grow to about 70 feet long - Prove him wrong! Actually, we usually only see about 12-18 inches of these critters sticking out, they'll back down into their burrows as you approach and they never do seem to get their entire body out, so you never know. The books put them at maybe a couple feet long.

This was taken at Garden Eel Cove, which is also home of the Manta Ray night dive. It's one of the locations we tend to see Garden Eels shallower than their typical 80 feet and deeper. At this location they are relatively used to people so you can slowly approach to within a few feet without them completely backing into their holes, in other areas you are lucky to get within 15-20 feet of them and still see them.

later,

Steve