Scuba Diving Vacations

That's what our group saw on one dive yesterday. I was captaining the dive so I missed out. I haven't seen a dragon moray in quite some time, I'm hoping it was at a spot it calls home and Bob can give me directions.

I haven't posted in a while, been very busy. Early in the month I was afraid it would be "slow", but I'm in the latter stages of working 15 days straight with several double shifts. Bob and I were both getting tired and since we didn't have anything scheduled for tonight as of yesterday, we agreed to pass on a charter for tonight if it came up... wouldn't you know it, I got a call last night.. I hate turning away business, but at some point I have to not overwork myself and Bob. Last minute bookings are never a guarantee, especially during the busy season. I do have a couple of extra people I bring on from time to time depending on their availabilities, but with the slow season coming soon I'd be a jerk for hiring someone as a "regular" and then laying them off 10 days later, I've seen it done elsewhere. If it turns out there is no slowdown, it's time to look to hire again.

Here's a shot of a Stripebelly Puffer (Arothron hispidus) I took on a night dive. These guys just seem to lay on the sand at night and are quite approachable, sometimes we will see small clear cleaner shrimp working them over when they are on the sand, but I didn't see any on this fish.

I'll try to pick up the posting pace if I can.

Aloha,

Steve

A little more about how nice diving is right now. On the first dive we moored off the north mooring at Golden arches. I could look down and see coral heads and pretty much under the archway from on the boat - now that's clear. Bob said the viz was spectacular. On our second dive we did a spot in next to the harbor that is gentle on the ears, one of our two students (just students that day) had ear clearing isses on the earlier dive. This site has a very gentle slope so is very easy to get to depth without struggling. I'm not exactly sure how far the mooring balls are apart there, but you could see the next one from just about 10 feet away from the one we were moored at.. and that was in the shallows where the viz was poor. We probably had 150' plus viz at depth. We did the 58 foot dive with no ear issues and saw some great stuff... three eagle rays, a huge school of Heller's barracuda, a leaf scorpion and a bunch of other neat stuff.

Today I was starting another class with academics and a pool session, Bob got the day off but it's back to the water for both of us tomorrow. We've got the students and some certified divers from last week signed up for another 3 days of diving.

Here's one of my favorite Hawaiian eels, a Zebra Moray (Gymnomuraena zebra). You don't see them out often, usually they are mostely buried in large coral heads. This one was actively poking around on one of our dives the other day. Neat looking fish.

Later,

Steve

We had great viz and other diving conditions today. I'm sort of on the front end of working at least 13 of 14 deys, likely will see that stretch lengthen before it slows down again later this month or early next month.

We've been going out with a couple of certified divers the last few days, and then had some Open Water certification students yesterday afternoon and today. We had lots of nice diving in that time.

This is a picture of an eagle ray that was at a cleaning station. We've got a spot where the eagle rays occasionally lay down and take a cleaning from the cleaner wrasses. You can see at least two wrasses, the little yellow and blue fish, picking parasites off this ray. I think there were actually four working the ray over at the time. I didn't really get all that close so as not to bother it while it was getting cleaned. This shot was probably from about 15 feet away, I used manual white balance to keep from getting too much of a blue cast which is so common in underwater pictures. I then did a little doctoring of the photo in photoshop, so the colors are a bit off/exaggerated.

I did the second dive today. We had all sorts of goodies. 3 eagle rays, large schools of fish, a school of probably 200 or more Heller's barracuda... lots of neat stuff.

I've got to head to bed... another class starts tomorrow.

Aloha,

Steve