Scuba Diving Vacations

This is a picture of a male Blue Boxfish I took last month before my flash died on the camera. The blue really pops out on this one.

It was a gorgeous day today. We've had a fair amount of rain the last couple weeks, but it's been dry today.

The manta dive has been hopping... we had 10 last night and Bob and my friend, who's boat I'm using, are out on another charter tonight with another group. Our little stretch of charters is done for a few days after tonight and then it get's busy again.

OK... Whohoo!! On the charter two days ago we went to a site where we had a fish that is among our more rare fish here in Kona - the cousin of the Blue Boxfish, the Whitley's Boxfish. We actually see the females of this particular species with good frequency, but the males are very infrequent. I've seen one maybe 5 times, Bob's seen one in Kona maybe once or twice (we've both seen dragon morays more than male Whitley's). So I briefed it and described it and one of my customers actually found it on the site!!!! I didn't have enough time to wait for it to get into a good lighting situation (remember, my flash died) but I did manage to snap a couple shots that at least showed up. I'll post pictures of it a post or two from now.

Speaking of rare fish!! Tonight's charter was sort of a divided charter, we did the first dive with a couple of divers, and then met another group who was going to dive on the night dive. On the first dive, Bob found a Hawaiian Morwong. It's the first one he's ever seen here, I've yet to see one. I'm hopeful I can see it and get a shot at some time.

later,

Steve

We had some good dives today. I've got a fun family group of 6 on board for a few days. Today we had a couple of nice dives. Highlights of the dives included moray eels, Bandit angels, a couple of flame angels, puffers, a rather large spotted eagle ray, and other cool stuff. Oh yeah, did I mention dolphins? I took this pic this morning, it's in grayscale and the contrast is turned up so it shows... dolphins sort of blend into the blue of the ocean so it's really tough to get a great photo unless you are only a few feet away. We don't get dolphins while on dives all that often, we usually see them on the surface but not underwater, but sometimes we get lucky, this time I actually had a camera on hand. This group probably came within 20-30 feet of us a couple of times.

...more later.....

Steve

We just had an earthquake about 5 minutes ago... and it lasted about as long as the title of this post, one nice little pop, maybe a fraction of a second but strong enough to know it wasn't our dog falling over (she's getting up there in age and sometimes trips up). It's the first one I've felt in a few months. Here's the link - http://tux.wr.usgs.gov - The red square (if you read this today or tomorrow) just south of Ho'okena is the one.

Gotta hit the hay, I have to be up about 6 tomorrow to get to an early charter.

Good night.

Steve