Scuba Diving Vacations

Aloha,

I've been quite busy with Wanna Dive this month. We've been doing charters nearly every day, with an additional one to two night charters each week. The goal is 7 mornings a week, and then the manta dive on Monday and Thursday evenings as well... nearly made it this month.

Yesterday it was a light load. We've been diving with a fun couple the last couple of weeks and it was just them for the day. Pat had the day off and decided to join in on the fun. Cathy and I took them to a spot that is pristine, likely one of the nicer dive sites in the state, that is out of the way and isn't dove that much. Pat had never been there and Cathy probably hadn't dove it in years. This is a cool site that frankly we aren't going to do unless conditions are right (they were yesterday) and we know the divers on the boat fairly well... there's some stuff at this site that a lot of newer or less careful divers might actually BREAK as it has a lot of our more delicate stuff. It was a really fun day for us.

Latest on water conditions... it's finally warming up. We've been seeing 77 degrees and I even had 79 in the shallows for a bit yesterday. The more typical summer water conditions seem to be settling in. I hope it keeps up. The manta dive is still HOPPING bigtime. We went a few nights ago and had 15 or so mantas, and last night's manta report had it at 27. If you or someone you know is coming to Kona in the near future.... YOU'VE GOTTA DO THE MANTA DIVE, even if you are just snorkeling... it's a world class activity, especially when it's going as big as it is now. Check my May 2008 archives if you haven't seen the video clip of the dive yet, that'll give you an idea of what it can be like on a very busy night.

So I was browsing through a few blogs today and ran across this blog from a diver in Saipan, which is outside of Guam. He has a bunch of photos of their local stuff and posts pretty regularly, it might be of interest to some of you. I figured I might as well post about some other blogs when I find stuff I find interesting. I hope to be able to travel some day, and Saipan might be an interesting place to go at some point.

This frogfish is one of the several I've seen in the last month or so. We found it on a drift dive up north right at the end of the dive. Luckily we had enough air to stick around and shoot a few shots before ascending.

Later,

Steve

With new photos.... I saw the tiny nudibranchs again, only this time I had my Inon closeup lenses attached to the camera housing. We dove the site that we were at the other week where I saw these guys. Bob took the divers out and I mentioned to look for these. Only one of the divers noticed them, but as soon as he said they were there I figured I had to hop overboard for a few minutes once Bob was back on board (a USCG Captain must be on board at all times).

I was down at the anchor looking around and I didn't see any and was beginning to wonder if the diver who said he'd seen them all over was just humoring me before I saw the first one, then suddenly I saw them all over. Once you see one, then suddenly you see them easily. I may have been generous in saying they're as large as Roosevelt's ear on a dime, they're probably smaller.

From a distance it looked as though they were on nothing but sand, but when I was taking pictures I kept noticing blurry areas. Turns out there was lots of clear algaes or other stuff layering the sand, the second photo does a good job of showing some of the stuff there.

I've finally got my closeups of these, whoohoo! Now if I really wanna have an interesting time, I'll have to grab my camera and do a night dive and really scrutinize about 1 square foot of sand. I did that one time without a camera years ago and found a scorpionfish and a few other critters that were near the same size as these guys.... there's lots of life we overlook.

Later,

Steve

The other week we were trying out a spot I'd never dove before (pretty cool spot) up north of the airport. This spot is north of the day use moorings so we were anchored in a sand patch next to the reef. I went to check the anchor at the end of the dive and noticed several of these little critters in the sand. I wish I had my closeup lenses on at the time, I'd love to get a good shot of these, this particular shot is really cropped and enlarged. This is a Siphopteron quadrispinosum, a type of nudibranch we see here (if you take notice anyway... they max out at a few millimeters in length) from time to time. To get a rough idea of their size, take a dime out of your pocket and look at Roosevelt's ear and it'll be pretty close to the same size as a good sized one. I've got a picture of three of them in the blog last June, take a look through the June '07 archives to see it. I'll have to keep my eyes open in the sand patches the next little while.

Tonight we did a reef night dive with some customers we have dove with already. Cathy dove it while I sat up top, she had great fun with it and came up quite excited... lots of neat stuff to see. Many of the dive operators here are rather invested in the manta dive and you hardly see anyone doing straight night dives on the reef any more here, we're trying to do them when we can get a group of interested divers as the straight night dives are really good and great fun for us (the crew) as well. It's a nice changeup to the manta dive, and so many things come out at night that you don't see during the day that it's quite exciting if you're a critter fan.