Scuba Diving Vacations

We've had some really great scuba diving in Kona lately. We did a night dive on Friday night, there was very little plankton but we had 6 manta rays putting on a good show for the crowd. I thought I'd have several days off the last few days, but I got a phone call or two and have been going out every day. Tonight we do the manta ray night dive again.

We've had a fun couple on board the last few days that have been diving here for years and are new to us. They were quite complementary yesterday, said they'd seen more new species on this trip than any dives here they can recall... part of that was site selection, part the fact that Cathy, Bob and I are into the fish and look hard, and part sheer luck - any given day you know. Anyways, it's been fun diving for both the passengers and the crew.

Their only complaint yesterday was after the first dive they mentioned... the dive would have been great, but every time they saw some cool fish to look at the dolphins would get in the way! They had a really good dolphin dive yesterday, along with a bunch of critters that were kind of uncommon. We've lucked into about 3 or 4 really good dolphin dives the last few weeks. I wish we could guarantee that, but it's kind of the luck of the draw.

I do have to report that the water temperature has dropped 3-4 degrees suddenly the last couple of weeks... brrrrrr... it's not really all that cold, but when you are used to 79/80 and it suddenly becomes 76/77 you feel the difference. I may be moving up in wetsuit thickness this winter if it drops below 74 again (last year it got down to 71 - very rare for here, it usually bottoms out around 74 degrees in the winter).

Here's an old (and not the best) shot of a Chevron Tang. We're seeing a lot of the 50 cent to silver dollar sized juveniles out right now, they're exceptionally brightly colored at that size, this photo doesn't do them justice. They become a large black tang as they mature.

Later,

Steve

Manta rays visit scuba divers in Kona Hawaii from Steve on Vimeo.

Here's a short video of mantas from last year that I took with my Canon G9 on a manta ray night dive. There were 4-5 that particular night. Last night we had only a few boats on the site, fewer divers than when this video clip was taken, but there were LOTS of manta rays. Bob said there were at least 15 when he came up, later on during cleaning up the boat a videographer came by and said they'd watched the tape and could name (the mantas have individual markings) 21 in the tape.... so imagine this times 4 or 5 and you've got an idea of what it might be like last night for the better part of an hour.

Very cool night.

Speaking of cool nights... it's cooling down here in Kona district. When I got up this morning it was 64.....Brrrrrrr... for here (I live at 900 feet down in the Captain Cook area, we're typically a bit cooler than down in Kailua. December hasn't even hit. Part of the reason we're having cool nights is there's very little moisture in the air for here, it's dry and sunny during the days and then cooling off well at night without the cloud cover we usually build. Water temps have cooled down as well. Bob had 76 on the computer throughout the dive today.

Aloha,

Steve

We've got a morning charter and then the night charter coming up tomorrow. I was told by a friend from another company the final count for manta rays on the night dive on Friday was 16 - Hopefully that'll keep up for a while.

Today was another internet battle. I've been working a bit on the website since we migrated over to our new web address and I tried to upload the new information and couldn't manage to get it done. When I talked to the tech support, they tried a few things and managed to crash the site. Took all day to get it all working again. I gotta hand it to Fatcow (my new webhost) though, the tech support is quick to respond (their "heiffercratic oath" swears they'll respond in 2 minutes, although I think it might have been 3 minutes on one call I made) and it's here in the USA so there aren't any language barriers.

Google's indexed my new website address and it's starting to make the slow climb back to the first page. As people stumble across my "de-hyphenated" address in the web search results and spend time on the website it'll climb up in position. I'm hoping the old results go away on their own fast.

Here's a couple of divers checking out a school of Raccoon Butterfly Fish (Chaetodon lunula). We have a couple of spots where we have good sized groups of these that haven't moved from their home base coral head or rock in the ten years I've been diving here.