Scuba Diving Vacations

I was just visiting another blog and noticed this post by Andrew from "A Darker View" which is a great blog largely about astronomy and also has a fair amount of posts about his Big Island diving experiences. He managed to get a shot of an oddball jelly on the reef. We rarely see them on the reef, but a few weeks back there was a 4 day span of strangeness where the viz was well over 200' and there were crown jellyfish, comb jellies and other deep water stuff on the reef for a couple of days. Kinda neat. I took my camera down on one dive that week and saw a few things and realized too late that I'd left my memory card in the computer at home. I'm glad he got a shot of one while they were around. It's something you normally need to a blackwater dive to see.

Nice.

We've had a pretty good sized south swell lately, but as long as you're at a dive site that faces somewhat north the diving's been pretty darned good. Water temperature is still sitting at 78-79 degrees.

We've got a pretty busy week lined up ahead, it's been kind of slow the last two weeks. Kinda wierd, I get 2 or 3 days off the boat in a row and it feels like I haven't been on in weeks... earlier this year I'd been going out 5-6 days a week pretty much, so one slow period isn't all that bad of a deal. The rest of the summer is shaping up pretty nicely on the pre-bookings. The last two years we had less pre-arranged diving and lots of last minute divers calling in, this year we seem to be back to people arranging dives in advance... I have at least a few days of diving arranged every month through October, nice for us, now we need to continue filling in the empty spots.

Here's a photo of a frogfish some of you may recall from my first year of blogging. It's about 6-7 inches long and just at the stage where it's between the juvenile yellow coloration and turning to whatever color it's gonna be in the future. They tend to take on the corloration of thier surroundings... always possible this one spends it's time in about 30 feet of water hanging out around finger corals, as that's the color it currently is, but it could change some as it gets older. They get so tough to spot once they mature.

Later,

Steve

I've been messing with my Wanna Dive website and figured out how to add a simple slideshow to the front page, hopefully it works here too.

Kona and the Big Island have a lot of things to do... hiking, the volcano, para-sailing, dining, shopping, beaches, ziplines, world class golf, horseback riding tours, ATV tours, stargzing, nature tours, waterfalls, rainforests, botanical gardens, biking, kayaking, whale watching, etc.... but if you come here and you don't make it into the water with a mask.... you're missing out!

The Kona side of the Big Island is probably Hawaii's top overall snorkel and dive spot... lots of healthy reefs, very good viz, lots of varieties of fish (some of which you are unlikely to see on the other islands - try to find black longnose butterflyfish and lined butterflyfish elsewhere in the state, they're fairly common here), all day snorkeling and diving (the volcanoes block the tradewinds so it doesn't get crazy choppy in the afternoon most days), the manta dive (considered to be one of the top dives in the world), great snorkeling right in shallow water, generally calm and current free waters, and teriffic shore and boat diving. It's a great spot for both snorkelers and divers. There are beginner level snorkeling sites that are fantastic, and if you like the snorkeling, you can try an intro dive - no experience necessary - and get under the water for a terriffic time. Kona is a great spot for water activities.

Sorry for the commercial hype type of post, but Kona really is a great place... and I really wanted to see if the self made slideshow works and needed something to say.

Later,

Steve