Diving the Kona Coast: May 2010

Monday, May 24, 2010

Dive Report for Saturday 05/22/10

A mild swell and gloomy skies greeted divers at Honaunau this past Saturday. For my first dive, I descended right off the "ALOHA" to visit the Longfin Anthias on their little coral head. I like to shoot photos of them every now and then trying out different approaches and angles.

The male remains as bold as ever and the females are getting less shy as well.

This female was feeding on some organic matter in the water column. It's not the greatest photo, but I like that it shows the fish with its mouth open ready to eat.

I caught this group of Yellowfin Goatfish being groomed by a Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse.

I rarely can get a photo of a Yellowtail Coris as they move so swiftly and erratically. This time I was fast enough.

When I get a little frustrated trying to photograph fast-moving fish, I take a break and shoot something that moves really slowly, like this Needle-Spined Sea Urchin.

On the second dive I came across this Juvenile Commerson's Frogfish. This is the second one I've seen this month. Maybe there's a population boom going on. This one was sitting right out in the open in a field of rocks.

My report ends with this head-on shoy of a small Whitemouth Moray nestled in the coral. Have a nice week!

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Dive Report for Sunday 05/16/10

As you can see, it was a great day for diving with the dolphins in Honaunau Bay!

I'll just let the photos speak for themselves!

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Dive Report for Saturday 05/08/10

A rather drab and overcast day, weather-wise but the ocean conditions were pretty good with only a tiny bit of surf. It was one of those days when things just didn't seem to go right. My strobes, which worked perfectly on the pre-dive check, were incredibly frustrating while I was underwater. The right strobe failed totally and the left strobe only worked about a quarter of the time. Very gratifying, especially since it was too overcast to shoot with ambient light. Of course, when I got home they worked perfectly.

You can tell I might have had a bad day when my lead-off photo is this Iridescent Cardinalfish. Pretty drab but this is probably the best photo I have of one as I don't do much night diving. It was so overcast this morning that a lot of these were out.

This honu was very mellow and hung around me for a long time which favored my 1 out of 4 or 5 successful strobe ratio.

Even though green sea turtles are easy to come by, this girl was the high point of this morning's dive. The low light kind of worked well giving some extra contrast to the wide angle captures.

This Yellowmargin Moray was sticking straight out of a small wall near the shoreline. It was a little shy but I managed to get this one useable photo.

These two Longenose Butterflyfish were caught picking at the coral in unison.

This Threadfin Butterflyfish is still sporting its muted "night-time" color scheme with the white portions slightly dulled. Again, perhaps due to the darkness of the day.

I have a spare flash unit in storage that I put there because it wasn't working properly. I'm going to use it to replace my current right strobe and hopefully will get more flashes out of it.

Hopefully, next week I'll have more and better material to offer you! Aloha

Friday, May 7, 2010

Belated Weekend Dive Report for 5/02/10

This was a busy week and I just didn't have time to post until now. Last week I had a really great pair of dives in Keauhou Bay with lots of big animal contacts that I just hadn't been getting at Honaunau recently.

One thing that is almost a constant in Keauhou Bay is the "baitball". A huge swirling mass of what appears to be thousands of Bigeye Scad or akule. The location of the ball changes but it's always somewhere in the bay. My camera's wide angle lens can't capture the whole "baitball" but I took this photo as I descended through its "eye".

At the bottom of the baitball it's almost as dark as night. Down there, big Greater Amberjacks cruise slowly waiting to make a quick lunge and pick off one of the akule.

Another thing you can almost always count on seeing at Keauhou Bay is Horned Helmet shells. They are usually half-buried in the sand, but I pulled this one out for a quick photo before replacing it in the sand.

I had very nice manta encounters on both dives and got a lot of photos. In these two, a big girl gets a thorough grooming by two Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse. The Cleaning stations are perfect for good close-up photo opportunities.

Any encounter with Mantas is a great experience and in Keauhou Bay they tend to linger in discrete areas for long periods of time.

This Crown-of-Thorns was creeping along the rubble bottom and wasn't threatening any coral at the moment.

This Amberjack came up to me and circled several times. I was far from the baitball and the jack seemed to be heading out to the deeper waters outside the bay. Maybe he had his fill of akule.

I had another jack encounter with this Bluefin Trevally or omilu. This one was on the smallish side and followed me around for a few minutes. Sometimes smaller predators like to follow around bigger predators hoping for a chance to snatch some scraps. Maybe this fish thought I was a big carnivore.

These fish are mostly silver but have really cool-looking, neon-bright blue fins which make them a real treat to see.

That's all the photos I have for now. Hopefully, I'll get in the water this weekend and take some more!

Aloha

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Ocean Fair at Jack's Diving Locker

This past Saturday Jack's Diving Locker held an Ocean Fair which included diving seminars on various subjects as well as craft and game activities for the kids. We took our six-year-old grandson Jacques to the Fair where he got to try out kid-sized SASY scuba gear in the pool. While he had a little trouble with the mask, he was a natural with the regulator and had a good introductory experience.

Jacques was eager to try out the regulator.

His instructor was Wendy who was excellent and very patient.

He looked awful cute.

"I can see my feet!"

Probably as much as anything else, Jacques enjoyed the bubbles from the free-flowing regulator.

The Ocean Fair was an excellent experience for Jacques and I would recommend anyone with kids who are interested in the sea to attend next year's fair.