Monday, August 17, 2009

August 14th, 2009

Got to Torpedo Dive with Marcie today. We went to Kaloko Canyon and dove for 78 minutes. We saw a Viper Moray, two different groups of Psychedelic Wrasses, each with 1 male and about 7 or 8 females. After we dropped off the heavier breathers, Marcie and I went cruising out over the sand flats and saw about 8 different octopus, 2 large Indigo Dart Fish, Flagtail File Fish, Dragon Wrasses and a huge, terminal male Yellowstripe Coris. Awesome. Mike did dive #1 today at Nai'a Bay. It was the usual crowd pleaser with the typical after dive remarks, like "that was the best dive I've ever done." So all the usual critters were there. Maybe Marcie will list them for us. Marcie? You out there?? (Actually, a new client today, Doug, whose been out diving with our competitors this week said, "This was the best day of diving I've ever had!" Thanks Doug, for giving us the opportunity to show you around... hope to see you again!

August 13th, 2009

Fishing trip today. Went out to OTEC Buoy. (12 miles offshore, over 10,000 feet deep) Loaded up with small Big Eye Tuna. YUMMY!! My favorite dinner, and the folks from Texas got to learn why!!! Also saw a lot of Mahi Mahi's but couldn't raise them. We also saw Short Finned Pilot Whales and Beaked Whales. Beautiful day with flat, calm water. Kona has returned to normal following Tropical Depression Felicia.

August 12, 2009

Tropical Depression Felecia brought us rain all night. We awoke to a soggy boat. A beautiful sunny day and strong winds out of the South today. Tomorrow, things should return to normal.
Three tanks planned today with the first stop being the Naked Lady. Crazy with critters... Didn't find the frog fish or the shark today, but lots of other fun stuff to keep us busy. 3 Leaf Scorpion Fish, Long Nose Hawkfish, 8 Green Hawaiian Lionfish, Bicolor Anthius, Helmet Conch, Lantern Tobies, gobies, nudibranchs, shrimp, and much more.

Dive two and three we hid from the South wind at Nai'a Bay and Turtle Pinnacle. The snorkelers hung out with that big, male Green Sea Turtle for quite a while at Nai'a Bay and then swam with Hawaiian Spinner Dolphins at Turtle Pinnacle! The divers got to enjoy a Spotted Eagle Ray, about 50 Cornet fish, puffer fish, a couple big Yellow Margin Moray Eels, turtles, octopus and more!

Underwater, visibility was well over 100 feet. I wonder if they can say that in Florida and the Caribbean when a Hurricane, turned Tropical Depression, rolls on through. I doubt it. Kona is so awesome! 

August 11th, 2009

Tropical Depression Felecia has finally arrived. A beautiful sunny day in Kona with gusty winds coming out of the North. We hid from the wind along the south facing shores of Pine Trees. No fishing offshore today! Skull Cave and Freeze Face were both really nice underwater. We saw octopus, a nice variety of eels, including a Tiger Moray and Garden Eels, nudibranchs in Suck-em-up lava tube, a Seven Eleven Crab, Reticulated Cowreys in Skull Cave, and a Frog Fish.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

August 10th, 2009

Fishing trip this morning. We tagged and released two Pacific Blue Marlin. A good time had by all!

Night dive at Golden Arches. We decided to do a regular night dive because our returning clients had all seen the mantas before. This dive was awesome!! My first time to do Golden Arches at night, here's all the cool stuff we saw: A Hawaiian Conger Eel, Cusk Eel, White Stripe Urchin Shrimp, octopus, huge Spiny Lobster, Sculpted Slipper Lobster, Regal Slipper Lobster, sleeping Star Eyed Parrotfish, and a sleeping, large, terminal phase Ringtail Wrasse sleeping in a crevasse under the arch amongst the cup corals. On the safety stop we found a cool Speckled Scorpion fish out cruising around.  The highlight for most of us was the Textile Cone out hunting... it was cruising and looking for something to kill with its harpoon extended far out in front! So awesome. 

Monday, August 10, 2009

August 9th, 2009

Today we did Nai'a Bay and Pyramid Pinnacle. At Nai'a Bay, although there was a pod of Nai'a (dolphins) in the bay, we did not see them during the dive. Spotted Eagle Rays were seen by the deep divers, as well as the other usual suspects that live out in the sand... Garden Eels, the used-to-be white, turned orange striped, turned orange frog fish, ( I wonder if the one at Lone Tree Arch will do the same?) Everyone got to see a huge, male Green Sea Turtle, numerous times, and there were so many White Mouth Moray Eels, many of them out swimming around! We also got to see a Tiger Flat Worm, and the yellow frog fish that's still hanging around the mooring.
At Pyramid Pinnacle we saw the Long Nose Hawkfish, Tinker's Butterfly fish, a couple different octopus. Mike found a new large yellow frog fish. Nikki found White Margin Nudibranchs with eggs! We also got to see the two harems of female Flame Wrasses (they are about 10 feet away from each other) with the male swimming between them in full display, proudly marking his large territory. Beautiful!

August 8th, 2009

Today, we went to a reef that, as far as I know, does not have a name. It's the reef south of Shark Fin Rock and North of Kailua Pier. Doug and Vikki are here! (from L.A) (Doug Wakeman has a lot of photos on our dive page.... check out his work) Dee and Marcie also were out today. We decided to name the reef after our puppy, Kea. (Dee's idea) so here are the highlights from "Kea's Reef" today: 2 Spotted Eagle Rays, a Zebra Moray Eel, a Yellow Margin Moray getting cleaned by shrimp, an Undulated Moray, Banded Coral Shrimp, an Octo Coral garden larger than any we've seen on the Kona Coast before. On the safety stop we had a curious Great Barracuda come check us out. cool
At Lone Tree Arch, we had a Tiger Moray, Whip Coral Gobies and Two Frogfish. The white one is sharing it's antler coral with some kind of Elbow Crab. The white frog fish is so cool. It has an orange angler, a black striped tail and black toe tips. The other frog fish is right by the mooring and is bright yellow.

August 7th, 2009

Had a half day "fishing" charter... which turned into a marine mammal charter. We saw Short Finned Pilot Whales! Also, we had an amazing swim with Hawaiian Spinner Dolphins. It was one of those days where the dolphins were super social! There was about 150 animals in the pod and they were being very interactive often swimming right up to us and stopping just a couple of feet away! Next we saw something so rare and incredible... Dwarf Sperm Whales! Usually a super duper shy species, it's hard to get a good look at them, but on this day, we got close enough to get a good look. Lucky day.

August 2nd, 2009

What a great day! The Highlights:
The Naked Lady (sailboat wreck dive): 2 frogfish, one had pink frilly growths! 9 Green Hawaiian Lionfish, Longnose Hawkfish, White Tip reef Shark, the submarine payed us a visit during the dive! cool
Nai'a Bay: Dolphins!! Eagle Ray, 2 frogfish, a very small Helmet Conch cruising on the sand, Peacock Flounder, Peacock Razor Fish

pm Nai'a Bay: 2 Eagle Rays, Garden Eels, lots of moray eels, frogfish
night dive: no mantas, but everyone had an awesome time! On the dive, we saw a lionfish! Also, a slipper lobster, a flounder, lots of shrimp, lots of hunting Undulated Morays, and a couple of Stocky Hawk Fish. The snorkelers saw eels and a turtle! 

August 1st, 2009

High Rock and Nai'a Bay, highlights: An awesome, very large Zebra Moray Eel, we got a good look at it including its sweet face! We also saw a Hawaiian Swimming Crab, a few Whitemouth Moray Eels and an Octopus. We saw Spotted Eagle Rays and 4 more juvenile Hawaiian Hawkfish! It's awesome that we've been seeing so many of these juvenile hawkfishes, almost every day on almost every dive. There have been more this year than any other year I can remember. It will be interesting watching them grow up to see how fast they grow up and if the adults also continue to hang around our local reefs.

July 31st, 2009

We did Kaloko Canyon and Nai'a Bay. Mike Bynum found me a Titon Scorpion Fish!! Thanks, Mike, they are one of my favorites. I counted a total of 6 juvenile Hawaiian Hogfish. I saw 3 on each dive!

July 30th, 2009

Dolphins! Dove at Pyramid Pinnacle and Turtle Pie. Long Nose Hawkfish, Tinker Butterfly Fish, Flame Wrasses, octopus, lots of Moray Eels, Leapord Blenny, Frog Fish, Leaf Scorpion Fish, flat worms, A yellow and orange bumpy sea cucumber (I forgot the name) and at Turtle Pinnacle, we saw a turtle getting cleaned by Yellow Tangs and Orange Rimmed surgeon Fish.

July 29th, 2009

High Rock on Torpedoes! My favorite way to dive at one of my favorite places to do a Torpedo Dive! This massive reef is best explored on a Torpedo. We covered Wacky's and High Arch as well. Tons of cool critters, including mating octopus. The highlights that the divers who kicked instead of using the Torpedo didn't get to see, ( because they couldn't cover the kind of area we did and ran out of air) included, a white tip reef shark, a DRAGON Wrasse and one of the most awesome and frilly frog fish I've ever seen... ( and we've been lucky enough to see some really curmudgeony frog fish lately, this one had so much growth, it was beyond curmudgeony, it was FRILLY!)

July 27th and July 28th, 2009

On the 27th we went to Nai'a Bay and Skull Cave. The highlights were Spotted Eagle Rays, Red Stripe Pipefish, Whip Coral Shrimp, Peacock Razor Fish, Horned Helmet Conchs, octopus, wide variety of moray eels. It was our first visit to Skull Cave in quite a while since summertime brings the south swell, which makes Skull Cave super surgy. it was nice however and we saw a White Tip Reef Shark (Lala Kea)

The dive on the Naked Lady on the 28th, was off the hook!! We have not dove there in so very long, but heard from Dee that there were lots of cool critters hanging around. She was right. Our action-packed 26 minute bottom time brought on the following plethora or marine life: A chill Lala Kea hanging around on the sand, 8 Green Hawaiian Lionfish, Frog fish, a Longnose Hawkfish, Curious Wormfish everywhere, a HUGE Ewa Blenny, a HUGE Peacock Flounder, Flagtail Filefish, Bicolor Anthius, a Helmet Conch, a few Peacock Razor Fish, an octupus, and a TON of Domino Damsel Fish. The water reached 81 degrees for the first time this summer! YAY!
Our second dive was a drift around Kaiwi Point. The highlights were, A Tiger Moray out and about. I think Mike Smith got some good pictures. We also saw a Zebra Moray, Belted Wrasses and Tinker, Flame and Banded Angel Fish.

July 26th, 2009

Okay, I got a little behind with the blog. That's what happens when you work 17 days straight, with 9 of those days being morning trips AND night trips. So the next few blogs are a little spotty, but I'm going to get caught up so I can get back on track, blogging daily. 
Mike, Theresa and Linda are here! haven't seen the Smith's from Ohio in two years! We missed you guys! Theresa, if you read this blog for the dates you were here, please feel free to fill in the gaps! 
We did Golden Arches again, because I really wanted to show M,T and L the two frog fish we found yesterday. I wasn't really expecting to find either one, and we found BOTH! The black one was near where it was yesterday and the big grey one was about 20 feet from where it was yesterday also. (by the way, I'm writing this on 10th of August, and we haven't seen either one ever since. My point is, you have to enjoy and appreciate every moment, you never know when it may be your only chance to see a particular animal)
Another highlight for me was the two White Stripe Urchin Shrimp, which were on the spiny urchin that the black frog fish was hiding under. They are awesome! Purple with a white stripe down the middle of their back, these two were the biggest I've ever seen, almost two inches long. We did another dive after that, (Theresa... help! I know your detailed log is filled with every critter found!) followed by a Manta Dive at night, there were over a half dozen rays. Aloha.