Category Archives: Kona

Bioflourescence, Kona, Uncategorized, wide angle

What are the odds?

Gallery Leave a comment

arch-with-diver-1-of-1On the trip to Kona I did 22 dives during a week spread out over 20 dive sites.  The dive sites were sprinkled along the Kona coast over about  60 miles of coastline.  Each site had its own unique characteristics, but there were many similarities.  The hard coral for the most part looked pretty much the same.

Before each dive we would get a dive briefing and I would alway being listening to get a sense of the types of animals that we might see during the dive as well as about the reef structure and other features of the particular site. Of course, I was always trying to get a sense of whether I should rig the camera for wide-angle shooting or macro.  Many times I would ask the crew the night before whether I should rig the camera for wide-angle or macro because it takes quite a bit of time to get the camera set up if I have to change from one setting to another.

For the most part the crew was pretty good at estimating whether the next day would be good for wide-angle or macro photography.  Nevertheless, as Murphy’s law would suggest there were times where I guessed wrong.  Now shooting a small animal with a wide-angle set up is not the end of the world, it’s just frustrating.  (Kind of like being asked to hit off the golf tee with a putter or sink a put with a driver.  Yes, it can be done, because I’ve tried it, but I don’t recommend it.  For me and golf it just adds another layer of frustration to an already frustrating game.)

halgerda-terramtuentis
Halgerda-terramtuentis, –yes that little blob on the left hand corner with the iridescent skin is a nudibranch

Shooting a macro subject with a wide-angle lens is similarly frustrating.  If you get the critter in the image you end up cropping to the point that the image ends up pretty small.  And, you rarely get the detail that I would want to see with a macro lens.  In this instance, you could count the spots on the little guy’s back.  Now he was less than an inch in length so trying to find him was just dumb luck.  Nevertheless, there he was on dive 20 and I doubt that anyone else saw him. Now of course, one of my recurring dreams is to be able to swim with and shoot whales, but with my luck it will probably be a day when I’m rigged for macro.  I will probably get a good shot of the eye and then be relegated to shooting barnacles on the whale’s back.  Oh well it would still be a good story.

Belize, Cayman Islands, Kona, Mexico, Uncategorized, wide angle

Have you seen undersea animals hunting in pairs?

Gallery Leave a comment

Sometimes when we are underwater, we see cooperation between fish from the same species hunting for food.  When I see that kind of behaviour, I think, now that is an interesting cooperative skill. Nevertheless, when we see fish or other animals from different families cooperating to hunt for food together, that is unusual and is well worth watching.

When we were in Hawaii I was somewhat surprised to see a white mouthed moray eel team up with a tivoli to hunt for food.
hunting-pair-2-1-of-1
Now in the middle of the day to see a free-swimming moray eel is fairly uncommon.  But to see a free-swimming moral eel hunting with another species of fish is even more unlikely, and certainly is interesting — at least to me.  I watched this pair swim together and chase several smaller fish into holes in the reef.  I did not see them have any success in hunting.  But I could imagine that a ray which could easily get into relatively small holes in the reef could be a very helpful hunting buddy.  I could easily imagine the ray either catching and eating a small fish in the hole, or chasing out the small fish into the awaiting jaws of the tivoli.  Of course the opposite could be true.  the tivoli could chase a smaller fish back to the reef and into the awaiting jaws of the moray eel.

Similarly, on several occasions I have seen snappers hunt with southern rays.   The first time I saw  that behaviour was on a shark dive in Playa del Carmen.  We were waiting for the sharks to come in when the first pair through the dive site was a southern ray and snapper apparently hunting for scraps.  I was just hoping that I was not part of the scraps.   Now I have seen the benefit of these partnerships between rays and snappers on several occassions.  The ray stirs up the bottom looking for food and the snapper gets the left-overs that squirt out the gills of the ray.  I have seen southern rays feeding with a snapper in Cayman Brac, Belize, and Mexico.  I suspect this kind of cooperative hunting goes on all over.  Regardless of how often it may occur, I still never get tired of observing it.

a-hunting-pair-1-of-1

Kona, Uncategorized, wide angle

Have you been to Mantaville off the Kona Coast?

Gallery Leave a comment
  • It was 7:15 p.m. when we got ready to get in the water. It was dark and you could only see as far as your dive light would penetrate.  The divers were all pretty excited.  As the dive was briefed, we were supposed to try to stay on the bottom so as not to interfere with the glide path of the mantas.  It took us about 7 minutes to get from the boat to the place on the dive where we would circle up around a big light which hopefully would attack plankton that the mantas would like to feed upon. The dive master put a sola 8000 in a milk crate and
  • turned it on and  pointed up.
  • I was just getting situated when I saw a manta fly over my left shoulder.  It was all I could do to try to squeeze off one shot before he was out of range.  My initial thought was wow, this could be good.
  • We settled in to the site and I would periodically turn on my video light and search around.  I left my focus light pointed up in hopes of drawing in the mantas.  Then we waited, and waited and waited.  At about 38 minutes into the dive I was bored and thinking that the mantas had just been teasing us.
  • There was a surge so I dumped all of the remaining air in my BC in hopes of staying on the bottom near the manta light.  Staying in one place  had proven to be quite tough for me in the surge. Try as I might, I stayed in roughly
  • the same area for most of the dive albeit I was having to work to stay there because the surge kept blowing me about.
  • At about the 40 minute mark I turned on the video light, put some air in the BC and started hovering above the bottom.   I started hovering in large part because I was tired of getting banged around the coral by the surge.  My “robo” camera was like having a sail tied to me and the surge just pushed me around the bottom.  I was getting jostled around pretty good and not seeing much.
  • I was just piddling around checking out the site when I saw someone’s flash go off.  I turned in the direction of the flash and could see a single manta swimming through the water column.   He seemed pretty close so I took a couple of shots. A few moments later one more manta swam through.  This one seemed to like my video light so I just hovered and watched him come in through the view finder, waiting to snap off a picture until I could see he was pretty close.
  •  I snapped off a couple of shots and just stood my ground. He keep coming and coming. I kept shooting.
  • A few moments after that that the manta had swum through the site and the dive was over based on time.  We swam back to the boat and only once on board did I take a look at the images. One really close one and some almost shots. While on board the dive master asked me if I had been hit by the last manta we saw.  I said I didn’t think so. He showed me some video he shot that you could see the manta flying at my light and then it looks like I was bumped. Maybe I was bumped but it was nothing compared to the surge.
  • Oh well that is the thing about large animals. They are rare, unpredictable but very special to see in person.
Kona, Uncategorized, wide angle

Do you like mud bugs?

Gallery Leave a comment

close up lobster-1

Alright I know, mud bugs are technically crayfish, but to me lobsters are just a bigger version.  And, fortunately, more meat to eat.   I was thinking after a week of diving off the Kona coast that in 24 dives I had seen two lobsters.  Now, granted the two lobsters I did see were quite large, probably 5 pounds or more a piece, but that was far fewer than what I usually see when we are diving in the Caribbean.

A Kona Lobster on the coral head
A Kona Lobster on the coral head

Maybe I was diving in the wrong place to see them. But it reminded me that what is plentiful in one part of the sea is often times quite rare in another part of the sea.  So I guess I should look forward to the next trip to the Caribbean and seeing lots of lobsters.

In this little hole there were well over a dozen little Caribbean lobsters off the coast of St. Vincent.  lobster insanity-1

 

Kona, wide angle

Have you been diving at Stoney Mesa off the southern tip of Kona?

Gallery Leave a comment

stoney brook 1-1
Stoney Mesa was the first dive we did on our week aboard the Kona Aggressor. The water was a pleasant 79 degrees and we had at least 80 feet of Viz. The structure of the reef is awesome.  Enormous lava flows had flowed into the ocean and created immense cliffs to swim around.  The fish life was abundant.   The small fish were very adept at swimming between the branches of coral only to reappear moments later.

Gearing up was easy and we had plenty of room.  We dove nitrox all week and even though I only did 24 of the 27 possible dives as usual I found nitrox a huge help with recovery.

stoney brook 1 part 2-1

I was eager to duck down and see the fish life. I was not disappointed. Lots of small fish and some very interesting middle-sized fish. I saw one moray eel who was well hidden in the coral.

The surge was quite strong at several points so I  had to wait until the surge passed by and then kick like crazy to get past the choke off points where the passage ways in the reef structure got fairly narrow. The Sun had come out and the light on the reef was awesome. I was amazed at the colors of some of the fish; I am going to have to get a fish book for this area.

sea star with coral heads

Kona, Uncategorized

Have you seen Manta’s at night?

Gallery Leave a comment

Not long ago, I had a chance to do two night dives with the potential of seeking manta rays off the Kona coast. The first night I was all geared up and we were swimming to the site. Just before we reached the site I looked up and a manta buzzed right over my head. My initial thought was: wow, this could be good. The manta made two passes and I took a couple of shots that were ok, but I was hoping there would be a few more passes so I could hone my timing in on the manta’s pace. I was actually quite surprised at how fast he blew by me. Yeah, I know I am slower that a turtle, but that manta was fast. Well, as happens with many opportunities to watch for animals, you can wait and you can wait. The manta made one more pass about 35 minutes later and that was the end of it.

Well I could not complain. I had seen a manta. I had gotten off a few snaps and I wasn’t even that cold in my 2mm shorty. But my hopes were that on Thursday night we would see more than one manta and they would make more than a few cursory passes.

Well we were lucky. We saw at least 10 mantas and they were pretty active for our 70 minute dive. Now the environment at the second site was totally different. Night one was just a few divers and one manta. Night two there were 20 dive boats, at least 60 divers a lot of snorkelers and 10 mantas making a variety of passes. There did come a break in the action early on where the mantas seemed to stop making passes through the site. It’s about that time I got into it with a photographer who decided she was better than the rest of us. All of the divers but one were circled around the lights that were on the bottom of the ocean and they were facing inward. Not her, she put herself inside the circle and faced outward shining her lights in any diver’s eyes that were close to her. I was within three feet of her and I was not happy. After one of the local instructors chewed on her she still wasn’t moving. It is rather hard to cuss some one out through a regulator, but it is a helpful talent I have developed. I’m guessing she got my message because after I finished telling her what I thought of her behaviour, she flipped me off, and she moved away from me. Now, it might have had something to do with my shining my 4000 lumen video light in her face, but she moved off not long after I was done “talking to her”. Nevertheless, inspite of the challenges, I shot over 200 images and a little bit of video during the dive. Some of the images were very good, and some were interesting. The whole scene had a rock concert feel to it. At about 50 minutes most of the divers had cleared out. The last 20 minutes were awesome. So here is the link to the video from the show.