Those dark spots are the reef reaching up to grab the boat
Belize is about the size of Massachusetts, so we are not talking about a large land mass, at least for someone from Texas. Belize is lucky because off it’s coast is the second largest reef system in the world. The Meso American reef stretches the entire length of the coast of Belize and carries over to the Riviera Maya in Mexico to the north, and down to Honduras to the south.
There are quite a few islands off the coast of the mainland. Perhaps the most famous islands include San Pedro, and Caye Cauker. What becomes obvious if you fly into Placencia, is that there are quite a few islands not far from the mainland. Many of the islands and islets have interesting names such as Ray Caye, South Caye, Silk Caye ect. Some are have houses or other buildings on them. Some are not much more than a palm tree or two and maybe a mangrove tree or two. But sandwiched among a number of the islands is an area that from a sailing perspective is a fairly difficult area to navigate. In the “bad lands” the water tends to be shallow, and the reef is not particularly well charted.
Ten years ago when we first sailed into the bad lands with a very capable South African captain, he told me that he really watched his gps chart constantly because he did not want to run aground. He explained and it became pretty obvious fairly quickly that the reef was very shallow and rose and fell without a lot of warning. Our captain 10 years ago followed exactly the same track on each trip, just so he would not run aground. Ten years later we sailed with a Belizean captain. Captain David knew the bad lands like the back of his hand, but still he was careful to watch the shadows in the water to make sure the reef did not reach up and grab our boat.
But because the bad lands are pretty shallow they make an excellent place to go snorkeling.
Are the bad lands deep enough to dive, perhaps, but they are probably better just to snorkel and save our gas for a part of the reef that is not so shallow.
I’ve always thought that crabs were pretty interesting creatures. Six legs — walk in any direction and have a hard shell to protect them. Not too bad. Maybe I am imagining it but they seem to have interesting personalities.
A hermit crab with his own anemone and greenery
An arrow crab feeding at night
When I think about it, I think I have seen more crabs at night or under poor light than I have under bright sunny conditions. I guess that is probably pretty telling.
porcelain crab fishing for dinner
plumed hairy crab
Given the diversity of crabs I think I will keep my eyes open to see more crabs that I have not previously seen.
Diving in St. Lucia turned out to be full of surprises. We went in December, 2018 and there were no crowds. We had the reef pretty much to ourselves. We dove with a shop called Scuba Steve’s because we were staying on the north end of the island. I don’t think I have been to any Caribbean island where I have seen as many octopi. On just about every dive I saw at least one octopus and on several dives I saw more than one.
An Octopus lounging on the colorful reef
The reef was healthy and exceptionally colorful. You would think that an octopus would be able to do a better job of camouflage than this fellow did, white and brown stands out on these sponges, but it made for a nice contrast for the picture.
Another aspect of the diving in St. Lucia that struck me was the variety of sponges and their incredible colors. There were tons of barrel sponges, vase sponges and tube sponges that added enormous color to the dives.
Tube sponges with diver
There is only one wreck dive that was available when we were there. Of course we got our wires crossed and we dove it the day I was shooting with a macro lens. I didn’t get any pictures per se of the wreck, but the wreck did provide a healthy environment for a variety of fish and sea critters, (including frog fish) and of course there was the nearly obligatory octopus.
Queen angel fish on the wreck
In the middle of the week we were there we did a tour of the island. We hired a guide who drove us around much of the island, which has a pretty laid back Caribbean vibe. Would I like to go back, yup, it was a very relaxed trip and they do know how to cook.
Unlike most of my posts, I have included more about how we got to Fiji and more details about the travel rather than just focusing on the dives.
Day 1 of our trip was a lot of flying. Dallas to San Francisco was about four hours and uneventful. I had worked until noon that Thursday, the day we were to leave, and then went home to make sure I had all of my gear ready. I had packed over the preceding two weekends so I needed to make sure I had not forgotten anything in the packing process. We were picked up at the house at 3 p.m. We left Dallas late in the afternoon and had a several hour layover in San Francisco. We ate at an airport restaurant; the food was passable, but nothing special.
The flight from San Francisco to Nandi airport in Fiji, was not a lot of fun. We left San Francisco around 10 p.m. local time. The flight was 10 hours of feeling like a sardine in a can of sardines. There were a few empty seats thank goodness. We probably should have paid for the upgrade from coach. The seats were close together and food was crap. Hardly slept a wink. Nancy took a sleeping pill and then was awaken several times while she was trying to sleep. We flew over the equator and over the international date line. We started the trip on Thursday afternoon and arrived in Fiji early on Saturday.
Our early arrival in Fiji at 5 a.m. local time on Saturday was uneventful. We collected all of our luggage, fortunately it all arrived, and cleared customs without any issues. Based on travel advisories we had received I had split up the camera equipment in my backpack. I had put two camera bodies and multiple lenses and a focus light in my photographer’s vest which I wore so my backpack would only weigh about 15 pounds. My backpack would have otherwise weighed in at over 40 pounds. Once we got on the plane I had put the equipment back in the backpack and put it back in the overhead. The games we play to avoid another bag fee of $200.
The temperature in Nandi was pleasant, almost cool. From the airport we took a cab to the local yacht club that advertised it was open for breakfast at 7 a.m. We drove by a spa that advertised day rooms, which didn’t look to be open. We would later learn that it was open, oh well. The yacht club didn’t actually open until 10 am. We got lucky, we met Andrew from a local dive shop who let us park our bags while we got breakfast. (I wanted to try to do a dive or two with Andrew and his shop after he was kind to us, but unfortunately our travel plans would not allow us to fit it in.) In a local restaurant in the marina near the yacht club we had breakfast. I had a Fijian breakfast burrito scrambled eggs with mushrooms in a tortilla. It was pretty good. Who knew I had to fly to Fiji to have a breakfast burrito? After breakfast, we moved the gear to the yacht club and tried to rest. We both slept on what looked like bean bag chairs. After we slept for a while we ate lunch and tried to stay awake until 5 pm when we met the crew from the boat.
We were met at the yacht club by Steve and Georgia, the base managers who had been our crew on a trip we did in the Pearl islands of Panama. They introduced the crew for our trip, Julian the captain and Jim the first mate, both from Fiji. We met the other guests on the trip and had a round of drinks while we waited for dinner. Dinner was a lobster dish and Fijian ceviche, which were very good. The rest of the evening was pretty much a blurr for me because of the lack of sleep. I finally got to sleep and slept until just past sunrise local time. Making the adjustment to Fijian time did not seem to be too difficult, but 17 hours of time differential did make it a bit tough to figure out when to check on things back at the office.
Day 2 in Fiji: The sky was somewhat overcast with a little wind but otherwise nice. The clouds meant that I could still take a sunrise picture even though I got up a bit late.
Sunrise on day one of the boat trip
We ate breakfast around 8 a.m. while under way. I don’t think captain Julian put up the sails until after breakfast although we sailed until around noon.
We were on a 59 foot catamaran which is a luxury boat in the Trade Winds system. To say that the boat is very nice, is an understatement. There is quite a
bit of room for the guests to read and sit around on the boat and watch the islands go by while the boat is underway. The state rooms are good sized and there is plenty of storage space for cloths and camera equipment. We were traveling at about 4-6 knots under motor and sail. My underwater housing was stowed in the diving equipment compartment. The marine heads are well designed and are efficient. The marine toilets were push button flush and seemed to work without getting stopped up. (This is a vast improvement over the first trade winds boat we sailed on in which to flush the toilet you had to hand pump water into it in order for it to flush. Also, on the old boats there was little if any air conditioning. And, electrical plugs were at a premium. The new luxury boats are much better at providing the creature comforts that are easy to get accustom to using). There are two U.S. electrical plugs on each side of the bed and more plugs up in the saloon where the kitchen is located. At 59 feet in length there is plenty of room to house the eight guests. Air conditioning on the boat works well, and it was on each evening so we could sleep well.
We had breakfast while underway. The food was excellent. Jim was a chef at a prior job and it shows. He is one of the better chefs we have had on the trade winds cruises. We did not have the typical trade winds menu, I suspect that is impart related to what food staples are available in Fiji, but the difference was refreshing. By midday, Chris, one of the guests had caught a tuna that probably weighed 10 to 12 pounds. The tuna was good as sushimi, and as sushi.
Chris hooks a tuna
We reached our destination before noon. We snorkeled for about an hour before lunch. Then after lunch, I assembled the underwater camera housing and went back out and snorkeled for another couple of hours with the camera. There were several things about the snorkeling that struck me. One, the variety or corals was significantly greater that what we are accustomed to seeing in the Caribbean.
Second, the health of the various corals appeared to be very good. Third, while some of the fish looked somewhat familiar, but in different colors, there were a lot of fish that were quite different from what we were used to seeing in the Caribbean.
blue green damsel fish and stag horn coral
By the time I got out of the water, the light was going down. The clouds had rolled in so it was a pretty over cast day; consequently, it got dark fairly early.
At dinner we learned that we would go to manta strait and see if we could see any manta rays snorkeling the morning. We anticipated we would do a dive later probably after lunch. Out of the guests we had 6 divers. One of them, Len, a retired attorney from Nevada was 82. I decided I would keep an eye on Len just to make sure he was ok. When you think about it, it is pretty impressive to be able to strap almost 50 pounds on your back and then be able to go diving. I sure hope I can continue to dive until I’m 82, of course that does assume I live that long.
Day 3: We had clear skies and we went snorkeling at manta bay right after breakfast. Just before we dropped anchor at manta bay, a sea plane landed and coasted up to the manta bay resort, which not surprisingly, sits on manta bay. Now seeing a sea plane land and take someone up to a resort is not something we see every day in Dallas.
sea plane at the manta resort
Unfortunately, no manta rays showed up at manta bay when we were there, but we did find an octopus and a lot of other sea life.
After our snorkel we sailed to sand dollar beach. When we got there, I looked down at the wall near our anchorage and said “lets go diving”. Well that didn’t work out. I suspect in part because getting tanks refilled in the Yasawa islands is not very easy. And, unfortunately dollar beach was a bit rough with the surge and current to see much snorkeling. Later that day Julian moved the boat closer to sand dollar beach.
The coral break was mostly dead, and we didn’t find many sand dollars. We talked about going for a night snorkel, but I was pretty tired so I gave up. The food was good. Beef tips at lunch were great. Breakfast was scrambled eggs, bacon and pancakes. Good thing we are snorkeling quite a bit otherwise weight gain would have been a challenge. I was hoping that the dive in the morning would be worth waiting for.
Day 4: Julian moved the boat back to the early anchorage at Sand Dollar beach. Visibility at the beginning of the dive was excellent. We weight checked Len and with 10 pounds he was fine. Weight checked Nancy with a new wetsuit and 24 pounds seemed ok, but she did have problems getting down. Jim said he gave her some more weight to get down. I chalked it up to first dive of the trip jitters. Unfortunately, the weight distribution was not even according to Nancy so she felt like she was going to roll to one side. Mid-way thorough the dive visibility got really bad. Then Nancy’s computer told her she only had 2 minutes of air left; when I got to her she was checking the analogue gas gauge and it showed 1000 pounds of gas so I helped calm her down and she stayed down for the rest of the dive. Meanwhile I had seen a sea krate so I went back and checked it out, got a picture or two before it was time to do the three minute safety stop. Visibility went from great to crappy mid-way through the dive and then back to good, then we had to turn around. So I suspect between the visibility, the computer malfunction and the new wetsuit, Nancy was not enjoying that first dive too much.
Sea krate, Laticauda colubrina
After the dive, Julian moved the boat to another “Y” island. We did some snorkeling after we anchored. Later in the afternoon we went into the village on the island where we had a kava ceremony. Everyone had to put on a sarong, even the guys. The ceremony was pretty interesting. They offered us Kava drink which looked and tastes like dirty dishwater. Afterwards the locals danced and sang for us. It was quite a nice ceremony. Captain Julian explained that Kava ceremonies had been abused in the past by outsiders who would come in engage in the kava ceremony and then not leave for a long time, all the while expecting the villagers to feed and house them. Nice work if you can get it, but I guess they now ask how long you are planning on staying at most if not all of the villages. I guess even paradise has its challenges.
A sandy beach on one of the Yasawa islands
The village we visited has maybe 300 people. Most are older men and women, grandma and grand pa age folks who tend to be fisherman or farmers. Then there are young children who are going to school.
Going back to school
We walked through a preschool school and saw some of the youngsters who attended.
Even in school what is outside is more interesting than inside
Most of the people from the village who were in the 18 -40 year age range were either away at school or had moved out of the village to live and work in the cities in Fiji to make a living. Most of the people who live in the village appear to live a subsistence lifestyle. Len was our honorary chief for our group and they made a nice lei for him and for everyone in our group. The people living in the village were nice people.
After the Kava ceremony we took the dingy back to the boat and then had vegetarian lasagna which was ok. Sorry, I just like meat protein, so it’s hard for me to get excited about vegetarian anything.
Day 5: I woke up early around 3:30 a.m. because my left ear was bothering me. Too much water, with no drops. I found some hydrogen peroxide and treated both ears then took an ibropen. I was hopeful the hydrogen peroxide would take care of the problem so I could keep diving. (Fortunately, the hydrogen peroxide did the trick and I was fine).
So far on this trip I had taken almost as many topside pictures as I had taken u/w pictures, which is out of character for me; but I did have to do something on those long sails. And, besides we had only done one dive so far. The snorkeling had been good, but it’s hard for me to get excited about snorkeling since the angle of the shots are for the most part overhead shots which rarely produce usable results. Diving down and trying to clear my ears with each breath hold is a challenge since my ears clear slowly and by the time I got down to depth I would typically have very little time to compose an image. In my mind snorkeling is not particularly useful.
Since I was up early I noticed the lights at the back of the boat seem to attract quite a few little fish. Every now and then a needle fish which was maybe a foot in length would come up and try to get a free meal. It didn’t appear that he was particularly effective in his hunting.
By 6:30 a.m. the light was starting to come up and it looked like we would have at least a cloudy morning. There was a little wind, but not more than 3 knots. The water was very still with hardly a ripple. It looked like the sun would come up over a mountain which usually means we will probably not have much of a sunrise.
Sometimes its good to be wrong about what the sunrise will look like
Well I guessed wrong, it turns out it was a pretty nice sunrise. I even managed to capture on video of the some of the sound of the waves crashing on the beach and the sounds of roosters crowing in the morning.
Day 6: Thursday; We had a long sail in the morning. We stopped at lunch and had a snorkel. The coral was pretty, but the viz was a bit iffy maybe 50 feet of viz. We had lunch then sailed south to Mana island. We did a dive on an uncharted dive site. Huge bommies, not a lot of fish. I’ve named the site, “Can’t Bommie Love”.
Can’t bommie love dive site
I got a few shots but viz was pretty poor and with little fish life the bommies were okay but not spectacular. We had Indian food that night on the boat. I was thinking, hopefully we will get tanks filled and go diving on Friday. We did sail out to where they filmed Blue Lagoon. Yep it is pretty, and we did another snorkel.
Blue lagoon
Day 7: Friday; tank fills are taking quite a while. One compressor, 3 whips and 50 tanks ahead of us. At least the bay is beautiful. Only a handful of boats. Read and responded to several emails before breakfast. Sunrise was a bit boring; no clouds so not a lot of character to the sun rise. I guess the resort that is near us has been closed for 4 months because the “Survivor” series rented it all and closed it so they could film nearby. My left ear is still bothering me but it clears alright so it must be an outer or middle ear problem. Food had been good; bacon and quiche, plenty of food. Getting bored waiting for the tanks to get filled.
I suspect once the tanks are filled we will head off to a dive site and dive it then head closer to the port. By 10 a.m. it looks like some of the tanks have finally come back. I checked the tanks after I picked one up and said it felt light. I unfortunately was right, the tanks had been hot filled and only had about 2700 pounds of air. So we left the tanks in the sun and let them warm up so with heat expansion they would register about 2900 but pressure would drop once we hit the water. Because the tanks are being filled so slowly, Jim stays at the shop filling tanks and Julian takes the boat out to a nearby reef. We wait for Jim and the dingy and the last of the tanks out at the reef.
While we were waiting to arrive we did a snorkel around the reef and we see several sea planes land which was pretty interesting. Nice way to get to a resort. After Jim gets back to the boat, we do dive 3 of the week, which is a site known as cabbage patch. We start over white sand and drop down to about 30 feet and follow the sand down to the reef.
divers swimming toward the cabbage patch site
One of the early creatures we encounter is a huge broadclub cuttlefish. Steve took some video of him and them I took a couple of stills. The cuttle fish just sits there, but he changed colors a few times before he swam away.
Broadclub cuddlefish
We eventually dive deeper down and see the cabbage patch which is a huge patch of plate coral. Among the leaves of the cabbage patch there are three schools of fish.
The cabbage patch
I take a few stills and then a few videos of the moving schools of fish. We continue on until we hit 30 minutes of dive time and then we turn around and head back. On the way back, I saw a couple of interesting tunicates and a few more schools of fish. When we were about to make a left turn to get back to the boat, I notice a sea krate at the bottom so I dropped down and watched him hunt for food. Sea krates are pretty animals despite being quite so toxic. And of course, there is no anti-venom for them so if you get bitten, you are dead. I got close to the sea krate, but he largely ignores me while I am videoing him. After I finish filming the sea krate, we head back to the boat and it’s a pretty good swim, several hundred yards back to the boat. I deploy my smb on the way back and carry the flag back since there is some boat traffic in the area. It was a good dive with excellent viz and interesting wildlife.
At the boat we get the gear hung on the sides of the boat so it can dry. The boat now looks like the streets of Milan where they hang all of the laundry out to dry. Bummer, it’s the last dive at least on this part of the trip. Fortunately, we will have more dives on the second half of the trip. I checked some of the images from underwater. I did get some good ones on the dive and on this part of the trip. I will put them away for now and start new cards. All of the weight restrictions for the airlines mean that I have to make some hard choices about what gear I bring. And, I left the netbook at home to conserve space and weight. So I wasn’t able to edit any of the photos until after we returned to Dallas.
This part of the trip has been good. Julian and Jim were excellent as captain and fist mate. I ‘d sail with them again. Sure wish we could get a compressor on the next boat.
On 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, –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.
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.
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.
When I first started diving finding healthy stag horn and elk horn coral was easy. Unfortunately, finding healthy stag horn and elk horn coral has become more more difficult more recently. You don’t have to look very far in the headlines to see various headlines about coral bleaching. Unfortunately there have been size-able beaching incidents on the Great Barrier reef and around the world. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2014 through the end of 2016 will likely be the longest coral bleaching event ever recorded. The current bleaching event is largely blamed on global warming. There can be a number of causes of coral bleaching causes, which among others include:
oxygen starvation caused by an increase in zooplankton levels as a result of over fishing;
increased solar irradiance (photo-synthetically active radiation and ultraviolet light);
changes in water chemistry (in particular acidification caused by CO2 pollution;
increased sedimentation (due to silt runoff);
bacterial infections,;
changes in salinityherbicides;
cyanide fishing;
mineral dust from African dust storms caused by drought; and
four common sunscreen ingredients, that are non-biodegradable that can wash off of skin and on to coral.
As shark week approaches it occurred to me that I have had a chance to dive with quite a few varieties of sharks, and I am not talking about the two legged variety. I hope that I will never forget the first time I saw bull sharks. They are incredibly beautiful animals that move through the water column easier than most people breath. They are so efficient under water a very small flick of the tail will carry them forward with incredible speed.
From fast to enormous size was the next set of sharks with which I had a chance to interact. The first time I jumped out of the boat with my camera in hand I had not even had a chance to turn around entirely when I saw this incredible mouth, almost 6 feet across, coming directly at me. I kicked for all I was worth trying to get out of the way only to realize later that with a small flick of the whale shark’s tail he could easily avoid me. So much for my swimming skills.
Drafting a whale shark
It was not until I traveled to Ambergris Caye in Belize that I really had a chance to watch a number of active nurse sharks. Sure I had seen nure sharks laying on the bottom napping while I was diving, but I had not really seen them actively moving around a reef until I was in Belize. Although many people think of nurse sharks as fairly “tame” you still need to be careful because they are big animals and can create some problems if their space is not respected.
The Bahamas gave me an opportunity to interact with grey reef sharks. They are very fast predators and they have a mouth full of teeth, but unless they are being fed they tend be to fairly shy about divers.
This is why you wear the steel suit
Grey reef sharks I think are very photogenic sharks. They are innately curious and will often give divers at least a quick look before they go back to looking for more interesting food.
The most recent type of shark I came across off of the Kona coast. A white tip reef shark. At least the one I found was about 5 feet in length, a juvenile and he was not interesting in hanging out with divers. I barely got a couple of shots off before he was long gone. And, even then he was pretty well hidden in the shadows.
One of the many sharks at Shark Junction
Maybe on my next set of dives I will get a chance to see a tiger shark. I guess we will see if we are so fortunate.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Second, the health of the various corals appeared to be very good. Third, while some of the fish looked somewhat familiar, but in different colors, there were a lot of fish that were quite different from what we were used to seeing in the Caribbean. 
On 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.
