So I'm eating a tostada... and then it comes to me...

I haven't been blogging much the last month and a half as I've been real busy with Wanna Dive. I mentioned earlier that I've rented out a spot across from the harbor for an office/storage/classroom/meeting spot/place to hang my T-shirts.Here's a refresher look at the space.
I wanted to set up the spot in a way that I could display my shirts and whatever else I may have at some point. Originally I wasn't really thinking of painting it, just washing the wall and hanging some slatwall or gridwall. I was looking at one of the fishing charter stores in the area and saw bright red slatwall, found it curious and asked Pat of her opinion, and what would she think if I put in a sheet of slatwall and painted it red with a diagonal white stripe to do the dive flag thing... she said go for it. That's about all I planned at the time - white walls, a sheet of slatwall looking like a dive flag.... then I got to thinking, I'm gonna have this gosh-awful red thing on one wall of a not freshly painted white room. YUCK! I'm gonna have to paint the whole thing.

This was a couple of weeks ago and the swell came up huge and we decided to take a day off. I figured I'd head up to the Waikoloa resorts to take a look at what new retail establishments are doing these days (Pat has learned I like looking at stores when we travel - something about retail display intrigues me, it has since the days I owned a pet store long ago). I was hungry, then recalled that a couple of Mexican restaurants in town had somewhat wild color schemes. It was tostada time at that point... yum yum... in the course of eating the tostada I was really enjoying the color scheme... so you know what that means, of course... I had to drive across town to eat something at the other Mexican restaurant I was thinking of... It's taco time now... in the course of eating the taco I was really enjoying the color scheme...

Luckily it only took 2 restaurants to make my decision... tropical/Caribbean colors... or I'd have been eating yet again. So after picking up a bunch of paint chips at Home Depot, I had a basic plan. Of course I still get other ideas popping into my head. This shot is of what has happened so far.

I should be receiving my slatwall and a couple other fixtures tomorrow, then it's off to more painting of garish colors.

Aloha,

Steve

Orange Cup Coral from Kona Hawaii....

I did a dive last week at Pawai Bay out on the Kaiwi Point end. There's a bunch of cup coral on a large formation near the point and the current was screaming when we were down so the polyps were out bigtime.

We had a huge southwest swell during the last half of June. I'd heard people mention it was one of the largest in decades but I hadn't thought much of it 'til this dive. Everything on the west end of the dive was as normal, but in one area of the site there was noticeable damage.... large lobe coral formations were sheared off and tossed out of place, often upside down. Wow. The area between Carousel and the Body Glove mooring had quite a bit of breakage. I'm wanting to check out the reef more inshore and to the south to see if it was damaged also. All of our sites that weren't directly in the path of the swell are fine. Quite interesting, it's amazing how much power a little surf has.

later,

Steve

Happy 4th of July!!!!!!!!!!

Here's a Leaf Scorpionfish (Taenianotus triacanthus) I found under a coral head at Turtle Pinnacle a couple months back.

Pat's family flew in last night so we've got a full house for a few days. I've got today off, with charters the next few days. I've got a big project ahead of me... the "office". I've rented a spot out near the harbor where I'll be able to keep my gear (the business has pretty much been living out of the truck and garage for several years), hang my T shirts, and meet customers that want to meet or try gear on ahead of time. I've got no immediate plans for retail, no immediate money anyways, so it'll be "Open by Accident", I mean "Open by Appointment", only. I'm heading off shortly to start filling holes, sanding and washing the walls in preparation for a more funky paint job... gloss white's kinda boring... there used to be a travel company office in this spot, I'm shooting for a different look. I'll post a walk through tour once I'm done - Someone asked the other day when I'm moving in... my answer was "over the course of the next 8-10 months". I'm hoping to have it looking like an official spot in the next 2-3 weeks of working between charters though.

Whale shark today!!!!!

We had a light load on board today, did dives at Black Hole and Sand Chute. "Black Hole" sounds more exciting than it actually is, but it's an all right dive. Sand Chute can be pretty good, especially when big things are swimming by. Today the bay off the Kona airport, where Sand Chute happens to be, was loaded with dolphins. Our divers did manage to get a brief glimpse of them underwater in the distance, but it was very brief.

On the way back we were rounding Keahole point and I noticed something on the surface. I thought it was a manta ray for a moment... then saw the spots....WHALESHARK!!! I hit the brakes and we ended up right next to it. It swam about 18 inches off our port side. Little guy, maybe about 12 feet long or so. Smallest one I've seen here. We're scrambling to get snorkels on masks and such and it made one more pass right next to the boat and was gone. We spent 20 minutes or so looking for it... bummer, it didn't stick around. This was still the highlight of the day, it's always a treat to see them, even if it's from the surface.

Here's a nice Yellow Margin Moray shot.

Steve

Time for a Hawaii underwater nudie photo...

Here's a shot of a Gold Lace Nudibranch (Halgerda terramtuentis). Looking up the scientific name, I just learned something new... this nudibranch is apparently only known from the Hawaiian Islands... cool, another piece of trivia. I was down doing a "Captain's dive" a week or two ago and saw this one under an arch.

The surf is really up right now. We've had a big south swell for several days now, and it seems to have peaked (hopefully) the last 2 days. We've got turquoise looking water all along the coast right now... people think it's pretty, but for divers it kind of sucks... it basically is light reflecting off all of the sand in the water, not clear water showing off it's beauty. I didn't go out today, but I had a buddy today that went out and said he had to do both dives at Kealakekua Bay and the viz was horrible - considering the sand is nearly 90 feet down at that spot, for it to be kicked up enough to make for horrible viz says something. Tomorrow's a big marathon/triathlon event in Kona, between that and the surf we're taking the day off. I'm hoping for better conditions come Monday... the weather report says the surf's coming down.

So, sort of big news for me - I signed a lease yesterday. I've been operating out of my garage and pickup truck for years, now I'll have an "office" in town where I can hang my T-shirts and store my gear. It's near enough to the harbor that it'll be quite handy. I've been wanting to have a spot to meet customers ahead of time to try gear on and sign papers to maybe speed up our morning pre-dive rituals. It's not a big spot, but big enough for my needs at this point. I'll have more information as time goes on... today Pat and I were looking at paint chips, it's currently gloss white, I'm looking to spice it up a hair if I can clear it with the landlord.

That's it for now.

Aloha!

Steve

Good fun scuba diving today.....

We had fun today. Went up to "Hoover's" for the first dive, ended up at Kaloko for the second dive. At about 60-65 minutes into the second dive, customer Mel found this fish... nice find. It's a Devil Scorpion (Scorpaenopsis diabolus). This one wasn't all that large, maybe 7 inches or so. They are essentially one of the stone fish, and have a knack for blending in to their surroundings. Mel said she saw it move as she went by... what is noticeable about them when they move is the back side of their pectoral fins, they're extremely bright, looking like a brightly colored butterfly when they skip along the bottom.Here's a quick shot of the back view. You can only see the color open up right when they move, and I just barely caught part of it, but you get the idea.

Later,

Steve

Great scuba diving in Kona Hawaii today....

Here's a Harlequin Shrimp (Hymenocera picta) feeding on a Blood Star. These little shrimp feed on the tube feet and legs of starfish. They are occasionally found deep in antler corals. When we find them we consider ourselves lucky, they often stay in the same coral head for long periods of time so we've got a shot at finding them repeatedly.

We're at the start of a long stretch of days of diver charters. Today we were at High Rock for the first dive. I captained and the divers came up quite happy... great viz - 150' plus, along with lots of critters. Cathy said if the pinnacle wasn't in the way they could've probably seen the boat from the north arch (we're probably talking 200-250 feet or so)... man, that's clear. Between dives we moved down to Golden Arches and I hopped in for a Captain's dive, the surge had come up by then and the water was a bit milky, but probably still in the 125' plus visibility range. I didn't bother putting on my wetsuit... it's running 80 degrees for water temperature right now. It was a good day.


Later,

Steve

Here's Lookin' at ya....

I don't think I've posted this squid shot from last year before.

We were seeing squid again on the manta dive a couple of times the last few months... they're always fun. We did the manta night last night, no squid but it was a great time for all. The manta dive has been hopping still, maybe a bit more up and down the last few weeks, I'm only aware of one or two no-show nights since late February.

I've got tomorrow off, then comes another two week minimum stretch without days off. I'm trying to set my manta outings to strictly Monday or Wednesday or Friday from here on out, and then likely go out on whichever two of those days gets booked first. I get people asking why I don't run it every night... well, I work 7 day charters a week when it's busy, and with two night dives thrown in on top of it that means for an awful lot of shifts for the three of us to cover. Most of the dive operators doing it more than 2-3 times a week are the bigger companies with multiple boats and/or employees.... I'm not there just yet.

We've had quite the south swell for a while, but it appears it's going down for at least a while. With the swells came warmer waters... YAY!!! Bob had water temperature readings of 81 degrees on both of his dives last night... I can't belive the water's actually warmed up about 7-8 degrees since April, that's a big jump.

Aloha,

Steve

A few days off...

We've been quite busy for a while and I've got a few days off right now, with the schedule getting hectic again in a couple of days. We've had back to back south swells the last couple of weeks, so the dive charters have been spending lots of time at spots outside the harbor and up near the airport, with a few dives in the north pine trees area, but the southwest facing sites have been pretty much off limits for a while. We've been able to find flat water by avoiding the sites facing southwest. Yesterday I was kind of glad to have the day off as the surf was probably as big as it's been.

On Monday evening I ordered an enlargement just to see how it'd turn out... it had arrived by Friday afternoon. It's BIG. I'm not sure if I want a BIG picture of an eel hanging prominently around the house... likely to be office material. It turned out great though, I wasn't sure if the detail would show up in the white, but it's fine. Here's a shot of the pic with me next to it just to give you an idea of how JumboGiant.com does with their enlargements.

Aloha,

Steve