Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Garden Eel Cove and Crescent


 Arc eye Hawkfish
 Peacock Grouper


 Lined Butterfly







  Goldlace Nudi
 Juvie Black Surgeonfish


 Whitespot toby

Monday, May 29, 2017

Honaunau with Brent

Here's Brent, above, cruising along the wall with the deep aloha sculpture just appearing on the left. 
Brent on the way out winding through the sand channels with beautiful reef and coral gardens on all sides.

More navigating through the sand channels.
 



Brent on the wall of cascading plate coral
 

On the way up the south side of the bay we passed the overhang where reef sharks are often found.  I call this feature Godzillahead.
 


This is the mushroom coralhead that is one of my nav markers on the way a=out and on the way back in.
 
Here's a hole in the plate coral where a big section broke off and fell to the bottom, just below on the right.
 
Backside of Godzillahead.

Monday, May 22, 2017

Hoovers Tower and Eel Cove

 Hoovers Tower first up today, pretty far north for a local charter.  Shooting wide today looking for interesting structure so glad it was Hoovers, where there are huge lava outcroppings and canyons.  

The current we were hoping was only on the surface wasn't. All the way down, and fighting it with an 18 inch dome port catching the wind.  Hard work.  I elected to crawl across the bottom to try and keep everyones' bubbles in sight.  Oops.  That rock I was about to grab?  It's a Devil Scorpion!  Good thing he moved or I would have had a handful of hurt locker.

Mercifully, we turned, and my 25% increased air consumption against the current calmed down enough for me to feel confident I'd get back to the boat with no probs, and so it was.







Eel Cove is becoming one of my fav spots:  Big boulders with lots of hidey holes, very friendly hoards of Racoon Butterflies (they like us because we scare away the Maninis guarding their eggs, and the Butterflies get lunch, so it's not us they like, they're just using us, yet, still feels warm and fuzzy.)