Somewhere in Kona and Rabbis 11/14/17

Fire Dart!  There were two of them, but the only shot in focus was of just one.

Did find an Octopus hiding in a hole.

Touch of Grey and Kua Bay 11/13/17

Long range charter with Kona Honu Divers.  Touch of Grey and Kua Bay.  Just west of the mooring at TOG there is a drop off and down the wall are lots of wire corals and black coral.  Here's some black coral.

Black lip Butterfly

Blackside Hawkfish

Chocolate dip Chromis

Dascyllus and antler coral

Eight line Wrasses

Just at the bottom of the wall west of the mooring at TOG we found this fairly large female Whitley's Boxfish.

Four spot butterfly

 On the way back to the mooring from the arch we found these three Pustulose nudis.

Rought spined Urchin

Sandy

Spotted Toby

Tiger Cowry

what is it?

 Here is one of the many Wire coral Gobies uder the arch at TOG.  These are tough to get with the 105mm macro in surge at 70 fsw, but when you capture it, its great.

 This Yellow margin Eel had a cleaner shrimp on his right side, but turned so that he was occluded.  I waited a bit but he never came back out.

 This is a Yellow Tail Coris transitioning from juvenile to adult.  You can see the adult coloration at the tail, but the juvenile white patches remain.  There was another one of these but she was more shy.

 

Orange spine Unicorn

Another Rough Spine Urchin, this time at kua Bay.

Puako house 40

As I came upon the cleaning station just seaward from the big arch at Puako House 40 I looked expectantly around for what I'd come for: a bunch of turtles being cleaned by a variety of different tangs/surgeons.  Well, there were a lot fo turtles, maybe 5 of them, and most of them were just resting on the coral bottom.  No yellow fish and turtles for today.

I did find a few swimming around near the big arch, but I guess they were not crusty enough to pique the interest of the multitude of fish in the area.  Puako is a very fishy area, with Tangs, Surgeons, Spotfin Squirrils, Butterflies, a variety of Wrasses and plenty different kinds of maninis.  Here are a few of my honu shots from today.

 

 As for fish, here's what I got.

Bird Wrasse

Crown of Thorns star feeding on coral

4 Spot butterflies

Lei Trigger

Black Longnose Butterfly

Racoon butterfly

Parrotfish

Ringtail Wrasse

Golden Arches and Eel Cove 11/11/17

Should have been more concerned when my strobes didn't fire on this Dragon Wrasse shot at the start of the day at Golden Arches.

Hmm, then next shot they worked, and so for the rest of the dive, no problem.  I found this Crown of Thorms Star with the middle eaten out.  Will it grow back? damfino.

 Lots of very healthy antler coral at Golden Arches these days, and that's a home for Dascyllus like this one, and  a lot of other fish.

Lei Trigger

 I really like coral.  And Lobe Coral is near the top of my list of favs.  Here is a cascade of it at Golden Arches.

 This is the business end of a Ringtail Wrasse.

 Lots of these Shortnose Wrasses at Golden Arches today.

Teardrop Butterfly

Tiger Cowry

 Near the end of our dive ( went off with Stacey Herman who was also taking pics) we found an area with lots of sub-adult wrasses.  Here are two of them, Yellowtail Corises.  Butt here were Shortnose Wrasses, and I think I saw a few Chevron Tangs.

 

Here's Stacey about the time we found the Yellowtails.  I'm shooting with the 105mm so had to get so far away my strobes hardly reached.

Then on to eel Cove, where two days ago I found the giant Viper in the previous post.   Found his coralhead but he was not there.  However right next door was this young Undulated.

By this time my strobes had gone dark again, actually for the whole d2nd dive, but with the 105 Ifigured I'd just use my torch and th hell with worrying about white balance.  At least I'd get something.  And so I did.

 

I have a hard time resisting the Ornate Butterflies and Wrasses; they're just so interesting.

Ornate Butterfly

Ornate Wrasse

Meanwhile, back home the strobes worked again.  GF. Telling myself I may have brushed the hotshoe contacts with some o-ring grease when I lubed the rig last night.  That's my story for now anyway.