Upwellings: 3/16/2020 A Day at Pine Trees

Out on the Amelia today, Aquatic Life Divers new boat but with Kona Honu crew. Dive ops help dive ops when one of them has a boat in the shop. Fun going out with Capt. Zain Hicks, who I knew from Big Island Divers a few years ago.

Water glassy but the wind was coming up. Overcast and kind of cold, which makes sense since it's still winter. But the world seems to have a pallor descending on it because we're all so freaked out with friends and family on the mainland subsisting in various stages of lockdown due to exponential spread of coronavirus here in 2020.

No cases of infection on the Big Island that we know of, but since there is no testing capability to find out if people are infected short of them showing symptoms, we're in the dark.

Fuck it Dude, let's go diving.

We pull up to the mooring at Suck'em Up. I look at the close shoreline lava shelves and see hardly any surge. A good day to explore the lava tubes and inshore caves with little danger of getting skylighted. Also good conditions for photographing nudis, which surge makes frustrating. Here are a few of the little monsters we found in Suck'em Up ad Skull Cave. Gold Lace nudis are so delicately beautiful, and the Hermit crabs Crab were spectacular. Way off the mooring we stumbled onto some Harlequins, but my fav was the Tom Smith's nudi that Sandy found, and the family nursery of the White Margins was pretty cool too.

Gold Lace nudibranch

Harlequin Shrimp


Hermit Crab

White Margin nudis and eggs

Tom Smith nudibranch

The second dive was at Pyramid Pinnacle where we found more small kine, three different Leaf Scorpions and a threatening Guard Crab. Id been cold on the first dive, having tried to get by without my hooded vest. That wasn't going to work for the second dive in 77 degrees and cold wind topside, so I adjusted my weight and donned the vest - ah, a nice 75 minutes of not being cold.

Here are the rest of the critters that came out to play today.