Touch of grey and Kaloko Canyons 6/17/21

 On the Aquatic Life Divers boat Amelia we learned that Rachel had never been to Touch of Grey.  "Every time we try someone's already on it," she groused.  So, without further discussion, we headed north, up past the fish farms and into the offshore expanse where the gigantic lava slab ends in deep notches and walls where the Grey Reef Sharks like to hide from the current.  I guess they go in there and sing, "We will survive."

Today there was little to no current for the first part of the dive through the giant archway that leads to the shark den.  I'm actually there for the wirecoral gobies, of which there were a few.  Here's a link to the video. https://youtu.be/3f148-cSPRw

From the exit of the big shark and gobie grotto, at about 70 feet depth we turned north and headed with the current that was coming up.  Not to worry; it was a drift dive so we didn't have to worry about getting back to the mooring.  On the way we followed the continuing wall and big crevasses where critters love to hide.  Below are some Blackfin Chromis in a healthy antler coral, a mated pair of Fourspot Butterflies, a big Puffer and the business end of an Undulated Moray.

 

I've been looking for seastar or cushionstar shrimp and finally found one very tiny specimen.  Becca found an also very small Dwarf Moray poking out of a hole.  Very shy, this one.  Then very deep in some antler coral was this little  endemic Lion Fish.

Here's a White spot Toby ducking under some wirecoral.

 

It was a fairly deep dive and so after about an hour Becca deployed her SMB and we herded up off the lava slab toward the surface, popped up and of course there was Rob with the boat right where we hoped he'd be.

Next stop: Kaloko Canyons, another one of my favoritte spots because of more wirecoral and Gobie action, plus the possibility of finding the Whitley's Boxfishes that are often there.  Well, we didn't find the Whitleys, but there were plenty of critters in the canyon maze we navigated, finally reaching the sand flats out past the outer mooring.  Yes, I looked for Rubber Duckies. Nope.

On the way out I found some Bigscale Soldiers bivouaced under a ledge and a Fried Egg nudi, and another Wirecoral Gobie.

We ended up saving some of the best for last.  Becca found a pretty big Frogfish and right under the boat on the way back I postponed my safety stop to get a shot of this very large Yellow Margin Eel.  The first set of shots of him were totally blank?!?!?  What now, camera rig?  I'm so mad that I can't get this awesome moray that I dialed up the ISO to 1200, opened up the aperture to about f 5.6 and just shot with my focus light.  Those came out meh but at least I could prove it was there.  Close examination now of all the flash system parts. Oh, the primary strobe was somehow turned off. Some fish must have snuck up on my left side and bumped the strobe selector to off.  Yeah, I'm sure that's what happened.