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 Swell model looked great today; calm ocean, so a good day for diving.  I arrived so early at the Harbor that the Kona Honu Staff hadn't pulled up to the gate yet, so I angled over into the gravel and waited about 5 minutes.  A guy on a bike came over and unlocked the gate just in time for me, the dive staff and their truck to roll through.

Out on the ocean to the south there was a huge cloudbank with a distinctly dark appearance; it was the one I saw from my house and thought, "Just don't drift north."  But at the boat slip everything was sunny, with no wind. Would have been a great day for a bike ride too, but I'd made my choice.

Rob suggested we go to Dotties.  Mo chimed in that that was a good idea, and so did I.  Last time at Dotties I missed my favorite Zoanthid soft corals, so this would be another chance to see them. The Big Island doesn't have a lot of soft corals, so the protopalythoa Zoanthics are a treat to see. and there's a huge wall of them at Dotties.

Splash!  wow, it's still 77 degrees. Glad I am still wearing my ratty old 5 mil with a hooded vest. Rob asked, "Is that wetsuit going to hold together?" Honestly not knowing, I thought, "I hope so."

We took a bearing toward the dropoff and eventually to Preacher's Arch. On the way i found a Day Octopus scrunched down in a crevasse of rock and coral.  It eyed me from a distance and as I slowly approached it seemed to settle further, though his eyes w3ere locked on me.  Great creatures, Octopuses.

On a wall rob found a puka with a tiny Dwarf Moray sticking its nose out, which is about all my camera was able to capture.

Toodling along I saw a large number of common butterfly fish.  here's a not as common one, a Four Spot Butterfly.

Oh, forgot.  Right under the mooring Rob found a very large yellow Frogfish, the first of two we'd find today.  As soon as I dipped back toward the bottom a Spotted Puffer swam right at me.

Here sitting on some healthy Antler Coral is a very common ambush predator: the Arceye Hawkfish.  Further on, under a ledge I found some Big Scale Soldierfish and a strand of Wire Coral.  Later, at our second dive site I found the same Wire Coral Gobie I shot last time here, last week.  Today's pic was not good though, so to see a nice  Wirecoral Gobie go back one blog post.

Here's yellow Frogfish number two for the day.  He was presenting more to the world than just his face, so you can see how they like to set their feet on the rocks for stability as they engulf their prey in a few hundred thousands of a second.

Near the end of dive number two we found a harem of Psychedelic Wrasses.  I didn't see a male–drat, but the females were frolicing around in the coral, or maybe they were trying to get away from me, probably that.  Anyway, I got a shot of them after chasing them across the reef for a while.

Only two eels today: an Undulated that was sitting right above the spot where a Helmet snail was gorging on an urchin.  The other was a small white mouth eel just watching the passing show.

Here's a video of me following Rob around, but he found some cool arches.