The sea had been extra rough for the past week, with large multi-directional swells and wind. I thought that Sunday things would have calmed down a bit, and the wind wasn't howling, but the ocean was still stirred up as we exited Honokohau harbor on Kona Honu Divers _Honu One_.
Winter wisdom is to head south to Pawai Bay, where a number of moorings hide from the big winter swells. We moored at Kamanu and jumped in to very choppy water. It was cold for Kona waters. My computer read 75 degrees all day, and mine reads warm. Others were getting 73 and 74 degrees. Time to dig out my 7 mil wetsuit, i guess.
Almost under the boat Dive master "Mo" Munoz found this unusual plumage on a decorator urchin: a leaf from topside and, the very cool Sailor's Eyeball Alga kind of shimmering on the right of the urchin.
Pawai Bay is known to be very fishy and Sunday did not dissapoint. A very large Ringtail Wrasse swam right at me, turning at the last second so I could get her good side close up. Immediately after a small but colorful Pencil wrasse poked out of a hole. There was so much surge that i got this shot as I flew by, only getting anything because of my fast shutter speed.
Mo had briefed us that we might see a female Bird Wrasse, so I wasn't surprised when one flitted under me and then rose up along a coral head, and at the same time, I turned to chase this Achilles Tang around until I got a good view of him.
Continuing to shoot from the hip in the surge, I captured these two Multiband Butterflies exiting a hole as I soared past in the surge. Along the reef gradient, as we descended the steep slope to the abyss, I found a very common fish, and perhaps the first one I really fell in love with, an Ornate Butterfly. I have so many pics of these fishes but one more always seems the thing to do.
Back up in the shallows under an adjacent mooring I found another oddity: a flower almost like it had been in an arrangement topside. I surmised that it had fallen off a boat and ended up on the reef for me to find. Another animal I have a hard time not lingering with is the very common White Mouth Eel. This is a fairly smallish one, but posed nicely so I took a pic.
So why aren't there more photos from the second dive? Because one of my strobes fell off the reticulated arm it had been attached to after the tiny retaining screw slipped off. This happense to me all the time, so often that I've stashed extras in my dive tool kit, which was at home. Note to self: why not put one in your dive bag tool kit? So after I handed my camera rig back up to the crew and descended it was going to be a simple day of sightseeing but no pics.
I actually felt happy to have a dive in which I didn't have the preoccupation with the camera rig and could just cruise and enjoy the marine life. Which marine life of course was plentiful and wonderful, but as I've been told many times: no pics and it didn't happen.
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