A dive family is a family

All of the Kona dive operators have club memberships available for Hawai'i Island residents, and these allow members deep discounts on dives and merchandise. But a few operators also set aside days of the week for club-only "ohana" charters, on which you can dive favorite moorings with old and new friends. One such operator is Kona Honu Divers, which offers Ohana charters mostly every Tuesday. I've been frequenting these charters for about the last four years, and enjoy friendships with most of the ohana divers that go back a ways, even before I started diving with Kona Honu.

So this morning I showed up at the slip, having made a reservation earlier, and schelepped my gear bags down to the landing. Skipper Johnny C and the rest of the crew were already there unloading tanks from the truck and loading tanks, diver gear, and supplies onto the boat.

The weather was variable, as it has been all year, partly sunny with cloud banks rolling down to the shore off the mountain.

As we drove out of the harbor and past the green can I noticed we were slanting off to the south, which means a likely first dive somewhere along the stretch of coast called Pawai Bay. Johnny picked one of the middle moorings and we hopped into the light morning surface chop and dropped onto the reef. Pawai bay features inshore cliffs and shallows with many big and small arches and caverns. Some of them, like the one at Airstation, are small eyelets connecting two larger expanses, and when there is surge you can position yourself to get shot out of one side and into the other. I don't much like to do this with a camera, but it's a fun thing.

Today, we initially angled along the cliff face and did a few swim-throughs before heading out into deeper water. The other thing about Pawai Bay is that, if you swim southwest over the steeply sloping, luxurious reef of mostly finger coral you will find yourself quickly dropping into the blue water abyss. This is a place where I've seen whales, Hammerhead sharks, and other pelagics. Spotted Eagle Rays are common.

On the reef we find every fish species found in Kona waters, including all the butterflies, Angelfish including Flame Angels, and all manner of Wrasses. One common species of Wrasse to be found there are the Psychedelic Wrasses. They get the name from the crazy red and polkadot heads of the males. They're also hermaphroditic, so that when a male is lost one of his harem of females becomes the male and off they go a restored family. A harem of Psychedelics is featured in the video if you scroll down.

My first cool fish of the day was this Potter's Angelfish. They too live in harems, with the males being identified by larger dark patches on their sides.

Very frequent on our reefs are the Common Longnose Butterflies, of which this is one. We also have a larger cousin called the "Big" Longnose Butterfly. It can be distinguished by the small dark dots extending back behind the dorsal fins.

Parrot fish are critical to the health of our reefs; they scour the rocks of algae and poop out the sand we find on the bottom. here's an Ember Parrot doiong its thing. Hardly a minute goes by on a reef dive where i don't see an Ornate Butterfly. This was the first fish I saw when I started diving here that made me go, "Whoa, what was that?" I still think they are very pretty. here's one. It's still spring and not really nudibfranch season, which is summer, but other divers are finding them, just not me. I did find a very common, large (2 inch) Scrambled Egg nudi. I've forgotten it's scientific name becsause I just don't care.

We have a couple of common hawkfish here that, if you read my blog, you've seen a million times already. I thiink they are pretty, and they sit on coral tendrils waiting for lunch to swim by. I sneak up on them and get the one shot I can get before they dart off down the reef looking for a less busy perch to sit on. This one is an Arceye Hawkfish."

Now for a fish I'd never seen before: a Lobel's Lizardfish. Very common here are the Reef Lizards, but the Lobels have different eyes. I was stoked to find this fish and check off another box on my "fish I haven't seen yet" list. A fish I can't seem to resist shooting is this Orangespine Unicorn. I think they are so beautiful.

Off we go to another spot along the Kona coast, this time up north to a stretch of coast called O'oma. There are six moorings along this coast, and it's also a good surfing area. We dropped onto a site that features a large and intricate inshore cave-lavatube system that you can only explore when the surge and swell are very slight. We elected to go deeper first and then spend the remainder of the dives in the shallow swimthroughs. Out on the reef I found this Ringtail Wrasse. See the white ring around its tail? Peeping out from under a ledge was this Spotted Boxfish, less rare than the Whitleys but still a nice fish to capture on film. Our dive guide Bob P signaled me to go look in a hole he'd just glided past. I looked. It was in between two walls and there was enough surge to keep me from getting to the hole. When I did I saw this magnificent Tiger Cowrie, and I took my only shot as I was being propelled past the hole by the surge.

As we wandered back toward the shallows it seemed as though the current we'd felt earlier and the surge had abated a bit, and we were able to get into the lava tubes and overhangs to see what we could find. One thing we always look for in a deep fissure with a sand bottom are White tip Reef Sharks. Today there was only one. I had my macro lens so only got the front half of this one. The video shows its whole body. They sleep under the ledges, and we try not to wake them with too much thrashing and kicking up sand.

Here's the video of the day.

Overcast sky didn't dim today's diving enthusiasm

Yep, overcast and some rain around Honokohau Harbor didn't diminish my hopes for a great diving day. After all, you are underwater so why worry about rain? I'd snagged a spot on Aquatic Life Divers charter today, which is cool because it's my birthday, and Tara P, one of the instructors aboard, and I have somehow managed to dive together on multiples of both of our birthdays.

On our way out of the harbor I could see dolphins ahead just cruising, half sleeping, after a night of feeding in deep water. A few of them surfed our bow wake as we powered up to head south to a spot where Tara and I have had many memorable dives, and one in particular years ago on my 70th birthday. It's on an exposed part of the coast, and as we approached it looked like the lingering swell might make it a challenging dive. On closer inspection, the site looked ok for diving, and we geared up and went in the water.

One of the features of this site is that, among the giant boulders north of the mooring, both Hawaiian and Indo-pacific Sergeant Majors, a kind of damsel fish, lay their purple egg masses on the broad rock faces. The males stand (swim?) guard around the eggs because the Butterfly fish that populate the spot love to eat them. Any time a butterfly gets too close the Sergeant flys out at them aggressively and scares them off. But it's a constant battle. The clever butterflies have figured out that divers scare the sergeants away from their guard posts, leaving the eggs unprotected. Lightbulb moment for the Butterflies was that if they lured divers over to where the eggs are the divers would scare away the sergeants and the Butterflies would have an easy meal. Smart huh? Anyway, this behavior is so common that it can't be chance.

Interesting was it, then, to find no butterflies around the boulders today. Only Sergeants of both types flitting nervously around their egg masses. Here are a couple of shots to show you the difference beetween Hawaiian Sergeants and the Indo Pacific ones. See how the Hawaiian sergeant's strips don't go all the way to the fish's abdomen, while the stripes on the Indo Pacific sergeants do? Otherwise they behave the same.

The boulders are like fish nurseries and they are always very fishy. Here's an Orangespine Unicorn fish and a White Mouth Eel I found as I was running away from the Sergents.

I was diving with Anna L because Tara had students. Anna is fun and curious underwater; she is good at finding hidden things, like this cowrie shell. She found two of them, but one still had an animal in it so she threw it back in the water. She makes jewelry out of the things she finds. Cool.

Another common fish at this mooring is the Bullethead Parrot. They are so vibrantly colored, like this male. Out of the boulders and back on the rubbly reef Anna found this cool assembly of the two most common nudibranchs we have in kona waters, the Strawberry and scrambled egg nudis. You can guess which is which.

We drove out to sea on surface interval looking for pilot whales, or any whales, since we'd seen humpbacks just a few days earlier. No luck with that, so we headed back to the coastline looking for an unoccupied mooring. We found one on the Pine Trees section of coast and jumped in.

Here is a Four Spot butterfly on his or her own today. Usually they are in pairs. We spent much of the dive exploring caves, which you'll see in the video below, looking in vain for nudibranchs, but out on the reef there were plenty of fish. This Peacock Grouper was just making a U turn when my strobes went off, and upon that flash of light he darted away. In a crack Anna found this Spiny Lobster who couldn't dart away, so I got a nice shot of him.

Here's the video.

Whales, Sharks, and an all-star appearance of underwater critters

Right out of the slip on Kona Honu Divers' _Honu One_ Sarah M headed for the bow to look for tiger sharks. They do sometimes come into the harbor, and we see them as wiggly dark shadows creuising over the lighter sand of the harbor entrance. Sure enough, we spotted a smallish Tiger Shark wiggling her way off the starbord bow toward the harbor entrance. Further out I looked for dolphins but they were elsewhere today. Present, however, increadibly this late in the season, were a mom and baby Humpback whale. The mom gave us a tail salute to send us on our way north to our first dive site.

The site we chose, despite some slight current and south swell was a favorite, however exposed, because of the large structures and inshore swim-throughs. Whether we'd actually be able to transit the long cavern-like structure was another question. On the way there we feasted our cameras on the largest Slipper Lobster I'd ever seen, and I startled a Flowery Flounder who found a new perch to blend in with hs extreme camo. Small creatures were on display too, and this Reef Lizard hung out long enough for me to get the shot. The first swim-through was just a small arch with lots of Blue stripe Snapperes congregating, but I was more interested in the tiny White Margin nudis that Kevin S pointed out. Two of them with eggs, so a family portrait.

The cleaner Wrasses were everywhere; perhaps it was car-wash day. Here's a Four Spot Butterfly gettting spiffed up. Nearby, under a ledge I found a Giant Porcupine fish who didn't want anything to do with me. He tolerated one shot and then beat it, but I got another shot of him on the run out of the hole. He wasn't the only underwater thing moving fast. The surge was strong and it was throwing us back and forth like a carnival ride. As I tried to move through a narrow crevasse I spied another White Margin nudi on the wall. I literally took the shot as I flew past him, and that shot, the only one I got, was miraculously in focus.

As we got deeper I rounded a rock to find a Pale colored Orange-Band Surgeonfish, Usually they are darker but a few have this paler color. Out on the reef i found a Juvenile Stareye parrot showing off her teeth.

On the deeper reef slope, as we headed for the dropoff, I was on the lookout for Psychedelic Wrasses. They are interesting due to the fact that the males are surrounded by a group of females who make up the harem. And if the male gets eaten or runs off, then one of the females transitions into a male and the family is whole again.. I didn't expect to actually find this treasure of Psychedelic Wrassehood: First, a transitioning female-to-male, second a bunch of females, of which this was one (more in the video at the bottom), and a male who might have been ditched by the females for being a knucklehead.

It wasn't an especially Eel-filled day, but the ones I saw were big and posing out of their holes. Here's a large White Mouth Eel, later I found one a bit smaller, but still large.

A very cool thing about butterfly fish is that many of them pair off in couples and go everywhere together. Here's a pair of Milletseed Butterflies and a solitary Threadfin. He's a threadfin because of the tiny thread trailing his dorsal fin

On an earlier post from last week i found an Indo-Pacific Sergent guarding his eggs. Here's one just hanging out under a ledge, apparently he got a baby sitter. Another instance of a fish getting shined up by a Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse, this time an Island Goatfish.

We found a couple of very large Scrambled Egg nudis, this one was about 3 cm in length which is pretty big. Looking up, I saw Laura P kicking toward a ledge. That meant she found something cool and so she did: a Female Whitley's Boxfish. The site we were diving on is famous for being home to both male and female Whitleys. Apparently, the male was on a bender and not presentable.

Hear the end of the second dive I saw Laura P again crowding into a hole under a coralhead. I thought perhaps she'd found an Octopus trying to become invisible to no avail. After she moved on I slotted in to prolong the poor Octopus's ordeal for this shot. Turning around to find the mooring line a Redbarred Hawkfish was sitting in a coralhead, and beneath, over the side of a wall a Supermale Bullethead Parrotfish was biting into the rock.

Here's the video.