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.