Every year in June I depart Kona for Northern California. This is because it gets hot and crowded and the dive boats fill up making standby slots fairly unavailable. Not that Kona doesn't have summertime charm: The water's warm and the sunsets are awesome, but I think northern California summers are pretty awesome too. Anyway, two days before I was to leave I snagged a spot of the Ohana charter with Kona Honu Divers and away we went out onto the glassy Pacific Ocean, headed north in search of some very rare fish, the Male Flame Wrasse, that we had seen a few days prior.
So right out of the gate I have to confess that I was too slow getting out to the deep rockpile where the Flame Wrasses are, and I missed out. Other, faster kickers than I did see and photograph them, but they don't keep blogs so no Flame Wrasses today.
What I did find was a Devil Scorpion, a Four Spot Butterfly and a SAnd Perch
On the next dive I found a fat Frogfsh perched right under the boat.
But patience and perseverence furthes, so when I got out to the deep buoy anchor block I was rewarded with multiple Hawaiian Green lionfish. These are supposed to be fairly common but I've only ever seen them in one place; the place I was at this moment. I've been out to this particular anchor block looking for these elusive fish and instead found Bicolor Anthias, which are fantastic and probsbly more rare than the green lionfish, but I was looking for the latter, and found them, in spades.
In addition, on the way back to shallower water I found a nice Reef Lizard and a White Stripe Cleaner Shrimp.
I did stop at the small rockpile on the way back in where another group of Bicolor Anthias hang out but they were not around so I kept going and ran into a couple of pretty juvenile fishes: a baby yellowfin Coris and a baby Shortnose Wrasse. The were photobombed by another wrasse that I couldnt identify. a few kicks further I found a beautiful Oval Butterfly, one of my absolute most favorite of the large butterfly family. Back up in the shallows of this site there are so many ledges and crevaces in the rocks and coral. In one of the holes I found a nice Porcupinefish who immediately left me for a more tranquile locale. Finally back under the boat I enjoyed a school of Yellowfin Goatfish that are always there and never disappoint.
