Sunday was eventful – in good ways and bad.

Our day began at Honokohau Harbor.  More accurately, at Alula Beach, just south of the harbor and accessible by a short hike over lava.  Without SCUBA gear, it’s a relatively easy hike.  With tanks, weights, and cameras, it’s a slightly tricky wobble over uneven ground, best made in two trips.

The dive site itself is variously referred to as “Honokau Harbor,” “Manta Ray Bay,” or “Rip-Off Reef.”  That last name comes from the fact that dive boats will often stop here, even though it’s just a 2 minute cruise from where they dock – thus saving them money.  However, it’s also a great dive site in its own right, so I’ve never minded being “ripped off” in this way.  In the deep, sandy area you can encounter larger animals like eagle rays and tiger sharks, as well as garden eels and small coral heads full of juvenile fish.  Or you can cruise around in the shallows, where big schools of fish like to hang out in the shade of moored dive boats.

We headed deep first.  I remembered doing a dive here with Jack’s years ago, where we found bicolor anthias and other colorful, tiny fish swarming over the coral heads in the sand.  A large tiger shark also showed up that day, so today I had my wide angle lens on just in case.  No sharks (or anthias), but I did get surprisingly close to an eagle ray as he soared over the sand.

Eagle Ray coming in for his close-up:

On our way back into the shallows, I was also delighted to discover more hungry raccoon butterflyfish.  One lonely  fish tailed me for quite a while, ducking in for a snack whenever I approached a seargant major’s nest.

Anastasia surrounded by her peeps:

After we hiked back to the car, I struck up a conversation with two local guys hanging out in the area.  When we’d passed them earlier, the air had been rather pungent with marijuana.  So it cracked me up a little when they told us we should come down in the evenings and hang out, barbeque and talk story – but not drink, as alcohol is illegal on state beaches.  Uh, pretty sure weed is too!

Other favorite local quote: “Honolulu – eh, pardon me for saying this, but it’s just for white folk.”

On warning them that I hoped to one day be one of those annoying ‘white folk’ who moved to the islands, I was assured that all I needed to do to gain acceptance from the local populace was “just love the island.”  That doesn’t seem like too tall an order to me!

After lunch at the harbor, we set off down south to dive Place of Refuge, with its much easier entry.  (Still over lava, but a very short walk followed by a handy set of natural ‘steps’ down into the water, and no hobbling out through rocky shallows.)

Sadly, this was where the ‘bad’ eventful part caught us – camera problems that you already know about by now.

You may recall from my last entry that we’d scheduled a second Pelagic Magic dive for Sunday night.  We’d even gone and bought a nicer focus light for Jeff to use.  Now he didn’t want to go at all – several rounds of phone calls ensued with the dive shop over whether we could cancel at this last minute, whether we could rent a camera and housing from somewhere, and so on.  They finally agreed to let us cancel, which was Jeff’s favorite option – but frankly, I still really wanted to go!  We hemmed and hawed a bit since they need two people to make it worth the trip, so if Jeff didn’t want to go I probably couldn’t either.

Finally I put my foot down and said I wanted to go, and would happily pay for his spot to make it happen.  But I hoped he would change his mind and come without the camera, so he could just enjoy the dive.  He didn’t think that was likely.  We headed back to the house to lick our wounds.

Fast forward a few hours, and Jeff decided a camera-less dive might be fun after all.  I was glad to hear it!

We were the only guests on the boat,  and had three crew members this time to keep us company.  Once again, this is just a REALLY COOL DIVE.  This time around we didn’t see quite as many little tiny critters, but there were lots of jellies – and I even managed some decent shots this time.  Near the end of the dive, I started to notice red blobbish things zipping by out of the corner of my eye – pelagic squid!  Darned things are way too fast to shoot, but nifty to see!  There were also a lot of tiny, colorful fish chasing my lights around.

Short clip from our Pelagic Magic dive – 1 MB, 20 seconds

40 minutes in, the batteries for my video lights died, so I spent the last 20 minutes camera-less and just enjoying the view.  It’s way more peaceful to dive without worrying about your camera – as Jeff was also reminded on this dive, which he enjoyed much more than the previous one.

And that was it for diving – at least until next time!

Our flights weren’t until Monday night, so we still had a day to chill.  We started by doing something we haven’t done since our very first visit to Hawaii: hanging out at the beach!  There’s a gorgeous little state beach not far from where we were staying, and we parked ourselves on the sand for a few hours watching the bodysurfers.

Soaking up the sun:

We must have brought our bad luck from Sunday with us, though – as we were getting ready to leave, we noticed someone being dragged unconscious out of the water.  Someone started CPR right away.  I got on the cell phone to 911 (I’ve learned you can’t always assume someone else has) – luckily, they already had a few calls in.  After about five minutes passed, we noticed the person was breathing on their own again, which is actually pretty amazing.  Another five minutes and the cops showed up.  Twenty minutes after CPR had begun… still no ambulence.  We went ahead and left, and passed the ambulence on the way in.  I have to say – twenty minute wait for an ambulence after you’ve been NOT BREATHING?  This might be a downside of living in Kona versus Los Angeles!

Back at the house, I checked in on our flights.  Jeff’s was good to go, but mine (different airline) had been bumped back to 3am.  Since the car rental places at Kona all close at 10pm, this would have left me in the empty, boring, closed-up Kona airport for five hours.

A few phone calls – and one very helpful dude in India – later, I was all set to fly back the next afternoon, instead.  Five hours of boredom averted!

Of course, Jeff still had to go.  We had a nice dinner in Kona, and then I dumped him at the airport and headed “home.”

Tuesday morning, I did nothing very interesting.  Slept in…  shopped around downtown Kona…  hung out on the balcony with a book.  It was awesome.

Then I left.  One of these days, the story won’t end that way.  It’ll go “and they stayed in Hawaii and lived happily ever after.”

On Friday, we headed down south for a few dives with one of Jack’s ‘advanced’ trips.  These are fun trips to sign up for, as you may get to some more difficult or interesting dive sites – and even if you don’t, you’re on a boat with a bunch of other moderately experienced divers, and no classes.

We dropped in first at Driftwood, a site with a large coral ridge running down the slope.  Parallel to the ridge is a pretty roomy lava tube; a swim through it usually starts your dive here.  It’s a good place to look for slipper lobsters, cowries, and other critters that like the dark.

Once you make it back out into daylight, this site is all about the fish.  Jeff actually managed to spot a Flame Angelfish, one of the rare fish that we were told to be on the lookout for here.

There’s lots of whip coral at this dive site – and where there’s whip coral, you can find whip coral gobies!

Whip Coral Gobies:

It’s a nice enough dive – but I was more excited by dive #2, at The Dome.  As the name implies, The Dome has a nifty lava tube structure that includes a large, dome-shaped area big enough for everyone to be floating around in at once. It also tends to be full of neat little critters like the blue dragon nudibranch.

Blue Dragon Nudibranch:

No major excitement today – in between dives we motored around in search of dolphins, but none were in the mood to play.  I think we’re kind of spoiled after a few years of having big animal encounters in between dives, because we found this pretty disappointing!

There was one bit of good news, though: after we raved to the dive shop about the awesomness of their Pelagic Magic dive, they set up another one for us Sunday night!  They usually only schedule one a week, but Matthew was available and there were a couple other crew guys who were happy to go.  We were both glad to have another chance to try to photograph all those little critters!

Saturday we did the normal Jack’s boat dive, which meant a slightly larger crowd and slightly less exotic dive sites.  On the bright side, our divemaster was Elaine, who we know from the Kona Classic.   Not to put down any of Jack’s other fabulous DMs, but Elaine remains our favorite!

This is what we call “diver hair:”

Dive #1 was at Pyramid Pinnacles.  I found lots of yellowtail coris and rockmover wrasses to chase after with the video camera, and there were a few photogenic lava tubes as well.

Looking through a lava tube:

The highlight here was when Jeff spotted some Heller’s Barracuda up in the shallows.

Heller’s Barracuda:

No luck in between dives today, either – it was just too windy and choppy to go out to sea in search of whales.

But our second dive was back at our old favorite: Eel Cove.  And today, the raccoon butterflyfish were there!  This pretty much made my day, if not my trip.  Ever since our first Kona Classic, when I first saw these guys in action, I’ve been dying to have another crack at it.

Raccoon Butterflyfish clip – 24 seconds, 10 MB

We also found a grumpy-looking devil scorpionfish.  I think I spotted this one while he was swimming – the backs of their fins are bright red and black.  But once they stop moving, they blend into the coral rubble pretty well!

Devil Scorpionfish:

Saturday night, we treated ourselves to dinner at the Royal Kona Resort, where we’ve stayed on most of our visits.  We did the tacky tourist thing and made the waiter photograph us with our tropical drinks:

Then it was off to bed, to get a full night’s sleep before our last day of diving…

We interrupt this Hawaii trip report to bring you the best picture EVER of me with a giant ground sloth:

Courtesy of the George C. Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits, which I’m pleased to report has barely changed since I first went there over 25 years ago.

On Thursday, we had a special treat planned.  Several weeks before our trip, I’d contacted the local underwater photography club to see if anyone wanted to dive with us while we were in town.  One of our offers was not just to go beach diving – but to go out with someone on their boat!  Adding to the treat was the fact that said someone (henceforth Boat Dude or BD to protect him from random other divers pestering him for dive trips) is an experienced videographer; of course we jumped at the offer.

We met BD at Honokohau Harbor at 7am on Thursday to launch the boat, which is just big enough for three divers with photo gear.

BD used to live in Southern California, but has retired to Hawaii and definitely has the laid-back Hawaiian attitude going on; I felt totally welcome even though he’d never dived with us before and couldn’t have known if we would be good company or difficult passengers!

Dive sites today were on request, so we asked to hit Turtle Pinnacles first in search of turtle cleaning stations.  We’ve had good luck at this site before, and were excited to have the chance to dive it without a ton of other divers nearby.

One reason BD may have been glad for company, even unknown company, is that it’s probably impossible to moor a boat if you’re the only one on it.  There’s no anchor-dropping at the dive sites in Kona; instead, each one has a mooring with a buoy attached to it which floats 5 to 15 feet under the surface of the water.  GPS coordinates will get you close; then you motor back and forth while peering down in search of the submerged buoy.  Once you’re on it, someone needs to dive off the boat with a rope to run through the loop on the mooring – and since BD was driving the boat, that someone today was Jeff, who nailed it on the first try.

Alas, the turtles were not to be found today.  Maybe they just hadn’t gotten out of bed yet!  We cruised around for a while seeing nothing special, but just enjoying a relaxing dive.

Of course, as soon as we climbed back onto the boat turtles started popping up out of the water all around us.  Figures!

Our second request was another old favorite of ours, a site where I always find something fun to look at: Eel Cove.  It’s exactly what it sounds like: a small cove with lots of little coral heads where eels are usually found hiding out.  Around the north and south corners of the cove you can often see one of my favorite fish behaviors: attacking raccoon butterflyfish.  Seargant majors nest in the large boulders in this area, and usually chase the hungry butterflyfish away from their eggs.  But when divers pass nearby the nests, the seargant majors hide – and the raccoon butterflyfish, not at all deterred by the divers’ presence, dive in for a free buffet.  It makes for a pretty good show, but you need to be careful not to linger too long near any of the nests, so that they aren’t totally decimated!

But, like the turtles, the swarming butterflyfish were not to be found.  There were plenty of eels though, including one or two out on the prowl.  And I managed to get in some quality time with yellowtail coris as they moved rocks around in search of food.

Back at the harbor, we unloaded the boat and watched as BD gave it a good rinse at the boat-rinsing station (one of the perks of Honokohau Harbor, for a modest annual use fee).  We grabbed lunch at a restaurant right on the harbor, where I decided to have another go at local fish.  I was told they were out of fish and chips, so the waitress gave me a few minutes to look over the menu and decide on a second choice.  By the time she came back, she had an announcement: they had fish and chips again!  Guess it really was fresh off the boat!

Thursday night was another special dive: Jack’s “Pelagic Magic” black-water night dive.

It’s pretty much just what the name implies – a dive at night in the open ocean in search of bizarre pelagic critters.  We had an hour-long orientation at the shop to go over diving procedures, as well as look through a photo book of some of the common pelagic animals we might see.  Our guide for the night was Matthew d’Avella.  We first met him years ago at the Kona Classic, where he’d screened video from “black water” night dives he’d started running; we were excited to have the chance to do this dive with him at last. Only three divers were signed up: us, and a guy who’d actually never made a night dive before and had intended to sign up for the manta dive.  (Luckily, he turned out to do just fine.)

Along with Jeff Leicher (owner of Jack’s), the five of us hopped onto the roomy Nai’a Nui and headed out into the darkness.  We motored straight offshore about 3 miles, where the water is probably about 7000 feet deep (yes, more than a mile).  The boat’s motor is cut, and a parachute deployed into the water to help drag the boat along through the current.  Three lines were hung over the side of the boat; each had a small weight attached to the end to weigh it down, and ended about 45′ under the surface.  As each one of us approached the swim step, we hooked ourselves into another, shorter line that would attach us to one of those lines while letting us move up and down freely.

And so we splashed into the dark ocean a few miles offshore, and let ourselves dangle under the boat for an hour.

I can definitely say this is one of the coolest dives I’ve ever done.

Most of what you see is teeny.  As in, super duper teeny tiny.  Larval crustaceans zip around in the water or attach themselves to slightly larger gelatinous critters and enjoy the ride.  They look like children’s drawings of crabs and shrimp: tiny colorful outlines against a black background, like little neon signs.   Some creatures just sort of slowly float by you; others will circle around your lights and investigate you until they pass on in the current.  Most are translucent and hard to see unless you shine your light at just the right angle; others generate their own light shows as they sail through the dark.

I attempted to shoot video, but didn’t expect to come away with any watchable footage – it’s hard to focus on small, moving, translucent objects in the dark.  I did manage a few shots that make for semi-decent screen grabs, though:

Comb Jelly

Larval crustacean on jellyfish

Jeff had an even harder time, since the focus light on his camera isn’t very bright.  He managed to take pictures of a clump of critters near the beginning of the dive:

Shrimp on some sort of jelly – eating it or just taking a ride?

After that, he never did manage to focus and basically gave up.  He was a little task loaded on this dive, between futzing with the camera and worrying about buoyancy control in the dark.  We probably should have skipped the cameras, but since this dive usually only goes out once a week we figured it was our only chance.

Still, I thought this dive was totally worth it – we saw creatures most people never get a chance to observe.  It was just really darned cool, and I’d recommend it to anyone.

This was my eighth visit to Hawaii, and Jeff’s fifth.

On our long weekend there last year, I wasn’t able to dive – so it had been two years since I’d dived around Kona, which is two years too long.  I was SO READY for this visit.  And Jeff was equally excited to dive someplace with clear, warm(ish) water; a nice change from our California diving.

I landed a few days before Jeff (work meeting).  The work part was productive, and the staying-in-Hawaii part was nice as always, but I was counting down the hours until the vacation part began!

Before I picked Jeff up from the airport, I went to settle into our house.  By “our house,” I mean a house belonging to some friends of ours who are getting ready to retire to Hawaii.  I’d hoped we’d be in Kona at the same time as them so we could dive together, but being allowed to stay in their wonderful home while they were back in the mainland was pretty nice too!  It’s just up the hill from the airport, a convenient distance from Kona and Honokohau Harbor, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. Our friends have done a fantastic job with the place – every part of the house is lovely, but homey at the same time.    It helps that they’re divers, so the decorations are sort of “diver chic” – lots of underwater photography on the walls and ocean-related accents, and places to rinse and hang gear after a day of diving.

Best of all, it has a lanai (balcony). This is the view:

We were also excited to discover gekkoes clambering about on the lanai, as well as one in the bathroom.  I was a little less excited to discover the tar-like substance that is gekko poo on the floor the next day, though!  At least they eat bugs (not that we saw any in the house).

I picked Jeff up Hawaii-style, meeting him at the gate with a tacky lei which I neglected to photograph.

That was Tuesday night, and our first dive wasn’t until Wednesday evening – which meant we had a morning to sleep in (unusual on dive trips).  We woke up to the distinctive sounds of morning in Hawaii: wind in the palm trees and the chatter of local birds. And fresh Kona coffee just down the street.  Life was good.

Jack’s Diving Locker has been our dive shop on every other trip to Kona, and we stuck with them this time.  After checking in at the shop, we met the evening boat leaving out of the harbor to go on the manta ray night dive.

Which is where Jeff noticed he was missing his BC.

I found this funny for two reasons.  First, he’d been gloating about how light his dive bag was compared to mine at the airport counters (42 pounds versus my 47).  Second, he’d JUST UNPACKED all his dive gear that afternoon at the house to swap it into the Jack’s mesh bags, and hadn’t noticed then either.

After a few jokes about his brain being left in California, we got him set up with a rental BC; no big deal.  And we were off!

Right outside the harbor we were swarmed by spinner dolphins leaping and twirling around the boat.  I have learned over the years that there’s no point in whipping out the camera – that’s a sure way to get them to stop.  So now I just enjoy the show!

The manta dive this year was a little different from before: we headed down south near Keahou, instead of the usual spot north of the harbor.    Our twilight dive was at a spot called Casa Caves, which does have a nice cave to swim through.  That was pretty much the highlight of the dive, though – if you can call getting wedged in a lava tube on your way out a ‘highlight’.

Luckily, the manta dive totally delivered.

Mantas feed on krill, which is attracted to lights; so a bunch of divers with bright lights make for an excellent manta party.  This was our 5th manta dive, and we only had zero mantas once.  That was last year, so the memory was fresh; I was a little apprehensive as we entered the water.  Would we be skunked again?

But as soon as Jeff and I dropped down, we saw manta rays swooping over the divers already on the bottom.  We took our stations and spent the next 50 minutes watching the rays cruise over and around all the divers.

It’s completely surreal: the lights from divers and cameramen light up the water with yellow and blue spotlights, and through it all are these enormous creatures slowly circling, twirling, and coming really, really close to your head as they scoop up their krill snacks.

Words really can’t do it justice – so how about a quick video clip?

Clip from Manta Ray Dive (0:36; 3.3 MB)

The manta rays seemed especially friendly tonight; I’ve never had to duck so often!  The manta show was going on quite close to our boat, which made for an interesting safety stop on our way back.  Divers are supposed to stay on the bottom when mantas are nearby, so that we don’t bump into them.  But as we hovered at fifteen feet under the boat, a couple of rays came over to check us out, leaving the main circle of light where the other divers were. It’s actually a bit unnerving to have a 500 pound critter playing chicken with your dive lights!

Jeff and I were the last ones on the boat, cursing the fifty-minute time limit; I would have quite happily stayed down there until my tank was dry!