Tuesday, and NOTHING WENT WRONG. Someone must have thrown a lei into the volcano for us.

We started out the day with a fairly uneventful dive at Eel Cove. Well, it was uneventful except for the fact that we spent big chunks of it trying to film necessary scenes for my video. It’s hard enough to direct a scene topside; underwater, when all the participants are easily-distracted photographers, it’s even worse! In a weird bout of life-imitates-art-imitates-life, Jeff and I pretty much drove each other bonkers shooting the sequence of our getting in each other’s way while trying to film an eel. Priceless.

(A big thank you to Dave for manning the camera on the shots of us – I’ve long since lost count of the favors I owe that man!)

Pair of lizardfish:

Dive two was Ray Bay, close to where I saw a tiger shark last July. No sharks on this dive, but we did come upon some enormous schools of goatfish, some eagle rays, and a tiny leaf scorpionfish lurking in a coral head. This was just a fun area to dive in: lots of coral rubble to hunt for fish and eels in, and always those schools of goatfish to film when there was nothing else around.

Leaf Scorpionfish:

So, two dives down, and still nothing resembling an Incident. Things were looking up just in time for the manta night dive.

As we waited for the sun to set, the photo pros brought forth a pile of wetsuits they’d promised to photograph. Our divemasters gamely pulled them on and headed to the bow for a photo shoot – hysterical! Lots of cheesecake shots of slightly damp divers in the sunset. I’m not sure who had more fun: the models, photographers, or the hooting audience.

Jeff and I dropped down a bit early in hopes of some alone time with the mantas, which were putting on quite a show at the surface. We sat by the light box for 10 minutes before one manta swooped by.. and disappeared. Another five minutes and 2 mantas swooped by – and dissapeared. The plankton was intense in front of my lights, and squirrelfish kept darting in for a mouthful, bonking my light and/or hand while they were at it. 20 minutes into the dive, suddenly we were surrounded – by a dozen mantas and several dozen photographers and videographers. Despite the chaos of video lights in every direction, we both got some cool shots of mantas swooping over people’s heads and turning somersaults. Mantas were everywhere, even getting in the way of shots of other mantas. I guess that’s a good problem to have.

Manta swoops over divers:

Unfortunately, Lady (Bad) Luck paid another visit to our boat; one of the photographers wound up with strobes that didn’t fire. Compared to the last two days, this seemed like an ok problem to have…

I was sure we’d used up all our bad luck yesterday. And at first, that seemed to be the case. We made it to our first choice of dive site, a sailboat wreck called the Naked Lady. Dave helped me shoot a bunch of topside segments I need for my video, and they all went well. Jeff and I had a perfectly nice, though not extraordinary, dive on the wreck.

We were the last ones in the water, so we were a bit surprised not to be the last ones back out. After a few minutes, it became apparent that one buddy pair in particular should have surfaced already. News slowly trickled to the surface with Dave and Tee, who’d been right behind us on the ascent line – one of the divers ran out of air on the wreck. In 100 feet of water.

Luckily for her, the divemaster Elaine was just a few feet away at the time, and apparently handled the situation perfectly (though I later discovered it’s the first time she’s had an out-of-air situation, even though she’s been a dive instructor and guide for years). It was a scary experience, though, and not just for the diver involved. I think we were all aware that it really could happen to anyone; it’s so easy to be distracted, especially when you’re taking pictures (and probably alitle narc’ed, down that deep). Apparently she was keeping an eye on her remaining bottom time (nitrogen absorption), which she assumed would run out before her air – usually that’s true. But not this time.

She’s fine, although she didn’t dive again that day.

Bow of the Naked Lady:

But our bad luck still hadn’t run out. The same guy who wound up taking a ride to the hospital yesterday surfaced from the Naked Lady with a flooded camera.

Doh.

I’m happy to report that the rest of the day went quite smoothly, at last. We even had a little dolphin encounter (minus the Man o’ Wars) on the way to the second dive site, a favorite of mine. My footage from today is less than spectacular, but I still enjoyed the diving. I got inked by an octopus for the first time, saw a purple frilly nudibranch, and had another turtle fly-by. Interesting story on that – Dave pointed the turtle out to us, and Jeff then inadvertently whacked Dave in the face with a fin while he got the shot. (He later apologized, and honestly, I think it looked worse from my angle than it actually was!)

We kicked off our Kona Classic dives with a trip to Turtle Pinnacles, site of Jeff’s award-winning shot from last year. The turtles were out in modest numbers (that is, two), but it was still a nice way to start the morning. The weather was beautiful without a cloud in sight, the sea was as flat as we could have asked for; all in all, things were looking good. We even saw a little Kommerson’s frogfish at the end of our dive, hiding out under a ledge and pointed out by a divemaster. Unfortunately, the awkward positioning of said frogfish caused Jeff to contort himself into odd positions trying to get a photo – and he managed to get a kneeful of urchin!

Kommerson’s Frogfish (image flipped upside down!)

It looked pretty bad at first – at least a dozen spines sticking out of his knee. Luckily for Jeff, it turned out that only one had completely broken the skin and left its little purple bit in the flesh, to slowly dissolve away over the next day. And he wasn’t the only diver to surface injured; Marcia came up with about a dozen urchin spines actually stuck in her skin. Ouch.

Things got even more exciting while we motored around offshore during lunch. A pod of bottlenose dolphins appeared off the bow, and half of us jumped in to try to get some shots – most of us without our wetsuits, since we were in such a hurry not to miss the dolphins.

BIG MISTAKE.

When I heard David Fleetham yell “watch out for Man O’ War,” i thought he was just covering a remote possibility, or perhaps even being facetious. But he was actually saying “Watch out, there are Man o’ Wars.” People started yelping as various body parts got stung, and we started for the boat – only to wind up in an even thicker patch. I felt a sting on my hand, and then a truly unpleasant batch of stings along the inside of my left thigh. David swam by towing Taylor, who’d apparently taken a nasty hit to his back and appeared to be in serious pain. My thigh burned worse by the second, and I have to admit I began to completely freak out – not so much from the pain I was actually in at the moment (though it did hurt a lot), but for fear of what was to come. I had my HydroOptix mask on, which meant I could see clearly – but only if my face was in the water. Not wanting to get stung in the face meant not being able to see anything clearly, which made it even creepier.

By the time the boat backed up to us, Jim (right in front of me) had a whole jellyfish hanging off his shoulder, with tentacles dripping down his back. David got Taylor up the ladder (depositing a second jellyfish on the ladder rail), and towed me in next (I should mention David, smart man, was in a wetsuit). Then David himself got a jellyfish to the ear.

So there we were, all huddling on the boat with various amounts of Man o’ War stings. Pretty sorry lot. As the welts began to swell and redden, we all compared wounds. Mine hurt a lot worse than they looked like they hurt – Jim and Taylor’s backs were both far worse than the few red streaks across the back of my leg!

Taylor turned out to have a known allergy to bee stings, so we kept an eye on him for signs of an allergic reaction. He started to experience SEVERE pain and muscle spasms, and then hyperventilation. The crew put him on oxygen to help him breathe easier, and we headed into the harbor to meet an ambulence.

Jim, who’s a scuba instructor back home, accompanied Taylor in the ambulance – but the rest of us, with the stings subsiding, opted to go on to a second dive in the hopes that we’d used up all our bad mojo for the week.

Lesson learned, by the way – you will NEVER see this body jump into open ocean without at least a dive skin.

It felt unbelievably good to pull on a cold, clammy wetsuit over the stings. Our second dive site, Suck ’em Up, sported some fantastic lava tube formations, including one cave that was home to a sleeping white-tipped reef shark. Pretty little fish were out in force, as well as a few hunting eels.

Posing for Jeff:

But then Dave had to go and stab himself in the knee with an urchin. So apparently, we’re still jinxed.

More details and pictures to come, but:

I won 1st place in the Kona Classic video competition!!

There was some stiff competition this year: 7 videographers competing against each other, instead of split into “open” and “locals-only.” Dave Husted, my mentor and camera-housing-loaner, took 2nd place after 3 years of winning 1st place in the open category. Jeff Leicher, the owner of Jack’s Diving Locker, walked away with an honorable mention instead of his usual locals-only 1st place – I suspect he sort of phoned it in this year, not wanting to compete against his customers. But I’m in some pretty amazing company; I still have a lot to learn from those guys!

I’ll make a DVD with a full-res version of my three-minute video, and hopefully some of the other winners as well. And of course, it’ll include a slideshow from Jeff – who took an honorable mention in macro, 3rd place in wide angle, and 1st place in the new photojournalism category! He’ll be published in Sport Diver later this year.

For those of you who just can’t wait, a web-sized version of my video is here:

Dive Buddies

Questions on my mind these days:

• What have I forgotten to buy for our Hawaii trip next week?
• Can I fit the tripod into a dive bag so it doesn’t take up space in a suitcase?
• Can we possibly squeeze all our clothes and extra stuff into a carry-on bag, so I can check my video housing instead of lugging it through security and being forced to disassemble it?
• How are we going to have any space to carry new things home with us? (Even if we win nothing, there are lots of random goodies given away during the week)
• Why isn’t Jeff concerned with how the hell we’re going to manage to pack 2 sets of dive gear, 2 pelican cases with camera housings, 2 laptop bags, 2 cameras, a tripod, the extra pelican with his macro lens, and all our clothes and sundries?

Questions on Jeff’s mind:

• Why is Anna freaking out about all this stuff when we don’t have to pack until Friday night?

We’ve had two SCUBA milestones this month. First, Jeff and I finally made it to Farnsworth on our fourth try. And second, our club president Kaz finally made it to Santa Barbara on his seventh attempt, on a trip that was his birthday present from the club. It’s been a lucky month!

Farnsworth was a bit of a disappointment, mainly because we didn’t hit it on such a great visibility day. We did, however, finally get a glimpse of the famed purple hydrocoral:

Sadly, the wind chop started making people pretty ill, so the captain opted to only do one dive at Farnsworth. We finished out the day with some really gorgeous dives on the frontside of Catalina, and even had an easter egg hunt at the last dive site (Jeff won a snorkel).

This past weekend’s trip out to Santa Barbara Island was far more memorable. There were about a dozen members of the Sole Searchers on board the Great Escape, which was actually chartered by Reef Seekers – they’re always a pleasure to travel with, and tend to have terrific DMs on board. Although our first dive was uneventful, the second two were fabulous.

Dive number 2 was at Black Cavern – and I would just like to say, WOW.

There’s this enormous cave cutting through a vertical wall, with openings at about 85 and 95 feet. The cave bends halfway through, so you can’t see the exit when you go in. However, it’s very roomy inside, so not too creepy (well, a little creepy once the divers have kicked up enough silt to make it extra dark). It was a really neat swim-through, although we didn’t have nearly enough time to poke around when we were that deep!

My favorite thing about this dive was spotting my first Electric Torpedo Ray – known for giving unsuspecting divers nasty shocks. It was scared out of the cavern by the first group of divers that went in, and cruised right by my video camera.

Jeff’s favorite sight was the Wall Of Nudibranchs above the cavern opening, where we tooled around offgassing for a while before our ascent. He took this picture of a hermissenda crassicornis:

For our last dive, we moored by the sea lion rookery. This was what Kaz had been trying to see for all these years, and he wasn’t disappointed – we had dozens of sea lions come check us out and goof off.

While they’re always fun, I have to admit the novelty is finally starting to wear off after the sea-lion-intensive year Jeff and I have had. I was much more interested in the Angel Shark that a divemaster pointed out (or rather, poked with his spear gun to make it swim out of its hidey hole in the sand and right towards my camera).

On our way home, Kaz broke out some non-alcoholic champagne to celebrate his success, and to thank the club for his trip. The trip home was marginally spoiled by the presence about about three billion flies which migrated onto our boat from the island, and completely covered you anytime you tried to stand still.

The captain says it can take about 2 days for the flies to completely clear out of the boat after one of these trips. Yikes!

Farnsworth pics here; SBI pics here; dive logs here.

I am not an assiduous brusher. I give my teeth a once-over in the morning, never floss, and rarely bother to brush again at night. (Amusing aside: the first week or so that I stayed at Jeff’s, we both brushed our teeth every evening. After a little while of this, I started to suspect we were just doing it for show, and asked if this was the routine. Turns out he was just a morning brusher too, so we quit the facade.)

The best part about my lax oral hygiene is that I have fantastic teeth. Every six months after my dentist cleaning, the dentist and assistants all ooh and aah over my perfect teeth, and tell me to “keep doing what I’m doing!” No doubt they assume I brush after every meal and floss regularly.

I like to consider this a consolation prize for my genetic predisposition towards clinical depression and chubbiness….

… really does not describe my latest business trip.

Bruce (my boss) and I landed in Kona at about noon the day before our meeting began. With a whole afternoon to kill, I somehow managed to talk him into his first attempt at snorkeling; we headed south of Kona to Kahalu’u, where I practically tripped over a turtle (which Bruce missed). There were lots of fish out and about, but all I had was a little disposable underwater camera that I haven’t had developer yet. (I mainly brought it for evidence that Bruce actually went snorkeling, but I probably won’t post those pictures, in the interest of keeping my job.)

I let Buce pick the next activity; we cruised on down to Captain Cook to visit Greenwell Farms coffee plantation. We skipped the full-on tour, but loitered for a while in the coffee-tasting shed, sampling different brews and petting the ancient dog that lounged there in the shade.

We finished off our “free day” with pizza at the Kona Brewery (Best. Pizza. Ever), and headed up into Waimea, joking that our vacation was over and it was all work from now on.

Thursday was, in fact, mostly work, aside from our evening jaunt into Kawaihae for dinner.

Friday, however, was practically a vacation day.

It started out like work in more ways than one: I got up extra early to go for a jog. I’ve blogged previously about jogging in Hawaii, and how it’s so much easier than exercising on the mainland! It’s just such beautiful scenery; you want to be out and about at 6am. On this particular day, the wind was whipping around Waimea something fierce, and had picked up to 30+ mph gusts by the time I walked/jogged to the small Waimea airport and back. Still, it was a gorgeous trip – aside from the extremely dead cat lying in someone’s driveway, well into the point of mummification. Yum.

Next we sat down to more of our business meeting – but to my delight, we ran out of things to work on around 11:30am, and no one seemed inclined to force the issue. So Bruce and I were left to our own devices for the entire afternoon!

Our first stop was Mahukona, a small boat harbor north of Kawaihae that I’d been told had decent snorkeling. The entry is a small metal ladder of the pier, into a channel that can get a wee bit surgey if the waves are going (which they were starting to do when we arrived). I stayed close to the harbor, since the wave action sucked me back and forth quite a bit, but still had a pleasant swim. Bruce got totally nailed by an enormous wave that splashed up onto the pier right after I exited the water.

Next up: Spencer Park, just south of Kawaihae. This was a great spot for surf wimps like myself: TOTALLY FLAT, sandy entry, and some halfway-decent snorkeling. There were tons of coral heads with juvenile fish, and I even spotted a little eel on my way back into shore.

Our final beach visit was near the Mauna Lani resort. We parked at the “beach access” lot, and started walking down the access road. We walked, and walked, and walked. We walked past lava fields, under trees, and by enormous lava tubes. We walked past a golf course, by some private residences, next to a lagoon, and finally out to the beach.

After all that walking, I was initially disappointed to discover that the visibility at this cove was totally crummy; I could only see about a foot, and there wasn’t any coral to be had. Of course, as soon as I dropped my camera back by my towel and hit the water for a camera-less swim, I landed on the world’s friendliest sea turtle.

Seriously, this guy wouldn’t leave us alone. I first bumped into him in about 5 feet of water, and he kept cruising right up to my mask. I had to dodge out of his way several times. Then he headed into shore, and amused himself for about half an hour bumping into kids and checking out those of us with masks and snorkels. At one point, I was basically lying down on my back in the sand and about 2 feet of water when he SWAM ACROSS MY LAP. Talk about not being shy.

We finished off the day with another trip into Kona to stuff ourselves with the delicious Kona Brewery pizza before we had to head back home the next day.

That’s what I call a good business trip.

They always know how to find me.

Last week, while I was workout out on the elliptical machine in the gym, I felt something tickle my upper arm.  Figuring it was just a stray hair, I batted at it with my other hand – and came away with a spider dangling from a string of web.  I guess it dropped down from the ceiling.  I just about killed myself falling off the machine as I flung and scraped and shook it off.

This morning, I sat down at my desk and pulled the keyboard closer (it tends to slowly migrate further in on the desk during the day).  And a chunky-looking spider came RACING TOWARDS ME from under the keyboard.  I let out a shriek that could be heard through all of IPAC, and scootched back in my chair so hard I wedged it under the lip of the desk behind me.  It was early enough, however, that none of my usual spider-killers were anywhere to be found.  Luckily, I was rescued by Martin the custodian, who no doubt now thinks I am a crazy person.

And now the underside of my keyboard is all cobwebby.  Gross.

The rains came too late this year for a repeat of last year’s wildflower performance in Southern California. Nonetheless, with the help of desertusa.com, we tracked down a thick patch of poppies and other flowers in Lancaster, just a little north of the Poppy Preserve.

I headed out Saturday afternoon with A2, Caroline, and Sachin (both of whose names I’ve most likely just misspelled). The drive up was green at first, but by the time we passed the aqueduct and headed into Santa Clarita it was just brown, brown, brown. It was hard to believe anyone had reported good wildflower photography anywhere in the area, and it still looked brown as we exited the freeway and drove past the Poppy Preserve. The hills that were covered with orange and yellow last year were brown. The sides of the road where we found all sorts of blues, purples, and random patches of poppies? Brown.

But when we passed the Poppy Preserve to the west and turned north, we saw it: a splotch of yellow and orange in the distance that was shockingly bright next to all the brown around it. We headed over dirt roads and around mud puddles, attempting to follow the vague directions from the website, and finally discovered this:

I spent a lot of time crawling around on the ground trying to find good angles to shoot from, and waiting for the wind to pause for a split second. I decided I might as well get a cute picture of me out of all that wriggling around in dirt, so I pestered A2 to come snap a few shots.

A little further to the south, we found a fun convergence of joshua trees and wildflowers.

The rest of my pics are here.