I’m halfway through my four day weekend, and I have to say that I have been extraordinarily productive so far. (Jeff was productive along with me today, but yesterday he just went to work like usual, so he has some catching up to do.)

My productive-ness yesterday consisted of car errands and apartment cleaning. My blue-underneath, gray-from-dirt Honda was about 1K miles overdue for an oil change as well, so I dropped it off at the dealer and walked the half mile or so back to the apartment. At 8:30 in the morning. On my day off. I told you I’d been adjusting my schedule to earlier hours!

While my car was being serviced, I launched into a cleaning frenzy. I made it through all the scouring and floor-mopping, and as much of the vacuuming and dusting as was possible given the general level of clutter, before it was time to pick up my car and go get it cleaned. Yup, after at least a year away (it might even be more), I finally took my poor baby to the carwash! They had to put it through twice, and I wound up giving a 110% tip to the guy who did the final hand-wash and inside-scrubbing. That job sucks, especially in summer.

Finally, everything was clean – just in time for Jeff’s arrival home. Lucky boy.

We treated ourselves to dinner at Far Niente with my friends Torrin and Barb. They were both really impressed with the place; Barb commented it looked like a good place to spot movie stars (in fact, we never have). Both our usual busboy (Roberto) and our waiter (whose name I never remember) recognized us, and we splurged on some expensive wine. Jeff commented afterwards that we’d given Barb and Torrin an awfully skewed impression of our typical Friday night routine!

Today, I forced Jeff to join me in some spring cleaning. I thought we’d spend an hour, maybe two, trying to clear some junk out of the office closet and the apartment in general. We’ve been talking about building some bookshelves this weekend, and it seemed like a good idea to get a little organized first so we’d have a clearer idea of what we’d need, and where we’d want to put it.

Well, six hours later, we were still going. Every time I finished clearing all the junk out of one closet, I’d find another one. Then another drawer. Or another file cabinet. Oh look, what’s this random pile of video tapes back here? What’s in this stack of cardboard tubes? Do I really need to keep this ratty gray stuffed cat that I once dressed up as a sci-fi critter for a DragonCon?

Eeks.

We were brutal. Against all our packrat instincts (actually, I think Jeff is a MUCH worse packrat than I am), we ruthlessly chucked anything we had forgotten we owned, or couldn’t see using in the next few years, or couldn’t remember why we kept it in the first place.

By 5pm, I thought we were done. I took these pictures to illustrate the magnitude of the cleanup process – piles of stuff to throw away or give out:

Pile size as of 17:00:

Trash

Donations

Sadly, I was wrong. At least 5 more VERY FULL trash bags were put together over the next few hours, and one or two more donation bags full of books.

There were a few tough decisions to make. It seems like there’s always a pile of stuff that you don’t really want to keep – it just collects dust – but you can’t imagine throwing out, for “sentimental reasons.” I probably had more of that stuff than Jeff! Interestingly, most of my sentimental stuff no longer held the attachment that it used to, and I found myself throwing away old tapes, old journals (no worries; I long ago typed them up!), and random mementos that were falling apart.

I came across my collection of convention badges from all the science fiction conventions I’d been to. In college, these were a fun dorm room decoration. These days, they’ve been stuck in a manilla envelope under a pile of clothes, and I honestly can’t see any future time when I’d want to display them. So I decided I’d just take a picture (in case I ever really wanted to see what they all looked like) – and into the junk pile they went.

We broke for dinner – and then tackled the kitchen. Among the things to land in the trash: oatmeal from before I knew Jeff (neither of us eats oatmeal), several rock-hard sacks of brown sugar, a grease-fire extinguisher that had been buried back behind so much stuff it was impossible to reach anyway, Jeff’s old nametag from working at Macy’s, 3 of the 10 or so spatulas that we apparently own, and bits and pieces from long-discarded coffee makers.

I’ll spare you a photo of the kitchen trash.

We also own a remarkable number of cookbooks (more than 10), considering how little cooking we do.

But the really sad thing is that we’re still not done! After completing the kitchen, I breathed a sigh of relief – our apartment was junk-free. And then I noticed the closet in the living room. And remembered the cupboard in the bathroom. And there’s one more kitchen cupboard, come to think of it. But I really think that’ll be all…

Our original plan this morning was to clean, then split up – I’d hit the gym for a few hours, while Jeff got bookcase supplies at Home Depot. We figured we’d still have all evening to start work on this masterpiece of wood, and maybe even watch a movie. Instead, all we did was throw shit out. Thank god our manager is out of town; he would have been apoplectic seeing the number of bags we tossed into the building dumpster.

It’s been quite a week. Work’s been insane, I’ve been acclimating to a slightly different sleep and workout schedule, and Jeff and I have made great strides in the eating-in department. :)

Still, I managed to squeeze in some scuba trip planning! My work is taking me back to Hawaii for a Thursday/Friday meeting at the end of July. I have a few more vacation days available than Jeff, so I decided I might as well use one and extend the trip through Monday, so I can get some diving in on Saturday and Sunday. (diving over by 2pm on Sunday; plane takes off 1:30 Monday – if you were wondering why I’m diving the day before flying!)

My original plan was to dive both days with friends and colleagues. One of the guys who will be in the same meeting, coincidentally named Jeff, is finishing up his scuba certification this month, and we talked about going out diving with his outfit up near Waikoloa. It sounded like a lot of fun, since I’d probably get to dive some more northerly sites. However, he was only available on Saturday. My old college friend Julie was available both days and up for anything; she’s also a pretty inexperienced diver, though she finished her certification with Jack’s in Kona a few years ago.

So my initial plan was to split up the diving: a day up north, and then a day with Jack’s. This would mean moving my gear around a lot, but no big deal. I also still had to find a place to stay.

After several on-line attempts to discover good rates, I finally found the best deal at the Royal Kona by calling, and booked myself for Saturday and Sunday nights. Then Jack’s Diving Locker wrote back to me that they actually had a THREE-TANK, ADVANCED dive trip going out on Saturday, with 2 spots left. Jack’s, of course, is right across from Royal Kona.

My plans to dive with Jeff went out the window (sorry, Jeff), and I instantly signed on. This meant I was dumping Julie, too (sorry, Julie!), since Jack’s has requirements on divers who sign up for their advanced trips, that she doesn’t yet meet. But now I’m diving right across the street from where I’m staying, and my gear stays in one place – and I get in FIVE dives instead of a measly four.

Julie gave me a call yesterday to say she’s still up for diving Sunday, and is actually quite content to do just one day of diving to ease back into it, so it’s all good. She’ll also keep me company in Kona Saturday night, and probably stay until I head back to the airport Monday around lunch.

I can’t wait! It’ll be a little strange diving someplace exotic without my own Jeff (and his camera). I’m hoping to borrow or buy a video housing, so I can take more footage while I’m there. If not, I might at least lug along our old Reefmaster for some point-and-shoot pics; we’ll see!

I had a lovely birthday weekend at Catalina with my favorite dive buddy. The weather was beautiful, the water was warm (well, it was warm when you stayed above the 30′ thermocline), the vis was not as bad as it often is, and the fish were out in force. What more could I have asked for?

Friday evening, I picked Jeff up from the airport after his week-long business trip in Florida. He somehow managed to get some dives in while he was there (check out pictures), even testing out his new dual-strobe setup. For our Catalina dives, he had an extra gizmo to learn how to use: we bought the port for our macro lens, so we could get some better pics of all the tiny critters out here and abroad.

Although he’d been up since 3am Pacific time, Jeff managed to make it down the 405 in traffic with me, onto the Catalina Express, into a taxi, and up the many stairs to our musty, un-air conditioned room at the Atwater. We grabbed a quick dinner (though I did most of the eating), and conked out as soon as possible.

Saturday morning, we hopped onto the King Neptune, dive boat of Catalina Scuba Luv. We’ve always been big fans, but this time we weren’t as impressed as usual – mainly because they’d crowded about 26 divers onto the boat, and frankly, more than 15 feels packed! It got worse when they arbitrarily assigned everyone into one of three groups, and said that only one group could gear up and get in the water at a time. We were in group 2, and a big class of new divers was in group 1 – meaning they’d take forever to get in the water, stir up lots of sand once down, and make it generally less pleasant for us. (Can you tell we’re get-in-the-water-first people?)

Jeff made his displeasure known, and for the second dive of the day, our group went first. At the last dive site, we were back to the number 2 spot, but Jeff and I sneaked in while group 1 was dawdling around.

The diving wasn’t spectacular, but it definitely didn’t suck; this is a good thing. Temperatures were 60 or a little over, as long as you stayed above 30 feet or so. There was a nice little thermocline at 30 where the temperatures dropped into the upper 50s, and I’m sure if we’d gone deeper we would have found a few more – but since the visibility also became poorer the deeper we went, we were more than happy to cruise the kelp at 25 feet on pretty much all three dives.

Our second dive site was one I’ve enjoyed before: Sea Fan Grotto. There’s a great little “nook” in the rocky slope at about 35 feet, where gorgonians grow on the wall in the shade. It’s about as coral-like as it gets out here. I got directions from the boat captain (“that way, in about 40 feet”) and we headed off.

We swam for a while along the edge of the rocks and kelp. And swam. And swam and swam and swam. After quite a lot of swimming, we were still in the rock-rubble area; I knew we had to pass to the sheer-rock area before we were even close. But we definitely hadn’t passed it, so we kept on swimming.

Finally, our persistence paid off – sea fans!

A little too murky for good photographs, but it was still a lovely sight. We poked around the gorgonians for a while, and I shone my light back into a cave that I briefly considered going into, but opted not to stir up all the silt that would no doubt result.

Our last dive of the day was the murkiest, and the underwater topography was pretty darned dull. However, we lucked out when it came to critters. First, we spotted a big sheep crab hunkered down behind a rock; I think he was eating something, because when he finally started moving he had what looked like a sea cucumber stabbed with his front claw. Here he is menacing the camera:

They’re slow, but strong. Jeff finally let it wander off before it decided to take apart the housing.

Next, I found an octopus poking its head and tentacles in and out of holes under rocks. At first, it was alarmed by us and hid in a hole. We stayed put for a while, and it eventually started to crawl back out again – only to retreat again every time we got too close or made too much noise. Finally, I started waggling my fingers near the exit of its hole like a possible snack, which enticed it to at least come out a bit more. Once or twice it flashed white and poofed up all “big” to try to scare us off, but eventually it stopped paying attention to us and just went on with its hunt.

Back in Avalon, we wrapped up the evening with dinner at our favorite Catalina restaurant: Channel House. And of course, dessert (including the box of Godiva truffles that Jeff is obliged to buy me for every holiday and occasion, which had unfortunately merged into several SuperTruffles while in the trunk of his car in Florida).

Sunday morning, we rolled out of bed a bit before 8 to make the hike over to Casino Point for a couple of dives. As it turned out, we only did one; the tide was low and the entry/exit slightly tricky, the steps in and out were crowded with students, and we had such a nice, long, fun dive the first time out that we didn’t feel the need to give it another go.

This was Jeff’s first outing with the macro lens, and he tried his best to get me a goby.

I also spotted him a few friendly scorpionfish.

The most memorable part of diving this weekend, for me anyway, was all the garibaldi action. Jeff spent quite a bit of time on both days photographing grown and juvenile garibaldi, and got some interesting shots. On Sunday, we encountered a few very territorial males, who would swim at our faces to try to scare us away. For the first time, I actually heard the thump/click sound they make to try to startle their opponents! It startles the heck out of me every time they swim at me, because I’ve heard Jeff’s biting-garibaldi story many, many times. And yet, I’m totally addicted to the comedy of it. They get so upset with you, especially if you start wiggling fingers – and they look so silly trying to be scary! (I will not stress out the wildlife, I will not stress out the wildlife…)

One male actually had a female in his nest at the time, laying eggs. It would have been a great video subject, or even wide angle – sadly, it was not something that Jeff could capture with a macro lens!

We topped off the day with a little shopping trip: some Catalina tile to use in a coffee table we intend to build sometime. They’re too reflective to photograph with a flash, so this is the best I could do on short notice – what do you think?

When I have a few minutes to kill during the day and start randomly dropping by some of my friend’s websites or blogs, it’s always pleasant to find one or two that have actually been updated. (And even more pleasant when they’re updated with content that I actually enjoy perusing.)

So why have I been depriving my own readers of this pleasure for the last few weeks?

Good question, really. After we got back from Hawaii, I felt like I’d over-blogged, and wanted to give folks a few days to catch up before marching ahead with new entries.

Then I headed out of town again, this time solely for work. However, I still had evenings mostly free, and plenty to blog about (though it might be safer for my job if I opted not to describe in too much detail what happens to astronomers when they go out drinking). So why not then? And why not when I got back from said business trip (which was quite a lot of fun), and spent a week at home while Jeff was out of town. I had lots of free time then.

Except, I kind of didn’t. See, while I was in Minneapolis for work, I started to work on editing the video that I took in Hawaii. (In the evenings; not while at the conference.) And the damn thing has taken over my life. I haven’t really had that much downtime in the first place; this month at work has been Hectic, capital letter intended. But every spare moment, I’ve done nothing but fiddle with this video. First, there was importing the video off DV tapes. Then, actually editing it into something watchable. After that, there was music to deal with, and re-edits and audio levels to worry about.

And then: it was time to try to create a DVD.

I started with the fun parts: learning DVD Studio Pro, and photoshopping up some moderately-attractive menus. But DVD Studio Pro is extremely slow and finicky, so attempting what seems simple can wind up costing hours of waiting for the little spinny icon to go away, or of going back to the Photoshop files to get them into EXACTLY THE RIGHT LAYER CONFIGURATION that DVD Studio Pro will deal with.

But finally, I had a menu I could live with, and I was ready to burn a DVD. My freeware editing software only outputs Quicktime; I then feed the Quicktime file to DVD Studio Pro to convert to MPEG (or run it through a compressor program first, if I want to do more advanced settings). Outputting a 24-minute quicktime file takes several hours on my laptop. Compressing it into MPEG on Jeff’s Mac takes several more hours. (Transferring in between takes 0 hours, thanks to my lovely new firewire external drive.)

If I only had to do it once, it would be no big deal. But the result of my first attempt was nearly un-watchable; whenever there was motion on screen, it got this weird jaggedy look – AND, there were horrible compression artifacts, even though I’d chosen to go with high quality.

(WARNING – boring technical details to follow. You may want to stop reading this now.)

Over the next few days, I went back and forth and back and forth. The compression artifacts were because I hadn’t REALLY been at the highest possible quality; that was easily fixed. The blasted jaggedy things are most likely due to a screwed up field order (film is in frames, each of which takes up the whole screen; video actually displays two fields one after the other, in an interlaced pattern, to make up a frame). You’d think this would be easy to fix, but it’s not. I’ve spent the last two days trying various different ways of going from Point A (Avid) to Point B (DVD), and so far, no luck.

Jeff’s friend Mark, who has way more experience outputting video than either of us, finally gave me the info I need: don’t use Avid to export to Quicktime, he said. No matter what he’s ever tried, Avid + DV + exporting winds up with freaky field issues. Instead, I should play the movie on my computer back out onto another DV tape – and then import that directly into iMovie on the Mac.

Right – because there weren’t already enough steps involved.

To make things worse, my laptop with it’s little firewire adapter card did not want to admit to the existence of an attached camcorder, so I couldn’t output to DV. So I made poor Jeff install Avid Free DV on his Mac, and then figured out how to hack into the file locations to make it open my project up from off my firewire drive. (This only took about 45 minutes.)

And sure enough, it works like a charm. For video. For audio, Avid’s DV output tool complains that the music tracks are in a different sample rate than the rest of the audio. If you convert the clips, it just creates new raw clips from the original – you’d then have to re-edit the new ones into place (this is just Avid Free, after all, without all the auto-assembly tools of the full version).

AAAAAAAGH.

So, for those of you who haven’t already given up in boredom, here’s the final workflow for anyone else interested in going from DV (for recording) to Avid (for editing) to DVD Studio Pro (for output):

1. Export the audio tracks as their own Quicktime file
2. Hook up your camcorder and play the video tracks of the movie back into it (using Avid’s Digital Cut tool)
3. Use iMovie to read the movie back into the computer and save it as a Quicktime file
4. Reunite the video and audio quicktime files in DVD Studio Pro

And that only took a week and many sleepless nights to figure out. Whoof.

Go here for links to each day of blog entries, dive logs, galleries, etc:

Kona Classic ’05 Trip Report

We decided to have a mostly-lazy day: slept in, breakfasted at Bubba’s, did a little shopping for Hawaiian shirts. Jeff was determined to find a decent Hawaiian shirt with a fish motif, and we finally found a good one: reefs along the bottom, fish everywhere, and a turtle being cleaned by tangs in the middle of the shirt – just like the photo he submitted for wide angle. I also got my first Hawaiian-print shirt (ladies sleeveless), so we were all prepared to gussie ourselves up for the Awards Banquet tonight.

Everyone began milling around the hosted bar around 6pm, and we snagged a table for our boat, plus divemaster Elaine. We were also joined by Rob, one of the Kona Aggressor captains and a friend of Tee and Dave’s from previous years, along with his girlfriend.

The first awards given were for the Reef Check categories: Reef Check had special categories (with prizes, but not the fancy blue dolphin statuette trophies) for Best Invertebrate, Best Vertebrate, and Best Reef Check Diver. Jeff won that last one! I was thrilled that we wouldn’t be going home empty-handed (even though Jeff really only came to learn and improve, I could tell he really wanted to at least place in some of the categories).

Then they got down to the serious awards. Each of the categories went by, and Jeff didn’t even get any Honorable Mentions. I could tell he was starting to be bummed, and trying not to be (since really, he didn’t expect to win anything this year).

Dave took the video contest, as usual, with a cute video set to the Beatles’ “Help” showing Dave deciding to take up scuba diving, and then totally panicking in the water. In between panic shots were all kinds of great critter shots; I hope my camera work is just HALF that steady.

The Locals Only video was won by the owner of Jack’s Diving Locker, who put together a real crowd-pleaser centered around those fancy bubble-rings that all tropical divemasters seem to be good at. He had all kinds of great bubble footage, including really fancy ones with multiple bubbles interacting with each other, and spinning off into little vortices. There were some great shots of turtles on the surface framed by a bubble ring as it rose up, and of freedivers swimming through the rings. Amazing stuff!

Incidentally, we were at the winning table – Rob had 4 trophies in front of him by now, from Macro, Wide Angle, Creative, and Topside (all fabulous photos), and John won Diver Portrait with a gorgeous shot of his wife Linda over the sailboat wreck, which was outlined by snappers hanging out in its shade. Elaine won in one of the Locals Only categories, so we had 6 blue dolphin sculptures weighing down our table – plus a pile of certificates for honorable mentions, 2nd and 3rd places, and Jeff’s Reef Check award.

Finally – drumroll please – it was time for the Best Overall categories. Jan (Jack’s divemaster) took it in the Locals Only with a fabulous cleaner-wrasse shot; we were thrilled because we adore her and her work. Kathy announced that the prize for Best Overall in the open category included a trip for two to Tahiti – and I leaned over to Jeff and whispered that he should definitely try to win next year!

Then the pros got up to introduce the winning photograph. They said that the photographer had made real improvements all week; every day, he or she had come to talk to the pros about their photos from the day, and come up with what to work on the next day. And the next day, they’d see the results of that conversation in the work, until by the end of the week the pictures had dramatically improved. (At this point, I started to hope it might be Jeff, even though I knew it was a long shot – he’d spent a lot of time working with the pros every evening.)

Marty Snyderman mentioned that it was ironic that he hadn’t seen a single turtle on this trip – and now I really started to think it might be Jeff, because the shot he submitted that all the pros had liked the most was a turtle shot. We had now reached the point where we would be disappointed if it wasn’t Jeff, even though it probably wasn’t.

But it was!

Open Category – Best Overall Image, Jeff Laity

We celebrated into the wee hours (well, midnight, when they close the bars) with Dave and Tee. Dave won a new video housing – I’m hoping I can talk him into selling one of his old ones, so I can shoot some video in Tahiti! The dratted trip will probably cost us more than it saves us, between airfare (not included) and all the photo equipment we’ll want to buy for it. It should be well worth it, though!

I sent Jeff home this morning with his pretty blue dolphin trophy (sculpted by Wyland, the guy who does all those calendar-worthy underwater paintings). He also got quite a pile of prizes donated by Body Glove, Pelican, Deep Outdoors, and others.

And as if all that wasn’t reward enough – all the first place winners will have their photos printed in the fall photo spread of Sport Diver magazine!We are very happy Laitys today.Yesterday we were about 90% sure we’d be heading back to the Kona Classic next year – now I’d say it’s a complete certainty! I hope we have as wonderful a group of boat buddies as this year, not to mention the pros who donated their time to helping everyone out. This is a truly fantastic event, and Jeff and I both had a blast. (And next year, Dave had better watch out – I plan to give him some competition in the video category!)

Check out the lucky shirt:

The last dive day of a vacation is always sort of sad. There’s such pressure on it to be a good day of diving, and in this case even more so because of the pressure to get good photographs. Jeff has been trying really hard to apply all the advice he gets from the pros at the end of each day, and has come back with better and better photos.

We piled onto the Na Pali Kai 2 for the last time with our group of buddies: Dave and Tee Husted (who loaned me the housing); Judy Bennett from New Orleans; her travel buddy Jim Squires, who teaches diving in Vermont; and John and Linda (John’s the UW photographer, but Linda foots the bill with a successful dental practice in a nice bit of gender role reversal – John used to be her office manager).

We started with a bonus dive. Some people really wanted to dive the Naked Lady again, but others didn’t want to trade in one of their long dives for it. So Jack’s gave us the option of an extra dive for $25. Easy decision. We didn’t see anything that spectacular this time around, but it was a pretty dive. I followed a big conch around on the sand for a while, and saw the bicolor anthias again. On the way down and up, Jeff practiced taking pictures of silhouettes and sunbursts.

Next we moored at Rabbi’s. We dropped down and headed towards High Rock, where a big frogfish reportedly hangs out. Apparently Jeff and I missed all the cool stuff on this dive, because everyone else came up with tales of amazing critters. We tooled around several ridges and arches, and I shot some more group-hunting action, a cute pair of tobies, and a trumpetfish. At the end of the dive, someone found an enormous moray hanging out under a ledge. It seemed to be awake, but wasn’t moving around or opening its mouth at all, so it made kind of a boring subject.After lunch, we headed back to one of our favorites for the last dive of the trip: Eel Cove. Jeff and I poked around the shallows for a while in search of the dragon moray, but didn’t find it. Both Jeff and I got shots of a rockmover wrasse in action, and I also saw some yellowtail coris wrasses shoving rocks around. We went around the corner to where the raccoon butterflies pester the sargent majors, and encountered a scene of incredible fishiness! I saw sargent majors courting, spawning dascyllus, and lots of damsels chasing away other fish. There were cleaning stations galore, and I spotted some fish I hadn’t seen yet on the trip hovering in the water column, including several pairs of pyramid butterflies. The raccoons soon materialized, and we were enveloped in clouds of ravenous butterflyfish and angry sargent majors.

Swarm of hungry Raccoon Butterflyfish:
We eventually turned around and headed back to the cove, where we still didn’t find the dragon eel, but we found a few small whitemouth morays. Jeff ran low on air and headed up, while I continued to putter around for a while in the shallows (plenty of other folks always in sight), just fish-watching and trying to film some bubbles.Now everyone settles in for an evening of touching up their photos and deciding which ones to submit to which categories, or for all-nighters putting together video. Not me; I’m definitely going to just take my time back at home this year. But maybe next year I’ll give Dave some competition!

This was just a great day of diving. Or at least, half a day of great diving. We started the morning at Turtle Pinnacle in search of turtles (what else?), and were happy to see a cloudless sky for once. Nothing beats sunshine for wide angle underwater photography!

This dive kicked serious, serious ass. Along with David Fleetham, Jeff and I were the first ones down, and we followed him right to the turtle cleaning station. One turtle was hanging out on the ground, and another was hovering in mid-water to be cleaned on all sides at once. I was drifting towards that one when I suddenly realized I was right next to another one on the ground beside me. Turtles galore! Sometimes one would be startled by all the photographers (go figure) and head for the surface – and then everyone would scramble to get silhouette shots. David was very helpful, indicating when it seemed safer to inch closer, and when I should slow down or back off. He’s got no shortage of turtle shots under his professional belt!

I spotted several peacock groupers hovering over coral heads, and began looking for their eel partner, who soon materialized. I got lots of footage as I followed him and his buddies out and over the reef, and eventually Jeff caught on and came along. I was distracted looking at a second eel when Jeff caught the first eel striking at an octopus in a hole – but I turned around in time to catch him tying himself in knots to crush the octopus, and swimming away with it while the peacock groupers tried to grab some scraps.

An ass-kicking dive indeed!

On our surface interval, we headed out to sea in search of big stuff. Instead, we found small stuff. The boat came to a halt by a red bucket floating in the water, and a different Jeff (one of the owners of Jack’s Diving Locker) jumped out to take a look. He reported back that the bucket was home to a triggerfish and dozens of juvenile something-or-others, possibly amber jacks. Everyone hopped in for a snorkel, remembering that last year’s macro winner was a picture of a frogfish on some floating trash. The triggerfish bolted, but it was fun to watch all the little fish that had made their home on the barnacle-encrusted bucket.

For our second dive, we moored by the Old Airport. We checked out this site in hopes of finding some macro critters: scorpionfish or frogfish. Apparently conditions don’t usually allow diving here, but today was calm so we checked it out. Unfortunately, we didn’t see anything very spectacular. Lots of small fish action: juvenile yellowtail coris wrasses and a juvenile rockmover. We saw several cleaning stations, and more hunting eels, but none as photogenic as on the last site. Still, we burned up all our air tooling around on the bottom. I’m loving these hour-plus dives!

We finished off our Thursday evening at the Kona Classic pizza party over at the Kona Brewery. Divers can eat; I don’t think the pizzas were ever out on the table for more than a few minutes before every scrap was picked clean. We sat with four other divers from our boat, and swapped stories about dives, pets and jobs. The evening ended with a raffle; I walked away with a PADI backpack (hey, an extra carry-on!), and Jeff snagged one of the Sport Diver baseball caps he’d been drooling over.

My foot was killing me when I first got out of bed, but it seemed to get better after some walking around – and of course, the diving seemed to help! (It probably just distracts me from the pain.) Unfortunately, once we were back on land it got progressively worse again as I walked around, and it’s ace-bandaged again as I type this. So: walking, bad; diving good. Duh.

Today we decided to head south for a change; our first stop was a dive site named Driftwood. We puttered downwards along a ridge and over a lava tube (which Jeff then went back up and over again to meet up with me). In around 70 feet of water, I spotted a pretty, multicolored potter’s angelfish. We hopped over to the other side of the ridge, where the divemaster pointed out an eel hunting with a bluefin trevally. Jeff was so focused on photographing the trevally (who wasn’t running away from us like they usually do), he didn’t notice the eel went right under him. Heading back towards the boat, we spotted a trio of male bird wrasses – first ones we’ve seen, though there’ve been plenty of females!

After the usual surface interval spent eating sandwiches and motoring miles offshore in search of big stuff (didn’t find anything today), we headed back to shore and moored at The Dome. Jeff and I kicked off the dive by poking around in the enormous cavern the site is named after, with lots of skylights to let some light in, but plenty of dark holes to peek into. We didn’t find anything spectacular, but it was a pretty area with the light trickling in and the fish swimming upside-down. We exited on the far side and looped back around past the boat, then went down along a ridge next to the sand. I filmed some goatfish feeding in the sand, and Jeff found a tiny lizardfish in a hole.

On our way back up the ridge, I spotted a bunch of jacks and goatfish hovering together over a coral head, and they didn’t spook as I inched closer – so I started looking for the eel they were out hunting with. Sure enough, one appeared, and Jeff and I watched the show for a bit.

Then Tee came over to grab us, and showed us a bunch of the other photographers gathered around a triton’s trumpet (enormous snail) eating a crown-of-thorns starfish (an invasive species that eats coral). Everyone took turns snapping pics and video of the triton’s meal, while I filmed the merry-go-round of photographers. Jeff pretty much emptied his tank (80 cubic feet as opposed to my 72), and used my octopus on our safety stop just to be safe. (First time we’ve used it, for you mothers out there who are now panicking, and he wasn’t even totally out of air; we were just being cautious.)

Triton’s Trumpet devouring a Crown of Thorns:

We spent the evening in various presentations by the photo pros: Dan talked about digital workflows and some basic Photoshop stuff (though with some tips that were new to us), and after dinner there were slideshows by Marty Snyderman, Jim Watts, and David Fleetham. Jeff and I barely had a chance all day to look at photos or footage – I’m now two days behind in logging my tapes! I guess there’s a chance I’ll catch up tomorrow, since there’s nothing scheduled between the boat dive and dinner at 7. Then again, I may just take the opportunity to nap!

I started today on the wrong foot – literally. The tricky entrance onto the boat yesterday was actually easier than today’s; the boat was even lower relative to the pier. I sat on the edge and put my left foot into a shelf below the pier, and one of the Jack’s folks pulled me across as I pushed off the ledge. But I wound up going sort of sideways because of my foot’s sideways orientation in the ledge, and my right foot twisted under me so I landed entirely on the side/top of it! Serious ouch.

It was a short ride out to the first dive, a sailboat wreck just outside the harbor known as the Naked Lady, and everyone tried to help: we wrapped my foot in an ace bandage, and put ice on it while I held it up. I decided to go ahead and try to dive; it hurt to walk, but there’s no walking underwater.

Getting into my wetsuit wasn’t a problem, but putting on my dive booty was. There’s a certain amount of foot-scrunching I do to sort of wriggle in, and it’s just that sort of foot-bending that hurts! Pulling on my fin was also a challenge; yanking back on the strap to set it around my ankle crunched up my entire foot.

Once in the water, I had no problems. Flutter kicks hurt a bit, but I’m more of a frog-kicker anyway. We headed down to the bottom and photographed schools of blue-striped snappers circling the wreck, hawaiian dascyllus mating behavior, and some bicolor anthias.

Bicolor Anthia:
Wreck of the Naked Lady:

Getting back onto the boat was a minor challenge as well. I handed up my weights first, and then slipped out of my BC so the crew could haul it on board and I only had to worry about getting my own weight up the ladder. Putting as much weight as possible on my good foot, I made it back up without incident.

Since we’d started the day with a deep dive (110 ft), and of course we all completely maxed out our bottom time, we needed an extra long surface interval. We cruised out to sea in search of big stuff (whales, dolphins, whale sharks). After lunch, we came across a pod of dolphins. The boat zipped ahead of them a bit, and then dropped us all in the water in snorkel gear – just in time to spot them swimming under us. We tried again, and this time they were cavorting in our wake just a few feet away from us – but again, once they were in, they all stayed down and just swam under. I doubt anyone got any decent photos out of it, but it was still cool to see literally hundreds of dolphins zooming by beneath us!

We did our second dive at Golden Arches, a relatively shallow site with two big ridges (with arches in them, obviously). On the way from the first to the second, we stumbled across a pair of lei triggerfish who were very upset with Jeff’s fins. He took one off and waggled it beneath the camera to get them to come close, and spent most of the dive in that position.

Lei Triggerfish:

I continued to cruise around the second ridge, observing more mating behavior – seems like all the fish are spawning this week! I hung out in the archway for a while, with a big school of blue-stripe snapper. Initially startled by my bubbles, they eventually got used to me and ignored my presence, and I just kind of chilled out and drifted back and forth with them.

Getting off the boat at the end of the day was a bit nerve-wracking, but with both Jeff and Danny (Jack’s crew) pulling me up I managed to land very lightly on my feet! Unfortunately, walking turned out to be harder than I expected. On the boat, I’d been able to get back and forth with minimal pain, but that was never more than a few steps at a time. Walking to our parked car, and then walking around Long’s Drugs in search of Ace bandages, made me wish I had a crutch!

I debated for a while over whether to go on the manta dive tonight. The smart thing to do, obviously, would be to lay off the foot for a while. But I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to film manta rays, or to try out nighttime videography (Dave was going to loan me a light). So I opted in, and thank goodness!

Jeff and I were the first ones into the water and over to the light box. There were no mantas in sight when we arrived, so Jeff settled in photographing an eel that was lurking under the rocks surrounding the manta-attracting light box. While his attention was occupied, one enormous manta swooped in from behind and over our heads, then disappeared for a while. Finally it showed up again, and Jeff paid attention. More and more divers joined us, and we wound up with two or three huge rays showing off. The eel that was hanging out in the light box suddenly took off vertically, swimming upwards through the school of fish hanging out in the light. Between the mantas and the free-swimming eel, I felt a severe sensory overload.

Andy (the divemaster) called us away for a bit to look at a devil scorpionfish on a rock, then we went back to mantas. This was my first attempt at night videography, and I had to turn off the camera sometimes to just sit back and enjoy the mantas instead of looking at the monitor. Andy called us away a second time to check out a reticulated frogfish, a tiny little red fish down in a crack (apparently quite rare). Then back to mantas.

My injured foot started to hurt after being sat on for most of an hour (while manta-watching, you kneel on the uneven ground, squashing your feet and fins beneath you), so Jeff and I started to cruise around a bit. Once again, Andy to the rescue – he pointed out an undulated moray out in the open. Jeff and I followed it around until it spotted a squirrelfish. Well, we helped it spot a squirrelfish with our dive lights. BAM, the squirrelfish was dinner – and we got it all on camera (both our cameras)!

Last year we had more mantas (eighteen), but I think this year was a better dive all-around. It was a truly great night dive!

Unfortunately, the time spent kneeling on the bottom did not do good things for my injured foot. I guess the acid test is whether it feels better tomorrow after a few hours of rest, or worse!