It can’t be a surprise to anyone who knows us that our usual birthday celebrations involve diving. Jeff’s November birthday lends itself well to 3-day trips on the Vision. My June birthday usually means a couple of days in Catalina. This year we splurged: three days in Catalina.

We took the last ferry out Thursday night so that we’d be able to spend Friday diving at Casino Point, and beat the weekend crowds. Usually we stay at the Atwater, which is right in town, but this time we tried out a new place: Seaport Village Inn. The main draw was gear shuttle service to and from the dive park. We used to just haul the gear there ourselves, but now that we’re sporting drysuits and two cameras, there’s just no way! The shuttle – actually a small golf cart – often resulted in a bit of waiting and repeated calls to the desk, but it saved us money on cabs.

Friday morning we hit the park at high tide and had ourselves three lovely, dry, warm and toasty dives.

The water wasn’t the clearest – it was full of what I’ve heard some divers call “whale snot,” and what Jeff refers to as “egg drop soup.” In the summer, the algae blooms and all kinds of things start growing and spawning, so if you think too hard about what you’re swimming through you might get grossed out.

We still enjoyed ourselves, with trips to the various wrecks in the park and plenty of oddball fish behavior to amuse us.

Male sheephead battle it out:

The other highlight of the day – and I don’t know why we didn’t take a picture – was seeing the T-shirts sported by a Christian dive club at the point: “He died for us… We dive for him.”

I don’t know if I’d put scuba diving up there with getting crucified, in terms of sacrifices one could make. The dive club was full of perfectly nice folks – a bunch of them were on the boat with us Saturday – but I just couldn’t stop mocking them inside my head because of the shirts. I’m going straight to hell.

Saturday we dove on the King Neptune with 16 Christians (mostly new divers), 2 guys from Northern California, and Dr. Bill. The divemasters let us heathens skip the briefings so we could beat the crowd into the water on all three dives, which was nice. On our first dive, we asked Bill for permission to follow him around, figuring he’d be bound to find something cool. We weren’t disappointed! Most of our dive was spent following these guys around:

The male was carting the female around, often picking her up completely off the ground. Bill said they didn’t seem to be mating – they would have been stomach-to-stomach – so he guessed they’d already finished and the male was just trying to keep her away from other males. We took turns shooting video (Bill and myself) and photos (Jeff), and I think we did a pretty good job of not getting in each other’s way.

Dive #2 was a bit of an adventure for everyone. We anchored a bit far away from the reef, and had to swim over sand for some time to reach it. Jeff and I actually had more fun in the sand than we did when we finally hit reef: we found a siphonophore floating around in the water column, several sheep crabs, and saw our first California pipefish (who promptly hid in the sand). We were in a large cove, but there was the danger of current if you got too close to the edge of the point, plus lots of wind at the surface, so we were careful to keep track of our heading going out and coming back. To my delight, we surfaced about 30 feet from the boat. Compasses are wonderful things.

And the Christians didn’t have any, apparently. In groups of three and four, they started surfacing off in the distance and swimming back on the surface. (With a compass, you can take a heading and then descend 5 feet to swim back – much easier). Our divemaster hopped in to help drag back the ones that were too tired, and pretty soon we had a deckful of exhausted swimmers (including Dr. Bill, who’d lost track of where he was and surfaced at the end of the current line, but hauled himself in and had a good laugh at his own expense about it.)

One group was a good 200 yards off, closer to a second dive boat than to us. We could see them, but couldn’t go get them until everyone else was on board. They blew whistles and inflated safety sausages, even though they weren’t drifting (still well inside the cove). It’s always scarier when you’re the one bobbing on the waves, I guess! And I know firsthand how easy it is to surface far from the boat…. but I have to say these folks really started rubbing me the wrong way back on board. All I heard was bitching about how that was way too advanced a dive site, and why did the boat make them swim all the way back instead of coming to get them? (They did go to get the farthest group, but everyone else was within range of the current line.)

Some were talking about how they thought they might die, and kept thinking of their kids; this seemed more than a bit melodramatic to me. Others immediately started bragging about the swim they’d just made, and how it must have been a mile. Um – not.

I helped get people out of BCs and dragged fins and tanks around on deck, and tried to have sympathy for the tired and crying ones – but the whining ones just pissed me off, especially after seeing how the crew bent over backwards to drag everyone in.

I could have told them it wasn’t that hard a dive site, and that the conditions were actually quite nice, but I didn’t want to scare them away from future dives in SoCal…

Sunday we opted out of diving and gave topside a chance. We’d never taken any of the inland tours before, so we signed up for the 2-hour “Skyline Drive” bus tour up to the airport and back. It was interesting to hear about the history of Catalina from the tour guide, but the tour itself was pretty boring – especially because the bus didn’t stop at all except at the airport, which just isn’t that photogenic. We did see some buffalo off in the distance, and Jeff managed to get a shot from his seat in the bus with a telephoto lens:

When we made it back to town, we really wanted to head back up into the hills so we could take some scenic photos of Avalon. We decided to shell out to rent a golf cart for an hour, which you can drive up to the roads that make a perimeter around the town.

And that was pretty much the end of our weekend. We had a great time diving, making fun of people (seriously, the people-watching on Avalon is outstanding), eating, and golf carting. I just wish we could do this every weekend!

Feel free to check out topside pictures, underwater pictures, and my dive logs.

They’re here! After a surprisingly sweaty session sitting on my office floor trying to cram together all the plastic ball-and-socket joints, my housing is starting to look professional. Well, aside from that ridiculous flat port on the front. One thing at a time.

What the fish will see:

The controls are part of the battery pods, mounted on the bottom:

This is just cool – I’m on the Light & Motion website! They’re hosting the winning videos from the Kona Classic. Check it out for a look at Dave and Michael’s videos, which were awesome:

2006 Kona Classic Video Winners

We crawled out of bed at 4am Sunday morning, so we could catch the 6:15am ferry to Catalina. Luckily, I managed a whopping 5.5 hours of sleep, so I wasn’t a total zombie (the same could not be said for Jeff).

At the ferry terminal, we met up with Bonnie and Marcia (Mar-see-a, not Marsha) from the Kona Classic. Bonnie lives in Palos Verdes with her diving husband and four (!!) daughters; Marcia is visiting from Brazil, where she also has a diving husband and three children. They met on Bonnie’s honeymoon in Cozumel, and have been friends ever since – Kona is their annual girls-only trip together.

It was an absolutely beautiful day in SoCal. We had sunshine as forecasted, with a nearly cloudless sky; there was just a little bit of a breeze; and most importantly, the ocean conditions at Avalon were smooth and clear. We headed straight to Casino Point, rented tanks and weights, and started setting up camera gear.

At this point, I discovered that my camera battery had run dry – it must have been packed with a button depressed, keeping it on since the night before when I’d recharged it. Oops. I didn’t have any spares packed, so I would be the lone non-photographer for the day.

That actually worked out pretty well, since it left one of us with hands free to help the others get their cameras in and out of the water, keep an eye on the group (it can be tricky diving with more than one buddy in the kelp forests), and model for photos.

The tide was on its way in, so the first entry was a smidge tricky with the water only covering the very last step. I hovered at the entry and played divemaster, since Bonnie and Marcia hadn’t dived here before and weren’t familiar with the entry. We got everyone in the water with their cameras, and headed to the east end of the dive park to pay a visit to the wreck of the Sujac.

It was our lucky day: not only was the visibility pretty darned good, but the water was WARM. Even on the Sujac, which sits in about 80 feet of water, we had a balmy 64 degrees. Jeff and I were in wetsuits for the day, so I appreciated the reprieve from 50-something degree water.

At the Sujac, I posed myself on one side of the swim-through and let anyone who was interested have a crack at taking pictures.

Hovering in the wreck of the Sujac:

We were running out of bottom time as well as air, so we turned around and headed into shallower waters, slowly cruising back towards the entry. It was a little tricky trying to keep three photographers in sight at all times, but I didn’t lose anyone (and even had a great dive myself).

We dawdled away our surface interval chatting and sunning ourselves, and hopped back in for a second dive around 11am. I’d expected the point to be totally packed with divers by now since it was Memorial Day weekend; to my surprise, it seemed slightly less crowded than a typical summer day. I wasn’t complaining.

For the second dive, we stayed in the shallows and pestered garibaldi.

We also spent a little time getting photographs of each other underwater – here are Bonnie and Marcia, looking surprised in their flat masks:

I continued my modeling career, occasionally stopping by something that I thought was pretty and waiting to see if anyone wanted to take my picture.

On this dive, we introduced Bonnie to the garibaldi THUMP, a loud popping sound they make when they try to chase you (or other fish) away from their nests. Good for hours of entertainment, or at least minutes, or however long your conscience will let you harass the poor fish.

Getting out from this dive was more of an adventure than I’d expected from a high tide at Casino Point. The stairs were well covered by water, but there were so many boats zipping around just outside the dive park (holiday weekend) that there was a constant barrage of wake. As soon as Jeff and I approached the stairs, the water became rough and so bubbly you couldn’t see a thing. Jeff somehow managed to struggle up the steps with his camera, but he’s had loads of practice at this. I had a hard enough time removing my fins and scrambling to my feet WITHOUT a camera in hand, so I camped out on the bottom step to help Bonnie and Marcia in. I’m starting to enjoy “playing divemaster” – guess it’s a good thing I’m signing up for the LA County Advanced Diver Program this summer.

We pondered a third dive while we scarfed down lunch at the dockside cafe, but opted to just take it easy instead so we wouldn’t be rushed getting back to the ferry dock by 3:15. We hung out in the sun, photographed the incredible collection of sea birds that were descending on an apparent baitball at the east end of the dive park, and pestered poor passers-by to take our picture:

Jeff was forced to spend the day with three fabulous chicks:

By the time we reached Long Beach, we’d been awake for 13 hours and made 2 fabulous dives. One would think that was enough adventure for one day, but no! We topped it off with an evening at Bonnie’s house for dinner.

Bonnie turns out to have an incredibly cool family in an awesome house. She’s on the hill just looking over the coast in Palos Verdes, but it’s not one of the extravagent mansions in the area – pretty much a typical-sized four-bedroom California house. But it’s VERY distinctive on the inside! She and her spearfisherman husband Mike have created such a great home for their four kids. The walls are covered with a combination of artwork, family photos, kid-art, and Bonnie’s underwater photos; the mantel is lined with clay creations of the girls. An old chocolate lab was huffing and puffing his way around the house, which was clean to my ideal standards: not dirty, but not sparkling, and filled with the natural clutter of six people. I loved it!

Another pair of friends came over for dinner, along with their three kids. After a little movie show in the living room (one of the girls in particular was really excited by all my california videos), we left them to their own devices and retired to the Tiki hut in the backyard. Yes, I said Tiki hut!

Mike had just returned from a fishing trip to Mexico, and the fridge was full of yellowtail tuna. Jeff was delighted to be treated to tuna sashimi on arrival – and I decided if I was ever going to try sushi, it might as well be now. I had a nibble. It had the consistency you think raw fish would have, and tasted like the sauce it was dipped in. I don’t get it.

I had better success with eating fish at dinner: Marcia had prepared a Brazilian dish, which included COOKED shrimp and fish. I ate at first mainly to be polite, and not wanting to miss the opportunity to try something different; turned out I actually liked it!

The conversation at dinner covered spearfishing, real estate, child-rearing techniques, religion, and everything in between – these were definitely my kind of people, with an everything-goes attitude to dinner talk. Jeff’s favorite line of the night: Mike yelling across the yard “Don’t let Bear [the dog] in the house tonight; he’ll have diarrhea!” after Bear consumed several dinner rolls that one of the girls dropped trying to carry an enormous basket of them across the yard. My favorite was actually the line right before that: “Just put the ones the dog hasn’t touched back in the basket – no one will know!” I think we both came away from the evening unable to decide if the visit made us want to have kids sooner, or much later! But we definitely adored everyone we met.

We hit the road at 9pm, while I still had enough energy to drive home without running into oncoming traffic. I was sorry to leave, but I’m sure we’ll be back!

Links to all galleries, blog entries (in order), etc have been posted here:

Kona Classic 2006

We briefly considered squeezing in one last dive Saturday morning, but laziness and a desire to travel with dry scuba gear won out. Most of the day was spent sitting around, eating, or shopping – Hawaii is one place where I love to shop. I loaded up on fishy earrings at the shops downtown, Jeff added to his collection of Aloha wear at the local Ross, and my small library of Hawaiian pop music grew a little larger at the Kona Borders.

Best of all, I found a dress to wear to the awards banquet – with fish on it! To match my earrings! For $10! Check it out:

The last bits of the afternoon we spent attempting to consolidate our stuff into packable piles, to save time the following morning. I should have taken a picture of our hotel room during the week we occupied it – it looked like the SCUBA fairy threw up all over. Or possibly the computer fairy, with all the laptops, external drives, and cables lying around…

I was surprisingly nervous going into the Awards Banquet. The thing was: I really wanted to win. I’m not usually a very competitive person, and this was something I didn’t really expect to have that great a chance at, given the competition. But I feel like I’m a pretty good editor, and I had a nifty idea for the basic storyline of my video, so I was more confident than a first-time competitor really should have been.

We managed to squeeze most of our boat buddies into one table, though there was a bit of overflow to the next table over. Eric Cheng, one of the photo/video pros for the week, joined us for dinner, proving that he’s just as fun to sit and talk with as he is to dive with. Jeff chatted him up about how to get started publishing photos in magazines, and I pestered him about his diving life (he’s only 30! And he takes amazing photos and videos AND is making a career out of it!), and about video equipment. He’s good people, and I’m not just writing that because he knows how to find my blog.

After everyone finished scarfing down dinner, they got down to the business of giving out awards. Our boat made a very respectable showing – I think we wound up with more than 15 awards (including honorable mentions). Jeff picked up a 3rd place in wide angle, an honorable mention in macro, and then – the one he was really psyched about – a 1st place in Photo Journalist! What was especially cool about the Photo Journalism category is that all the winners were from our boat, and they were all FANTASTIC photo sets.

Photo Journalists: Bonnie, Jeff, Dee and Jim, presented their awards by Ty Sawyer

Up next was the video category. First came an honorable mention – Jeff Leicher, owner of Jack’s Diving Locker. It was amazing footage as always, but not quite as polished as his usual submissions. I suspect he intentionally recused himself from placing in the category, so as not to compete with his customers!

Next was third place, and I was getting nervous. I wanted to be one of the three so people could see my video, so I was hoping to see my movie show up… but on the other hand, what I REALLY wanted was first place, so I didn’t want to see it yet!

And I didn’t – 3rd place was, again, amazing footage by a local. This guy goes out on black water dives at night – basically floating around under a boat in the open ocean. He shot video of all the little translucent and glowy critters that float around out there. Did I mention it was amazing? Now I was starting to worry I wouldn’t place at all.

2nd place, and I held my breath – Dave Husted! Whoah. Dave has won several years running, and he’s been my mentor for the last year (and loaner of much equipment). I was sad to see him dethroned, terrified that I wouldn’t place at all since it seemed unlikely I’d beat Dave, and still a smidge excited that 1st place was still available. Dave’s movie was hysterically funny as always: he dressed up like a conductor and “conducted” all the fish in the ocean, to some really fun music. Good stuff.

And finally they were up to 1st place. There were three other folks and myself left as possible winners, and I wasn’t familiar with any of their work – so I really couldn’t say how good my chances were. So imagine my delight when I saw the familiar titles for my video pop up on the screen!

Here I am surrounded by crazy-talented people:

(That’s a better shot of the fish dress, too!)

There was something awfully poetic on winning my first time out, just like Jeff did last year. Pretty cool.

We finished off our evening by closing down the bar next door (not hard; it closed at 11:30), along with a bunch of our new buddies from the Kona Classic. Jeff and I then crawled to bed for a bit of sleep before a day of packing and traveling.

The traveling part was not so bad, but packing was a bit of an adventure, thanks to Jeff’s prize in the photojournalism category. He won an Aqualung limited edition Mistral (double-hose regulator: think Jacques Cousteau), which came in TWO BOXES, one of which was a fancy wooden display case that’s notoriously breakable during shipping.

Enter the Husteds, YET AGAIN, to rescue us. They invited us to breakfast at their house, which is just up the street from the airport, and took the monster off our hands to ship or carry themselves. And we finally had an excuse to see their house! Which is beautiful! That’s it; we’re packing up and moving to Hawaii.

Friday morning, we left town early to squeeze in a morning dive down south at Place of Refuge. We’ve dived this site on both our previous trips to Hawaii, but always in the late afternoon or evening. The morning light was incredibly beautiful, and the water was clearer than I remember seeing there before.

Jeff and I were basically “same ocean” buddies, keeping each other’s bubbles in sight but otherwise steering clear so as not to interfere with each other. We really need to get pony bottles…

I had a great dive: cleaning stations galore, a tiny lizardfish, and – well, more cleaning stations. That was pretty much my goal for the day, anyway. Jeff found a snowflake moray out hunting towards the end of the dive. We were back on the road by 10:30am.

Surgeonfish gets a bath:

Jeff really wanted another shot at turtles, so we followed the advice of one of our boat captains and tried to hit Turtle Heaven, theoretically reachable from shore just north of the harbor.

I say theoretical because it’s A) a long walk from the car to the beach, B) a long swim in 3 feet of water from the beach to the boat channel, C) there’s a boat channel, and D) the only turtles we actually saw were in a foot of water, with an inch of visibility.

We got some great exercise in, but I doubt we’ll try that again. Luckily, I did manage to nab some usable footage of a juvenile hawaiian dascyllus bobbing in and out of an urchin, so it wasn’t a total waste! And anyway, even a crappy Hawaiian dive is still better than most of our SoCal dives..

Finally learning to just hover and wait:

It was our last day of diving on the boat, something that always leaves me feeling a bit conflicted. On one hand, at this point in the trip, I feel like I’m really getting a handle on what I’m doing, and I’m confident that I’ll get some excellent footage. On the other hand – it’s our last day on the Na Pali Kai! That’s just sad.

Our first dive was a return to Ray Bay, where we once again sought out the schooling goatfish and the leaf scorpionfish. Even better, David Fleetham got our attention and led us out into the blue a bit, where an enormous school of Heller’s barracuda was hovering. Jeff was shooting macro; for most of the dive, I just tried to stay far enough away from him that we could both get the shots we were after!

For our last dive, we decided to go in search of a pair of harlequin shrimp rumored to be living in a coral head at a dive site called Disneyland. According to the divemasters, there wasn’t necessarily much else to see at that site, so I wasn’t really expecting a great dive. Luckily, I was wrong. I found cleaning stations all over the place, and finally got some halfway decent footage now that I’d learned to sit still for long periods of time. A turtle cruised by twice, and Dave apparently saw a hammerhead shark!

After everyone got sick of trying to photograph the harlequins hiding way down in the coral, David Fleetham carried a red spotted starfish over in front of their home to coax them out (apparently it’s their favorite snack). The photos/video of that event aren’t admissable into the Kona Classic (it’s manipulating the wildlife), but they were still fun to shoot.

Harlequin Shrimp comes out to munch on a starfish:

We finished off the day with a trip to the Kona Brewery for the World’s Best Pizza:

Our first dive was back at Turtle Pinnacles, complete with turtles – though again, I spent most of the dive trying to stay clear of all the photographers, and just tooling around coral heads looking for eels. I did get some cute footage of a peacock grouper trying to nudge an eel into hunting, but the eel wasn’t in the mood to play.

I did not chase this turtle – he swam right over my head:

After the dive, the boat motored over near the entrance of the harbor, where a pod of dolphins was swimming around. A bunch of us slid into the water (with our wetsuits this time), but for quite some time the dolphins were elusive, diving deep down to swim under us, and then surfacing in the distance. There was boat traffic in the area, so it was a bit of a trick to keep one eye out for dolphins beneath you and another for boats on the surface!

As if a switch had been flipped, the dolphins suddenly decided they were feeling friendly after all. They started cruising close to divers in small groups, making shallower dives and staying in eyesight. Unfortunately, right about that time, the divemasters decided that the boat traffic was getting a bit too dangerous, and called us all back in. Oh well – at least no one got stung this time.

Wednesday night was a slideshow by the photo pros, specially designed to make everyone else in the room feel inadequate and talentless. No, really, it’s a wonderful event – Marty Snyderman and David Fleetham both presented shows that awed us all. Eric Cheng showed lots of shark photos and video footage, along with many of his amusing, trademark self-portraits. (Taken underwater – that takes talent.) The evening was topped off with some video highlights from Jeff Leicher, owner of Jack’s Diving Locker, whose work always leaves me green with envy at the same time it has me rolling in the aisles. There was some especially adorable footage of a monk seal playing with a floating coconut that was a serious crowd-pleaser. It’s such a privilege to have the chance to dive and work with all these guys during the Classic!

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…