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…

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

Once again, I found myself required to make the five-hour flight to Hawaii for business. We’ve been having more face-to-face meetings than usual with the Keck half of our team (building an archive for one of the Keck instruments), because two months from now we’re undergoing an “Operational Readiness Review” which should be buckets of fun. About two-thirds of the time, the Keck folks come to LA – but we get our fair share of trips to Hawaii as well. Sometimes, we’re even forced to stay at fancy, expensive hotels. And it’s completely unavoidable that our meetings tend to fall just before or after a weekend, making it nearly impossible for me to not tack on a little vacation.

While our 2-day meeting up in Waimea has been, well, work (go figure), the days as a whole have been pleasant and almost as relaxing as full time vacation. It probably helps that I actually enjoy spending time after hours with my fellow travelers: Bruce (my boss) and David (project scientist, who does a really good drunken rendition of my Hamper Story).

The three of us all arrived early in the afternoon on Wednesday, several hours before we could check in to the Hilton Waikoloa (the aforementioned “fancy, expensive hotel”). The trip was a breeze, no doubt due to the fact that I somehow scored a first class ticket. (Beside the fantastic amount of elbow room, I think my favorite part was being served a warm chocolate chip cookie with milk, on a fancy little tablecloth carefully placed over my tray table.) We picked up one of our rental cars and headed to Kona for pizza and beers at the Kona Brew Pub, where I drove David completely bonkers by pointing out every cat, lizard, and mongoose that I spotted in the brush next to our outdoor table. (Yes, I said mongoose. This island is so cool.)

After killing a sufficient number of hours, the boys dropped me at the airport to get the second car, and we met up again at the Hilton. The drive from the airport to the Hilton is absolutely gorgeous – wide open spaces covered with black lava rocks or waving silvery grass, intensely blue skies, and an unending variety of cloud shapes entertained me on the drive up the coast. By the time we checked in, I was totally in the island mood.

My first few visits to the Hilton had left me rather unimpressed. It wasn’t because of any lack on the Hilton’s part – they have boats, trams, spas, lagoons, pools, waterslides, turtles, rocky beaches, funky statues, exotic birds, and for crying out loud, a dolphin-populated pond. It was the sheer sense of overkill that did me in, and the hyper-resort atmosphere created by the crowds of sunburned teenagers and japanese tourists.

But this time, the place has finally won me over. I think it started when I discovered the balcony of my room here in the Lagoon Tower overlooks DolphinQuest, where for $175 per person you can spend 20 minutes being introduced to dolphins. (You also have to make reservations several months in advance.) I can never decide if I feel sorry for the dolphins or if they’ve got a good deal going, but it was definitely fun to be able to watch them cavorting just outside my window.

Our first order of business after settling in was hitting the pool. The Hilton scored some more points with me when David and I discovered the waterslide. I can get some serious momentum going on these things – with occasional unfortunate consequences where my bathing suit is concerned, upon landing in the water. Ahem. Luckily, any sudden adjustments I had to make were hidden from public view by the enormous amount of splashing and foam generated by my landing.

Despite the fact that we were all subjected to the sight of each other in bathing suits/trunks, it was a darned nice way to spend a few hours. By the time we finally pulled ourselves away from the pool, it was basically time for dinner and a collapse into our beds.

I’ve been so good with my workout schedule lately that I was determined not to screw it up on this trip. Since the gym here at the Hilton has funny hours and costs $20 a pop, and the pools aren’t really designed with laps in mind, I only had one viable option: jogging. (Insert snort of laughter here.) And it gets worse: I was scheduled to meet my colleagues at 7am to head up the mountain for our meeting, so this jogging thing would have to happen really, really early.

So please forgive me if I take this chance to gloat: two mornings in a row, I got my ass out of bed at 5:20am and WENT FOR A JOG. (Where is Anna and what have I done with her, you ask?!)

First I tried jogging around the Hilton, but the paths around this place are a total mystery to me, and I wasn’t a big fan of tripping and sliding on wet flagstone, either, so I finally left the complex and headed along a bike/jogging path that leads back up towards the main highway. And I have to say, after years of making fun of people who go jogging at 5:30 in the morning while apparently on vacation, I think I finally understand the appeal. It was a stunningly beautiful time of day to be out and about, and the agonizing pain, labored breathing, and gallons of sweat actually seemed like a fair price to pay for the experience. I think if I lived here, I’d do this every day. All kinds of funny little birds were scurrying around, and the few people I bumped into were friendly and smiling through their sweat. The air was cool and breezy this near the water, and the sun just barely starting to peek over the mountains to the east.

This morning (the second day in a row that I woke up at 5:20 and WENT FOR A JOG), I had an additional half hour before I had to meet Bruce and David, so I decided to top off my jog with a stroll over to the dolphin lagoon. It seems like 6:30 or so is when the dolphins are most awake; they were goofing off and chattering at each other, and one was rolling around in the sand in the shallows. You can’t get too close without paying up the nose, er, that is “reserving your Dolphin Encounter,” but it was still an awfully nice view to enjoy while stretching the cramps out of my legs.

This evening was even better, if you can believe it. Bruce drove David to the airport to catch a red-eye, leaving me on my own after 6pm. I’ve been kicking myself the last few days for not packing a camera, but this evening I grabbed the video camera (which can take stills) and went for a stroll all the way to the far end of the Hilton in search of a good spot to wach the sunset. I finally found the perfect location back near my end of the place: there’s a stairway down to the rocky beach, and you can walk out onto the lava rocks and watch the surf roll in. There was also plenty of tidepool action to amuse me while I waited for the sun to get lower in the sky. Hermit crabs of all sizes were crawling all over the place and chasing each other, and I even spotted a funny little goby (my favorite kind of fish) darting around between rocks.

Pics (or some sort of screen grab) to come – I just discovered I didn’t pack the FireWire cable for my video camera, so it’ll have to wait til I’m back in SoCal.

I finished my evening off with more strolling around the Hilton, some chocolate cake, and a boat ride back to my building. The sky is totally clear tonight, and in the pockets of darkness between buildings and lit pathways, the view from the back of the boat is phenomenal: we have Total Milky Way Visibility here.

And so ends the business part of my trip. (My job doesn’t suck, huh?) Tomorrow I kick off the “real” vacation; two days of diving down in Kona. In other words, it’s JUST GOING TO GET BETTER. Somebody pinch me.

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!

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: