Dive Day #3 - Kona Coast + Mantas, once more!

25 Jan 2021

Another full day of diving with KHD again. After freezing through the first 2 days of diving (adding my hood wasn’t enough to keep me warm), Kevin, my guide, brought a 2nd suit for me to use, and I ended up wearing two full 5mm wetsuits for the rest of the trip. Sure, I looked like a marshmallow, it took me forever to suit up and I needed to add several extra pounds so I could actually sink, but I was finally warm!

Dive #9 – Air Station

Lots of rare critters on this dive!

Hawaiian red lionfish:

And another (yes, he was hanging in the vertical position):

And a couple more! These guys don’t get very big- these two were 6-7″:

Close-up:

Psychedelic wrasses! The orange-headed guy is the male and all the red-tailed ones are his harem:

Bird wrasse:

Bird wrasse (male)- not the best picture, but this was the first and only blue one I had seen!

Saddle wrasse (a very common endemic fish):

Frogfish!!

Lizardfish:

Hidden lizardfish:

Oh look, another whitemouth eel:

Potter’s angelfish:

Rock-mover wrasse- remember that weird leafy fish that flitted around and was really hard to photograph? This is what he grows up to be:

Ah, judgemental ring-tail wrasse, we meet again:

Blackside hawkfish:

Octopus + Manybar goatfish:

Octopus:

Dive #10 – Carousel

Hey, look! Another parrotfish eating the coral!

Arc-eye hawkfish:

Pyramid butterflyfish:

Trumpetfish:

A group sergeants (mostly Indo-Pacific, but I think that guy on the right is a Hawaiian) and a Hawaiian cleaner wrasse:

Fun fact: while the Indo-pacific and Hawaiian sergeants are 2 distinct species, they can interbreed. Not sure if the offspring are fertile.

Eels eating (the picture is cloudy because of all the blood in the water):

FLAME ANGELFISH!

These guys are so pretty, but are so skittish! It took me many tries to get a picture of one not completely hidden in the coral:

Success!

Cornetfish:

White-mouth eel:

Yellow tang:

These guys are everywhere, but this might be the first picture I intentionally took of one

Eightline wrasse (I don’t remember seeing this guy before this trip):

Bullethead parrotfish:

So often when I see soldierfish, they are peering out like this from a hiding place in the coral:

Thompson’s butterflyfish:

Ugh, I only saw a handful of these Goldrim surgeonfish, but none of the pictures were in focus 🙁

Belted wrasse (male)- a cool endemic species I don’t remember seeing previously!

Black triggerfish:

This guy had a really cool blue pattern on his head! According to my fish book, that happens when the fish is aroused. Pretty sure I killed that mood. Their sides turn orange and they display bluish lines along their sides when agitated. Pretty sure that’s what this guy is doing:

Yet another Bullethead parrotfish munching on coral:

Agile chromis, trying to hide:

Ringtail wrasses just look so mean!

This would have been a great shot of an Ornate butterflyfish until he stuck his head behind that coral:

Octopus!

on the move

a second octopus!

isn’t she pretty?!

and now they’re making baby octopuses

This Arc-eye hawkfish kept leaping off his perch in the split second between when I pressed the trigger and when the camera snapped a picture- I’ve got a good half-dozen pictures of him swimming away, but I like how you can see the cool orange striping on his “chest” in this one:

This octopus was half red, half white:

but I couldn’t get a good angle on him:

Dive #11 – Garden Eel Cove

The seas were quite surge-y, and the garden eels we usually see at this site had all tucked into their holes. Still, there were exciting other critters to be seen!

Spotted coral blenny: