26 Jan 2021
Today, I almost missed my dive boat. I was doing a long range trip with KHD but when I showed up at the harbor, the boat was gone. In a panic, I called the shop- no response. I knew that Jack’s boat sometimes left from the pier, which was back in town (about a 5-10 minute drive), then vaguely remembered that once a boat left from the other side of the harbor. So I drove around and there was my boat! Captain Blaine was calling me as I ran up. Not a great way to start the day.
Besides the fact that there’s no head, I like this boat- plenty of shade and a dry place to put my big camera! We sat on the sides of the boat to gear up and while most everyone just backrolled in, I was able to step off the back (I don’t like rolling with my camera, but I’ve mastered jumping with it- this was a drift dive, where we descended pretty much as soon as we hit the water, so it was easier to just keep my camera with me, rather than swim back and have my camera handed down)
Dive #13 – ‘Au ‘Au Crater
First thing we saw when we dropped was this Tinker’s butterflyfish:
These guys tend to live deeper, but this one was up around 90′.
Strawberry nudibranch!
Sandy, my guide, is super into nudis and tiny things (she even carries a magnifying glass!), so she found lots of cool stuff for me to photograph, like this little Wire coral goby:
He was like 3/4″ long and shy- these guys tend to run to the backside of the coral and hide from cameras.
Stretch little gold-lace nudi!
Another strawberry nudibranch (yes, they are common and yes, I still take a picture of every one!):
I don’t remember who this little guy was 🙁
I don’t know if this gold-lace nudi has a growth on its rhinophore, or if that’s just a little clump of sand/debris:
Locust nudibranch / Hypselodris peasei:
This guy was about the size of a grain of rice, but once I knew what to look for, I started spotting them everywhere!
Tom Smith’s nudibranch / Ardeadoris tomsmithi:
(I want a critter named after me!)
Blue dragon / Pteraeolidia ianthina:
I saw a bunch of these on the back wall of Molokini Crater, but none of them were actually blue- they were all purple or grey.
Dot-and-dash nudibranch / Hypselodoris bertschi:
Really wish I had brought the macro lens- it would have come in handy for all these tiny critters!
Giant spiny lobster! He was close to a foot and a half long and looked quite tasty 🙂
Crown jelly:
it looked like something took a chomp out of this guy
still floated around gracefully
Dive #14 – Dragon Pinnacle
Started off this dive with a school of Pyramid butterflyfish:
A small Black coral:
Black coral, while protected now, was once harvested extensively in Hawai’i, so not many plants remain.
Another wire coral goby:
Strawberry nudibranchs, making more nudibranchs:
Juvenile rock-mover wrasse:
and again, I took well over a dozen pictures trying to get a decently focused one
The structures growing next to this strawberry nudibranch look like snowflakes!
HA! Something took a chomp out of this crown-of-thorns sea star:
Not a fish:
Wide angle underwater shots totally aren’t my forte, but look at all that hard coral!
Dive #15 – Blackwater
This is my favorite dive- the boat goes out a few miles off the Kona coast, where the ocean is several thousand feet deep. Weighted lines are dropped off the side of the boat and we each clip into one, then wait to see what comes up from the depths. Most of it is small stuff, but occasionally, something bigger wanders through.
This is a salp:
they are super-common, usually linking together to form chains- some short:
some much longer:
close-up of the chain
this solitary salp has a small hitchhiker
Doliolid, I think (kind of like a salp, but with a tail):
A siphonophore, or net-caster:
another type of net caster
Another type of siphonophore (Athorybia rosacea):
Probably not a spider:
Definitely not a spider (a cunina sp.):
Venus girdle:
Mauve stinger (Pelagia noctiluca), do not touch:
Heteropod (snail):
these guys might be my new favorite- I don’t remember seeing them before (this was my 3rd blackwater dive), but they are fun to watch- that thing on their back is the foot, and they use it like a fin to swim through the water
Unfortunately, my camera’s vacuum seal checker started alarming, so I came up early. Fortunately, the camera was just fine (and of course the alarm stopped when I was at the surface).