Beginning the descent to the reef at PuakoIt has been over a month since I have been in the water. We do live on an island, with world class beaches and reefs just 15 minutes from the house. How can we not go to the beach every weekend?
Well, there is work, and these little events like the Transit of Venus. One thing or another conspires to interfere with getting some proper time in the water.
With a holiday weekend on hand it is time to change that. Thus Deb and I joined the Keck crew for a Saturday morning dive. A routine dive at End-of-Road Puako, one of our favorite spots. It was a fair group… Kirk, Mark and Patti, Pete, Tomas and his daughter Angela, Deb and myself, a veritable pod of divers.
We parked under the usual trees, swam out from the usual spot and dropped into the usual set of canyons. I wandered here and there with the camera, looking for anything interesting to photograph. Nothing really special, a couple decent photos including a Keferstein’s sea cucumber. Simply a nice day to be in the water, perhaps the start of a pleasant summer dive season?
You see these starfish often enough, they are fairly common on the reef. Often taking a closer look at the commonplace will show something worth a photo. In this case a closeup of the underside of the starfish, a truly odd creature…
The underside of a cushion star (Culcita novaeguineae)
A secretive species, the cusk eels are seldom seen by divers on Hawaiian reefs. They shelter in caves and crevices during the day, emerging at night to forage. This eel was holed up in a shallow crevice low in a rock wall. I shot one half decent photo before it retreated further into the crevice, out of sight.
Bearded Cusk Eel (Brotula miltibarbata) in a crevice at 24' depth Amphitheater
I have not done much diving south of Kona, usually diving the shores close to home, the reefs of North and South Kohala. I have done a couple dives at Two Step, at Hōnaunau. The terrain is different further south, there are different species to see. Last weekend I got a chance to do some more diving down south.
This was made possible through a friend and fellow Keck engineer. Dennis owns a boat. Not just any boat… The Aqua Safari… A big boat, a fast boat, a dive boat, equipped for scuba, actually a pretty nice boat. I was invited to join the guys for a dive outing. I didn’t even ask where we were going, it really didn’t matter, I just wanted to dive.
Mark Devenot exploring the reef drop-off at TanksWe headed south of Kona to a dive site I had never explored before, a place called Amphitheater. Just around the corner from the famous Kealakekua Bay, the site features some large sea caves carved into the cliffs by the winter waves. An excellent site, featuring good fish, numerous lava tubes, and good coral cover. Visibility was great, allowing good photographic conditions.
A find of the dive was a Bearded Cusk Eel hiding in a crevice at the base of a rock wall. I managed one half-decent photograph before it disappeared further into the crevice, out of sight. I guess it did not like the strobe, cusk eels are notoriously shy.
Mark, Patti and I shared the meal preparations. They had brought sandwich makings, I brought tuna mac, drinks and chips. Deb even sent a long a batch of home-made chocolate chip cookies. We ate well indeed.
The second dive site was Tanks, a site just north of the old Kona Airport and south of Honokohau. A fair amount of surge made mooring quite a challenge, we actually gave up on one mooring buoy, too close to the rocks where we were getting bounced around. There was quite a bit of surge underneath as well, and visibility was poor. At least poor by Kona standards, fairly good for most anywhere else. The surge and vis did not preclude a decent dive, we descended to the edge of the dropoff, where the slope plunges into the deep blue abyss. A few good photos, including a Undulated Moray. We spent the last part of the dive exploring a number of small caves just under the shoreline, where we found several white tip reef sharks, including one of the largest I had ever seen. This shark was a bit more than six feet, and quite rotund. He lived up to the scientific name for the species Triaenodon obesus.
A great day and a couple good dives. That was the goal, and that was what we achieved. Thanks Dennis!
The books says these guys grow to 3½ feet in length. Uh, right. This guy was at least six feet long, with a mouth big enough to slide my whole hand into. His scarred head and ragged fangs spoke of a lifetime of life and death struggle on the reef. The book also says that undulated morays are one of the meanest morays, cautioning not to feed or play with these eels. I had not read the book before the encounter, but I needed no warnings to give this fellow a good deal of respect.
A large Undulated Moray (gymnothorax undulatus) shows a toothy threat to the camera, 70ft depth at Tanks
