Tag: reef

Sailboat on the Reef

I first saw it from the highway as we approached Honokohau, the sailboat in a bad spot.

A very bad spot.

A large vessel is sitting on the reef just off of the Honokohau beach about half a mile north of the harbor entrance. The beach is closed as it is part of the Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park, closed along with other effects of the federal shutdown. We took a few photos as we cruised past the beach on the way to a Sunday morning of diving.

I looked through the news Monday, looking for information on the incident. There is none, no explanations as to how the sailboat got onto the reef, or what is being done about it. Everyone in the harbor knew about the boat, not a whisper in the media. Tuesday’s news?

Update- The sailboat appears to be the Corsaire, a charter out of Honokohau. No word on how she ended up on the reef.

Sailboat on the Reef
A large sailboat sitting on the reef in front of Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park

Postcard from the Reef – A Beautiful Sunday

A very nice day. True, the weather was not great, scattered clouds and vog in Kona. It was a great day to be underwater. We dove Pipe Dreams and Hoover’s Tower, for a pair of pleasant dives on a Sunday.

Pete was playing with a new toy, a very nice Fix housing for his G12 with a wide angle dome. The results are some very nice photos…

Pipe Dreams
The author diving the intake pipes at OTEC, photo by Pete Tucker

Triton Trumpet

Snails are supposed to be small.

Like most things creepy and crawly, we are comfortable in having a large size advantage over these strange lifeforms that share our world. Encounter a snail that is a thousand times the size of the average backyard snail, and we take notice.

Triton and helmet snails are this big. This one was at least 14 inches from tip to tip, probably tipping the scale at ten pounds. With the large foot completely extended the apparent size doubles. An impressive snail indeed, pretty too, once you get over the surprise…

Triton Trumpet
Triton trumpet (Charonia tritonis) hunting the reef at night

Too Blue? Make it Black and White

One of the major problems in underwater photography is the loss of color as you descend. The water filters out the red end of the spectrum, creating the blue world all divers are familiar with.

Visually this is a problem, divers are unable to appreciate the beautiful colors of marine life without using an artificial light source. Most divers carry lights, even on daytime dives, for this reason. It can be quite dramatic to turn on a light and watch brilliant reds and yellows appear where there was little color without the light.

Blue Manta with Histogram
A blue manta photographed at 40ft depth

Photographically it is even more challenging, a strobe can light up nearby objects, revealing the colors. For more expansive scenes even the most powerful strobes fail, resulting in photographs heavy in greens and blue, with very little red. For some photos, the blue works, a “true” representation of what was seen. Often the blue does not work, the resulting photograph is an unattractive blue tinged with green, that no amount of fiddling in Photoshop will salvage.

One method in dealing with the loss of color balance is to simply take the loss further, convert the image to a black and white photograph. This is a technique you will see used in underwater photography quite often. By removing the distraction of color, the viewer is able to focus on the subject. The same reason so many modern photographers eschew color, even in an age when wonderful saturated colors are easily reproduced.

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Postcard from the Reef – Night Colors

Many reef fish change color for the night. Many lose their bright daytime colors to become rather drab, most likely in order to evade the predators who scour the reef at night. Moray eels, reef sharks, and more are on the hunt, looking for the fish hiding in the nooks and crannies of the reef. For the diver a nighttime reef it totally different, the clouds of fish hovering over the coral are gone. Here and there a few fish are visible, the color seemingly drained from them as they wait out the night.

Longnose Butterflyfish
A longnose butterflyfish (Forcipiger flavissimus) in nighttime coloration during a night dive at Puakō