Diving ʻAuʻau and The Hive

When Dennis let me know he was heading south for ʻAuʻau Crater and that I was invited I didn’t even think about it… I’m in! When do we go?

The ʻAuʻau Wall
The wall at ʻAuʻau Crater
The furthest south I had been diving along the coast is the Red Hill area. The dive sites there are good, some of the best I had seen. The snorkeling at Kealakekua, even further south, is spectacular. I had read descriptions of the diving at ʻAuʻau, and had really wanted to see for myself.

It is a long drive past Kealakekua Bay to the ʻAuʻau Point area. As such we left Honokohau much earlier than usual, ready for a long day of diving. ʻAuʻau crater itself is visible on the shore, a classic littoral cone formed where lava met water and created an edifice much like a cinder cone from the resulting hydrothermal explosions. The cliffs are pocked with sea caves, many small, and some huge, large enough for us to drive the boat into on a calmer day.

The first hint about the site was the amazing glimpses of the terrain you could see from the surface as we crossed the area looking for the mooring. Boulders and coral 30 feet below us one moment, then nothing but deep blue the next. This site has a wall! Not just a little twenty foot wall as you see along the Kohala Coast. A sheer wall that we could not see the bottom of while we hovered at 100 feet. The wall just drops into the depths, inviting you ever further down into oblivion. On 32% EAN nitrox we dared not venture any deeper. This thing is at least 200 feet high, probably much more.

The wall is a mix of volcanic rubble, in places you can see layers, but mostly it is remnants of thousands of years of lava flows hitting the sea and creating sand and fragments of rock. On the ledges and in the little cavities life flourishes. Urchins and sea stars roam, but there is relatively little coral. This unstable surface is a poor place for the hard corals to colonize. One exception is wire coral, meter long specimens protrude here and there.

For our second dive the choice was The Hive. Arriving at the site revealed a small sea arch adjacent to the mooring large enough to drive the boat through. We did not know what to expect at the site. Thus the dive plan was to make a sweep out the edge of the reef and then back towards shore to check out the sea arch for possible caves. The sweep was pretty routine, a steep coral covered slope, nothing to hint at why there was a dive mooring here. Coming back to the arch revealed what was special about this spot! A set of great caves hide right under the arch at 25-30 ft depth. There were lobsters, innumerable flat rock-crabs, and several species of nudibranch to be found.

As I thought about leaving the caves after a first sweep I looked at my gauge… Still a thousand PSI in the tank! I turned around and headed back into the cave to find still more.

The Caves at The Hive
Dennis explores the big caves at The Hive
Entering the cave I immediately noted a Spanish dancer I had swum right past earlier. Looking through the large boulders at the entrance I found a few blue dragon nudibranch, always a pleasant find. Dennis was trying to get my attention from a few feet away. I insisted that he look to see what I had found, a blue dragon. When I looked to see what he was pointing at it was another blue dragon. They were everywhere, I lost count, it was just a matter of finding one better situated for photography.

We surfaced, a set of very happy divers, conversation buzzing as we compared notes. Diving has an interesting complication… Communication is limited underwater, you have to wait until you surface to ask questions and compare notes. We identify critters, sometimes grabbing the ragged and well used books Dennis keeps aboard to identify some rarity. We find out what others saw and what we missed. Through the conversation the dive is extended as we relive it one more time.

These are some of the most fantastic dive sites on the island. Not easy to get to but worth it. There are very few boats that run this far south, most vacation divers are happy with the dive sites near Honokohau and the boats need not venture very far from harbor. Jack’s Dive Locker runs a long range dive if there is sufficient interest. The Kona Agressor live-aboard is the only boat that regularly calls at these sites. The very occasional private boat like us is the only other practical way to get to these fantastic dive sites.

Mauna Kea Summit Panorama

Mauna Kea Summit at Night
The Mauna Kea summit at night, panorama of seven frames with a Canon 6D, 20s @ ISO6200 and Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 lens

It may look small, but this image is anything but small, click on it to find out. The panorama is assembled from seven frames, with final dimensions of over 12,000 x 2,000 pixels. The version posted here is a bit smaller, only 4,000 pixels wide. While it is a big image it does not really come close to the effect of actually standing there beside the camera. Also missing from the photo? The biting cold wind.

The image includes ten telescopes, two planets, two galaxies, two meteors, four volcanoes, and innumerable stars.

Google Photo Sphere for iOS

It helps that I now have an iPhone 4S in place of my ancient 3GS. Yes, I was nearly three models behind. I was in no rush to update as long as the phone did the job. The phone is a hand-me-down from Deb, who just updated to a 5S. It is not all one-sided, I recently updated to an iPad Air, while she gets by with the old iPad 2.

With the new iPad I had downloaded PhotoSynth from Microsoft, a free panorama application. My experiments with this software were far from successful, I have never achieved a satisfactory result. It is sufficient if all you want is a once around pano, but if you start to add a little vertical the stitching suffers. There are terrible stitching errors in every attempt I made to capture more than a single pass.

A few days later I learned that Google’s Photo Sphere app had been released for iOS I quickly headed to the app store to get it and give it a try. I shot a couple panoramas on my way up to the summit. The results? Much better, the program does assemble decent 360°x360° spheres.

WP Photo Sphere (Mauna Kea Access Road)
There are some conditions that will give the software trouble. Dramatic lighting around sunrise or sunset will cause trouble. The varying exposures are not handled well, over-exposing the ground and other large areas of shadow. I have gotten the best results at mid-day with the Sun high overhead and even lighting as you spin. Alternately I have seen decent twilight results when the lighting is again fairly even over the entire scene.

Some stitching errors will be visible if there are a lot of straight lines visible. This will be most apparent in a built up environment, with large structures in the image. In natural surroundings it becomes more difficult to pick out the stitch lines between frames.

It takes two to three minutes to shoot a complete sphere. You spin in place, moving the camera from image to image as you shoot. Positioning of the camera is performed by simply aligning the camera at each aim point provided in the software. It appears that the software uses the phone accelerometer to detect the correct orientation of the camera. It is a bit like a shooting video game, aim and shoot, aim and shoot, each shot is fired automatically when you get the aim right. A progress bar surrounding the button at the bottom of the screen lets you know how much you have yet to do.

The app is designed to upload the images to Google Maps, making it appear as if the free app is designed as a way to create more content in Maps. While you do not have to upload your images, I have uploaded a few anyway. I do not mind contributing to a tool I have found enormously useful.

The full spheres are a lot of fun. Easy to take with the one camera you will have with you at all times. Given the half-decent photo quality of the later iPhone cameras the results are pretty good.

WP Photo Sphere (The Commute Panorama)