Coris Wrasse.... one heck of a colorful fish.

Good Evening,

Boy have we been busy on the boat. I had the fuel tanks replaced and was basically down for a month, but turning down little business, and suddenly were going out every day. I've had one day off since the 15th of last month between the two jobs, and only 3 days off on the boat since then with the next off day on the boat tentatively scheduled on the 16th.

We've been seeing lots of neat critters on our dives, sharks (mostly sleeping reef sharks, but the divers saw a hammerhead off Kaiwi point a couple days back), rays (we had one at a cleaning station for several minutes today), scorpion fish, turtles,etc. I saw a thumbnail sized yellow frogfish the other day but didn't have the camera... bummer, left it at home. Today we hit the site with another group and I looked for it and it wasn't there... also a bummer, but the manta ray coming in for a cleaning more than made up for it. I took a poor quality video of the manta circling that I'll post later.

The leg's feeling much better, but I did notice it when I dove off the boat to set the mooring, nothing major though. It's just nice to be back in the water.

The underwater photo above is of a Yellowtail Coris Wrasse (Coris gaimard), I knew them as a Red Coris Wrasse back in my aquarium keeping days. These guys are tough to get a picture of usually, they tend to zip off just as you are taking the shot. This one was fairly cooperative though, Pat may have an even better picture. The colors are a bit "hot" on this one, I had a rather dull looking photo and then hit
"auto levels" in Photoshop and this came out. It probably could be toned down a hair, I think the red on the top fin and the blue dots are almost too brilliant, but it's pretty darned close.

Kona diving conditions? It's been excellent as of late. Good visability, slightly warmer (I saw 75 the other day, but my computer read 73 today) than earlier, and pretty calm waters. The weather has been great.... sunny days with rain showers in the evenings up mauka. Rain almost never affects the diving conditions here as we have no rivers or streams on the west side.

That's about all for now.

Aloha,

Steve