Best Dive Site That's Not A Dive Site

Possibly the best one anyway!

Spent a day at Kealakekua Bay on Hawaii's Big Islands.

It's a very pretty bay. It has a monument to Captain Cook, the 'discoverer' of Hawaii.

Started out the day by parking up on Napoopoo Rd, just at the junction of Mamalahoa Bypass Rd. From there, there is a walk down a gravel trail to Kealakekua Bay. It's a fairly hot walk, even for Thanksgiving Day, when I did it. That being said, I personally felt that it wasn't as bad as most guidebooks tell you it's going to be.

There's no diving down at the bay, but you can snorkel. We snorkeled all morning. Just enter the water from the Captain Cook monument. Stay off the bottom, as it's all coral. All the expected fish of the island are there: Parrot fish, Durgon, Butterfly, chub, filefish, etc.

After snorkeling all morning (just off the jetty) we exited the water and had lunch. Exiting the water is a little tricky, as the rocks are slippery.

After lunch we went back into the water. This time, we made our way out to a small pinnacle, quite a swim out to the left of the beach [picture/map to follow].

This spot is an exquisite dive site. The formation has everything you would expect to find on a dive site that's 20ft down on big island, but all within 10ft of the surface, so you can easily free dive down and enjoy looking a the formations and the fishes.

When nosing around the overhangs at this spot, we were blessed by the passage of a pod of 15 or so dolphins. Kealakekua Bay is a spot used by dolphins to rest. We were lucky enough to be in the water in the late afternoon, and as I understand it, this is about the time they awaken.

We swam back to the jetty to get out of the water shortly after that. As we were swimming back through the deeper water of the bay, we noticed that the dolphins were heading straight for us. It's quite a daunting sight, having a large group of apex predators approaching you at speed! What was truly wonderful and amazing was the sight as they reached us. They all simply dove down, about 20ft below us. We looked down into the water, with our mask and snorkels on, and watched them swim by.

Several smaller dolphins were swimming upside down, as if doing it out of curiosity - to get a better look at us odd creatures awkwardly messing around on the surface.

And for the combination of the corals, the fish, the scenery, the hiking and the dolphin encounter I consider this place to be the best dive experience I've had on a dive that's not a dive site!

Redneck!

http://forscubadivers.com/photosvideos/scuba-fishing-video/

Ear Cleanliness

My ears often give me trouble after an extended period of diving - you know, like after a live aboard, or a long vacation with several days diving.

Here's a DAN article with some useful things to try.

   http://www.diversalertnetwork.org/health/ears/aural-hygiene

How do you stop invasive lionfish? Maybe with a robotic zapper | PBS NewsHour

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/robot-lionfish-invasive-species-rise-nekton/

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What could possibly go wrong!

Want one

Stuff for sale...

Fins: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/spo/5006906937.html

Hooded Vest: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/spo/5006927741.html

Boots: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/spo/5006947155.html

Gloves: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/spo/5007037642.html

Wetsuit: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/spo/5007065032.html

Scuba Diver Salvages Lost Treasure - Dubai Blog

http://www.dubayblog.com/scuba-diver-salvages-lost-treasure/

Forwarding this to highlight all the things that are wrong about this story.

I thought we had a saying in the diving community: Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but bubbles.

Anything you take with you on a dive needs to be secured to you with a lanyard or retractor.  It's too easy to accidentally, or intentionally, let go of something on a dive.  If it isn't clipped to you, you WILL looses it.

When something is in the water for a period of time, marine life will move in.  An old coke can may be junk when it gets dropped off the side of a boat, but after a short period of time, marine life will move in to investigate.  It may become a home for a snail, crap, octopus.  You cannot remove things from the ocean that have become part of that environment.  By the looks of the camera, it has been down there a while, and I'm pretty sure something was living on it judging by the condition of the outside of the housing.

The worst part of this story is the fact that it took the guy several minutes to extracate the camera from the rocks and CORAL.  I find it hard to imagine that this could have been done withouth causing damage to the environment.  Coral is a very slow growing, fragile ANIMAL.  Divers climbing over it, yanking at it, breaking it off, just to get to a lost camera is not worth it!

Two lessons to learn from this then:
- Don't loose your stuff when you go diving
- Don't bring things out of the water if they look like they've been claimed by the ocean.

Grouper "hunting" a lionfish.

Grouper/ Invasive Lionfish Live Open Water Kill: Believed to be the Firs...: http://youtu.be/HKLkQaMY8KQ

Diving McAbee Beach - Night Dive - Feb 25, 2015

McAbee Beach Night Dive

Site Description

McAbee beach is a dive site on Monterey's Cannery Row. The dive site is accessed from the small beach between the El Torito restaurant and the Spindrift hotel.



Click for Fullsize map or Google Map

Street parking is available, metered. There is also a lot across the street, which charges by the day. The El Torito restaurant also has a parking lot, however, El Torito do not appear to be welcoming of divers in there lot at the moment (parking tickets have been issued recently!).

Enter the water around the center of the beach, the is where the water is the calmest. Be aware of the drop-off, the beach has a shelf. A small problem on entry, and on exit - for short divers it can make the exit on this beach tricky. Swim away from the beach quickly, and bear towards the El Torito side of the beach.

Plan to dive closer to the El Torito side of this beach (South East), this is the calmer water. If you dive towards the North, the water is shallow, and the surge and waves can become dangerous.

On this dive, we dropped down just outside the rock-wall surrounding the El Torito restaurant. We dove the plan shown below.

View Fullsize Map

What to see on the dive

At first we swam parallel to the shore and the water remained pretty shallow (20ft). You will see plenty of old cannery pipes and plenty of rocks. We saw rock fish, decorator crabs. Also, in under the rocks I saw a good size octopus. I was hoping the pipes would have some eels, but wasn't lucky enough to see any.

As we swam out from the beach (30degree heading) we got more kelp. The depth dropped to around 30ft for a while. There were still plenty of rocks, although the bottom did opened up a little and there were several sandy patches.

Swimming back in, it got more rocky, gradually shallower, and a little surgy as we got in above 20ft.

Video

Here's a Critter Montage video. If you look carefully, around 45seconds in, you can see the octopus hiding in the rocks.



Watch on YouTube

Dive Log

Depth	34ft
Duration	56min
Temperature	56F
Visibility	15ft

Click for full-size

Night Dive at McAbee Beach, Feb 25 2015

Metridium Fields and Breakwater Dive Oct 25 2014

Dive to the metridium fields this weekend with a couple of dive buddies from the Dive Club of Silicon Valley.

We dove to at the metridium fields, as one of my buddies had not had the opportunity (or good fortune) to find the metridiums when he'd tried it in the past.

Recently I've taken the approach of descending nearer to shore and following "the pipe" out to the metridiums (see earlier maps). However today we swam out further, to save air, and dropped right down on the metridiums.



The advantage of avoiding the swim out underwater is that you then have enough air to make the long swim parallel to shore, to exit at the breakwater. This makes for a different dive from usual. Infact, this is the first time I've done this and it's a nice way to end a metridium dive.

I was expecting the bottom to be entirely sandy and barren, with the occasional halibut for company. But as the video shows, there are several rocky oasis on the journey, with plenty of marine life to enjoy.

"Easybreath" - Full face snorkeling mask/snorkel

Masque facial "Easybreath" - Full face snorkeling…:


Looks kinda nice.  I'm not sure I'd pay 95 euro for something like this though. But if someone wants to send me one, I'll give it a try. Could be a good seller for our next Dive Club of Silicon Valley annyal Snorkel Safari

Breathing Underwater A Possibility | Collective-Evolution

Wow, let's hope they can make chewing gum that lets you breath underwater.


http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/10/10/absorbing-crystal-can-steal-oxygen-from-air/

California Lobster Season Off To A Rough Start With 5 Accidents | California Diver Magazine

Go Lobsters!

http://californiadiver.com/california-lobster-season-off-to-a-rough-start-with-5-accidents

A little cold water doesn't scare me, I dive Monterey!

UK Dive Boy and the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

seeing something on the way back, which you saw on the way out ...

Little things like that give you a warm fuzzy feeling, when you're a scuba diver.

#navigationspecialty

Sex and Sensitivity to Oxygen Toxicity | The Dive Lab

http://thedivelab.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/sex-and-sensitivity-to-oxygen-toxicity/

No "wimmin diver" jokes here ...

Dive to Metridium Fields, Monterey, CA

Managed a repeat of the Metridiums dive this weekend.

Visibility was about the same as last month, maybe a little better.

Took my GoPro this time, so captured some video of a Metridium. Unfortunately, I didn't have my green water filter on, so the colors are somewhat messed up.




Timeline for the video:

Time Offset	Description
0:00	Urchin on the pipe
0:30	Traveling along the pipe (lots of sea stars
1:10	Into the murkiness
1:40	Arrival at the metridiums and a friendly nudi
2:00	Metridium panorama
3:00	Critter time: Sea hare?
3:20	Critter time: Lingcod
4:05	Critter time: Tiny Nudi (back on pipe)
4:20	Traveling back along the pipe in the murkiness
5:20	End

Turtle in Belize

My son had been wanting to see a turtle the whole time we were diving in Belize. If fact, even before we got there. Luckily, on the last dive, of the last day, we got to see one!



And to think, we were supposed to be diving out at Turneffe Atol that day. Good job the trip got cancelled eh!

Coral Reefs 101

http://www.padi.com/blog/2013/05/24/coral-reefs-101/

Well, I just learnt something, plus got a pining to go back to Belize :-)