• Tag Archives Diving
  • Advanced Open Water Certification Dives Complete!

    Underwater Photography and Fish Identification (AWARE) Dives: our last two dives for our Advanced Open Water (AOW) Certifications are complete through Blue Wilderness Dive Adventures at the Waikoloa Queens’ Market Place on Hawaii! We will get our new cards within 90 days 😀

    View at Cave exit at Kei Kei Caverns (Horseshoe), Kawaihae Coast, Hawaii.
    View at Cave exit at Kei Kei Caverns (Horseshoe), Kawaihae Coast, Hawaii.

    Yikes…we are now AOW Certified! Maybe the next step, after a while, is the “Search and Recovery Diver” dive to see if we can recover the weight pouch that dropped out of my BCD on our Fish I.D. Dive, the second dive; although, I did better on my air supply on both dives! All-in-all, the whole day was great!

    The first dive was our Underwater Photography Dive at Kei Kei Caverns (Horseshoe), Kawaihae Coast, Hawaii. The initial entry was brisk, as it always is this time of year; but once in, it was very nice! I FINALLY heard whale song and it was very melodic and lulling, not to mention Fantastic!

    However, I was not going to be distracted from the purpose of this dive so I took many photos and a few video clips. Several of my photos are quite decent regardless of my inexperience due to Andy having used the camera on previous dives before the second camera was acquired.

    Andy examining the reef & fish during our 1st dive.
    Andy examining the reef & fish during our 1st dive.

    Continue reading  Post ID 516


  • A Night Dive at Catholic Church, Puako, HI

    We continue our Advanced Open Water (AOW) Certification with a Night Dive at Puako 😀

    Yellow Tang in their night resting place and plenty of plankton attracted to my Dive Light.
    Yellow Tang in their night resting place and plenty of plankton attracted to my Dive Light.

    We descended to about 65 feet to see if the Garden eels were out. They were not, but we saw plenty of other ocean night life while our air held out.

    Regal Slipper Lobster.
    Regal Slipper Lobster.
    A Regal slipper lobster, an Eel about 6 six feet long swam around us while we were in a cave and gave us quite a show! As you can see by my picture of the Yellow Tang, there was A LOT of plankton and little worms.

    Andy taking another night dive photo with his Canon G9.
    Andy taking another night dive photo with his Canon G9.

    Two more dives to complete (Underwater Photography and Fish ID) and we have our AOW Certifications! Now, if the ‘colds’ would just quit catching up with me! 😐

    My Photography and Fish ID dives should have plenty of photos to share when I ever get to complete them! 😉


  • Deep Water and Underwater Navigation Dives complete!

    We completed our Bookwork review and quizzing a couple of weekends earlier so Saturday, November 22, 2008, was a day for getting in over our heads and putting two dives for our Advanced Open Water Scuba Certification under our belts 😀

    Yes, we completed our Deep Water and Underwater Navigation Dives with Blue Wilderness Dive Adventures Corp. in the Waikoloa Queen’s Market Place on the Big Island.

    Andy as I usually see him...behind his camera.
    Andy as I usually see him…behind his camera.

    Note that Blue Wilderness has recently moved from Kamuela to Waikoloa Queen’s Market Place and will be updating their website. Until then, you can call them at their new number: 808-886-0980 to arrange a fun-filled day or night out on the waters of the Kohala coast!

    We are taught in our initial Open Water certification to do our deepest dive first so we didn’t have to ask which dive we would do first today. Knowing it would be the Deep Dive first, we went to Ulua Caverns. A beautiful coral, sand and rock terrain!

    My max depth indicated that I got as deep as 116 feet as I kept an eye on my gauges. Although this dive is to test how my body will deal with the greater depth, I didn’t feel any issues of Nitrogen Narcosis; but my breathing was less than ideal and I dipped my tank away too quickly – well, at least I didn’t hold my breath. 😀

    Butterfly Fish and Coral somewhere between 60 and 100 foot depth at Ulua Caverns, Kohala Coast, Hawaii.
    Butterfly Fish and Coral somewhere between 60 and 100 foot depth at Ulua Caverns, Kohala Coast, Hawaii.

    Guess I need to work on the other often heavily encouraged piece of Scuba diving and get myself back in good physical condition. Aerobics here I come! Plus, I need to keep my mind on my conservative breathing while, not instead of, gazing at all the underwater visions! 😉

    And even at 100 plus feet deep, there were a lot of things to see! I was pleasantly surprised; although, the colors were severely lacking in reds and pictures are hard to “salvage” to make them decent if you can not get close enough for the flash to do its job. This being the main reason, I prefer the depths above 60 feet.
    Continue reading  Post ID 516


  • Diving as a Wedding Anniversary Celebration, Part 2…

    Whewww! Sorry this has taken so long for those of you that were left “hanging” on the next word   I didn’t expect a ‘little’ root canal to leave me so wiped out nor did I expect that I would be doing it again in a Part 2 on teeth either

    Well on to more adventures from May 26, 2008, Memorial Day Diving: 

    The first dive was at a site called Catholic Church, Puako.  We went deep to 94 feet to see the Garden Eels mentioned in Part One and to give us an opportunity to determine how well we would conserve our tank of air at depth. The water remained a nice temperature of about 75 degrees for the entire dive and visibility was better than 100 feet. There are a few fish to see at the deeper areas of the reef; although at that site, the Garden Eels were about it at that depth. When we came back up to shallower water, we saw Many, Many tropical fish and water inhabitants.

    Like this photo of a Hawaiian Day Octopus (Octopus cyanea) that Andy took as it rested in a crevice on the reef wall near the boat anchor buoy…

    And this Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas), also taken by Andy, that just meandered across our path on his/her way to the next foraging spot or a favorite beach to rest upon…

    The Coral, WOW, the Coral! The Coral in just that one dive site looked like we traveled miles away in the difference between the deep Coral and the shallower Coral.  Once you get past 40 or 50 feet, the colors are fairly well ‘a wash’ due to the lack of light and they get paler and paler the deeper you go. But the Coral was still beautiful in its shapes and textures that the shadows of the depth highlighted! When I got back to the shallower waters, I looked more closely at the Coral and noticed that the same textures are there, too; but I just didn’t notice them as much because of the more vibrant coloring and more intense shadows from brighter light. The shapes are still very different in the shallows versus the deep, though; and that makes sense because colonies (Coral ‘villages’) will each be individual in nature. Even the 3+ minute safety stop at 15 feet was far from boring!

    The second dive was at a site called Haunted Cavern right off the coast out from the Mauna Lani Resort (Franko’s Dive Map of Hawai’i, The Big Island shows its location off the Kohala Coast). There are numerous Coral Arches here and several are swim through; but take care not to damage the Coral Arches or the long colonies of Wire Coral stretching off of the Arches that reside here, please   In and around and through we went, spotting fish under the arches that prefer to come out closer to the twilight hours and the remains of crustaceans that had been somebody’s meal…I felt like a dolphin at play…

    There were A LOT of the Black Triggerfish (Melichthys niger), aka Black Durgeon, and Hawaiian name is  Humuhumu ‘ele’ele! There were too many for me to count so I merely marveled at the shear numbers. On the exit of one of the Arches, there was a very long Wire Coral that I was careful to swim wide around to avoid causing any damage. It is an interesting entity and it looks so fragile. At the shallower depths (only 50 feet at its deepest), I went through my air a lot more slowly so I was able to get a 53 minute dive in and it was spectacular!

    This Greenhead Moray (Gymnothorax undulatus) by Andy was actually seen on our night dive on Sunday, May 25, 2008:

    For another perspective on the subject diving and these same dives, check out A Darkerview – Diving, a Weblog by Andy

    May your journey be pleasant and the road smooth and unfettered!
    GG


  • Diving as a Wedding Anniversary Celebration, Part 2…

    Whewww! Sorry this has taken so long for those of you that were left “hanging” on the next word 🙂

    I didn’t expect a “little” root canal to leave me so wiped out; nor did I expect that I would be doing it again in a Part 2 on teeth either. 😐

    Well, on to more adventures from May 26, 2008, Memorial Day Diving:

    Hawaiian Day Octopus (Octopus cyanea) at Puako, South Kohala by Andrew Cooper
    Hawaiian Day Octopus (Octopus cyanea) at Puako, South Kohala by Andrew Cooper

    The first dive was at a site called Catholic Church, Puako. We went deep to 94 feet to see the Garden Eels mentioned in Part One and to give us an opportunity to determine how well we would conserve our tank of air at depth.

    The water remained a nice temperature of about 75 degrees for the entire dive and visibility was better than 100 feet. There are a few fish to see at the deeper areas of the reef; although at that site, the Garden Eels were about it at that depth.

    When we came back up to shallower water, we saw Many, Many tropical fish and water inhabitants. Like the photo of a Hawaiian Day Octopus (Octopus cyanea) that Andy took as it rested in a crevice on the reef wall near the boat anchor buoy…

    And a Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas), also taken by Andy, that just meandered across our path on his/her way to the next foraging spot or a favorite beach to rest upon…

    Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas) at Puako, South Kohala by Andrew Cooper
    Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas) at Puako, South Kohala by Andrew Cooper

    Continue reading  Post ID 516


  • Diving as a Wedding Anniversary Celebration, Part 1…

    May (2008) marked 16 Years for Andrew and I! 🙂 It does not seem like it has been that long.

    To celebrate, we went diving!

    No, it was not a plot to finally be rid of me either 😛 We are starting our certification for Advanced Open Water and went for our Night Dive on May 25, 2008.

    The Ocean is a whole new world at night! When we turned out our lights as part of the certification objectives, it was an eerie experience to only have the sense of feel and “taste”. If you got disoriented, it would even be possible to lose the sense of direction and which way was up.

    Most of the usual fish that are seen during our daylight snorkel and diving trips pretty much hide at night (or sleep), and a lot of other creatures come out in their place. I saw a lot of Regal Slipper Lobsters like the one in this picture:

    Regal Slipper Lobster (Arctides regalis) in Crystal Cove, South Kohala by Andrew Cooper
    Regal Slipper Lobster (Arctides regalis) in Crystal Cove, South Kohala by Andrew Cooper

    Continue reading  Post ID 516