Our Affordable Hawaiian Vacation - Introduction to Kona Diving

We were greeted to our first day on the Big Island with a wonderful breakfast at the B&B, consisting of a frittata and a fresh fruit platter made from fruits picked fresh from the farm. The passion fruit (Lilikoi), guava, papaya, rambutan and Jaboticaba platter reminded me of the twisted fruit portraiture of Giuseppe Archimboldo. Breakfast was served at the communal kitchen table with other guests. 

Exotic fruit breakfast platter

But we couldn't linger long at the kitchen table before it was soon time to go diving with Wanna Dive. Steve, the owner of Wanna Dive, was very curious about our dive experiences in Maui, and seemed defensive of how Kona diving compared. Also, Steve's Hawaiian fish species expertise, gained from a lifetime as an aquarist, as well as a divemaster, soon became apparent. True to Steve's word, everyone on the boat were experienced divers. Three of our fellow divers were family members who scuba dived in Hawaii every year (lucky them). Shirley, another diver who loves nudibranchs, and who is an Aggressor Liveaboard veteran, capped the total on the boat at 6 divers. Wanna Dive was great about letting divers dive as long as they wanted. Cathy, our divemaster, chaperoned divers to the boat each time a diver ran low on air, while letting the rest of the group continue. However, everyone stayed down for longer than an hour.

At High Rock, our first dive, we encountered a voracious 4' long sea turtle who was using all 4 flippers to grip the coral he was demolishing. If sea turtles were more self-aware, they would realize how silly they look while eating underwater. But fortunately they are not, which makes for more entertaining viewing for us. So consumed was the turtle by its food, that he didn't even notice me as I picked algae off his shell while he ate.


Our second dive consisted of a series of lava tube swimthroughs.  This was where we were ushered through Suck 'Em Up Cavern, Skull Cave, and Aquarium.  Suck 'Em Up is an interesting dive where periodic suction occurs at the exit of the lava tube. This suction makes it difficult to exit, unless you time your escape properly. In more challenging conditions, we were told that divers were sucked out of the hole in the ceiling, so we were told to avoid the champagne bubbles underneath the sky lights. In the following video, I time my exit properly, but still have a difficult time swimming completely out of the tube's pull.

Later on, we spotted 5 spotted eagle rays in a flying formation out in the deep. Cathy, our divemaster, led us out into the deep bottomless blue to get a closer look.  Despite monitoring my depth, I still ended up at 85 feet deep, and got close to running low on no-decompression time.  But it was awesome. Any dive where you see a small school of spotted eagle rays counts as a great dive in my book.

For dinner, we ate on Ali'i drive in Kailua Kona: a salad and a mai-tai rounded out my evening:

Dive Details:
Dive #201: High Rock
Depth/Time/Temp: 59'/1:22 minutes/76 deg F
Sightings:
-Big sea turtle biting off chunks of coral.
-wire coral goby
-shrimp on basket starfish
-white margin nudibranchs
-juvenile dragon wrasses

Dive #202: Suck Em Up, Skull Cave, and Aquarium
Depth/Time/Temp: 86'/1:17 minutes/77 deg F
-5 spotted eagle rays in the distance, we all swam deep off the wall to take a look. Got as deep as 85 feet.
-had 51 minutes of NDL left when DM had 7.