Kona dive report

[smellzlikefish]

Aloha guys (and gals...),

I don't normally post dive reports, but this was a spectacular trip. I am following Hawaiian hammerheads in my free time and trying to find congregation points around the main 8. This weekend I found myself on a boat run by Bottom Time Hawaii going to deep southern Kona chasing a tip from a local diver. En route we were watching whales and other crap on the surface when we saw a large fin cutting through the water towards the boat. We stopped to check it out and it was a 30 foot whale shark! I grabbed my camera hoping to get some shots from the boat when somebody else yelled, “snorkel gear!” A mad rush and I found myself in the water with this thing. It wouldn’t leave us alone! It kept rubbing the underside of the boat, then turning and swimming at minimal speed directly at us. Most of the time, it was too close to get the whole animal in the frame! The series of pictures (150 in total) go something like “this is it swimming away, then here’s one of it turning, then here’s one of it coming at me, here’s its mouth, then here’s it is swimming away…”-and repeat. After an hour, we had to leave it and continue on.

We dived Uli Canyon and a spot a little further north. Uli Canyon produced some spectacular topography. By spectacular I mean it drops off very quickly to a shade of blue darker than black. The second spot was an exploratory dive. I think they ended up naming it pygmy point for the "pygmy" whales we saw escorting some humpbacks nearby. The dive was typical Kona with a few odd characters like my favorite, the viper moray (Enchelynassa canina). After each dive, we got onto the boat and all said something like, "well, that was neat, but how bout that whaleshark!" In the end, we did two spectacular dives, but I didn't find my hammerheads, so the whole trip was a fantastic failure<---insert sarcasm here. If you happen to know where I can see hammerheads (other than Mokuhoniki) please let me know.

 

[cuddlefish]

Glad you had the whaleshark experience. It's certainly spectacular. We have been seeing a couple of different whalesharks right off of Kona over the past couple of weeks. Keep an eye out for one with a chewed up tail. As far as hammerheads, I have seen them at Au Au way down south. I have also seen schools of them offshore. But I would say I have seen more of the right in town at Kaiwi Point! There is no real pattern to seeing them...though they seem to show up in the winter more than the summer.

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

Nice Pics!

 

[smellzlikefish]

Thanks guys! I've been in Okoe Bay (sp?) and had them swim right over me...while my head was in a hole staring at ulua, so I completely missed them. I have also been to Mokuhoniki and saw probably 7-8 there. I have heard rumors from multiple people, but have yet to see the huge schools they see elsewhere. I think for the most part Hawaii lacks the deep water pinnacles that seem to initiate the schooling behavior. And has anyone ever seen a smooth hammerhead here?

 

[gkndivebum]

Generally when we see hammerhead sharks here off of the Big Island they are in very small numbers, and tend to be cruising along the exposed points of the island in shallow water. Ule Pinnacle has been good to me in the past, but this time there weren't any hammerheads ... oh well. Once last year we saw a school of perhaps 20 of them offshore about a mile, swimming in shallow water. They were very skittish, not at all like the nearly comatose behavior of the schooling hammerheads we saw at Cocos. And I've only ever seen scalloped hammerheads here.

 

[saildiver]

I'm glad someone is still on the look out for this school of Hammerheads in Southern Kona...but it saddens me that so few Hammerheads have been seen compared to what we saw in the early 70s (see post below from 2004) . After several thousand dives all over the Big Island, over 1/2 of those dives were by boat looking for the coolest, fishiest, most beautiful spots(at that time unaccessable to most divers...I was studying Marine Biology and had befriended a spearfisherman who needed someone to help him ...while he was diving and spearing dish I'd follow his bubbles...then while he was off gassing he would let me jump overboard and I'd then dive to my hearts content and he'd follow my bubbles...it was a perfect arrangement...and since he was unafraid to put his boat in anywhere, I got to see the wildest underwater areas of Hawaii). Alas... I left Hawaii to go to medical school in early 76, and I have only been back for about 20-30 shore based dives since then, so I've, not been able to see the Hammereads again that I saw in about 74. When I have come back, I have been saddened at the decline in the number of fish of all species for the most part( I did losts of baseline fish counts on the Big Isle from 73-76).
However the site that you describe as Uli Canyon reminds me alot of the place where we saw them. It is also right around where we spotted a 40 foot whale shark behaving in a simalar way-swimming around our boat, as we were surfacing towards our boat after a long deep dive. My dive buddy at the time, a very experienced Korean spearfisherman, towing a stringer of fish, had never seen one before and did not want to go back to our boat since it just looked like a HUGE shark to him and it was hard for me to convince him underwater that this was a "safe shark"...so as my air and his was getting really low- I finally just started to surface and as I got close the wahale shark of course started to gradually swim off, and my buddy could now "safely come back to the surface".
That same area is also home to the most vicious moray eel in the entire Pacific ocean that I have yet encountered...Enchellynassa Canina or "EC" ! Thanks for the great photo of EC ( which will probably trigger a few nightmares tonight). While diving nd occassionally spearfishing in this region back then, I have had many bad experiences and attacks by this eel. I have personally been bit 3 times, once on the hand( the worst) a finger and the wrist(really bled alot) ...all while I spearfishing...twice I had just speared a fish and... BAM ...EC hit me so fast and hard while I was contemplating pulling the spear back...the painful bite and power of its jaws is not to be under estimated ... the time it had my hand it actually started to coil my arm...I offered it the fish from the spear with my other hand, a small Ulua, and fortunately, it spit out my hand and took the fish. Other times I had speared fish in a hole and got the fish out ok, but Ehchellynassa just came out of the hole after my fish, swimming really fast and aggressively towards me...I would swim as fast as I could but the eel was a faster swimmer and after trying to fight them off unsucccessfully with a Hawaiian sling a couple times, my discovery to be safe was that I had to swim straight up as fast as I could and after about 15 feet EC would stop and swim back into the coral...but up until that point EC was going for my fins ---if I"d been bare footed I could have easily lost some toes judging by the way EC nipped at my fins!! My Korean Dive buddy had been bent twice due to severe bites from EC while spearfishing alone deep where the eel's canines went completely thru his hand and broke several bones and it then took many minutes before he could free himself. His hands were a gnarly site to behold from so many EC bites over the years with numerous poorly healed broken bone sites in both hands. I was witness to a facial attack. This attack was provoked when he speared 2 fish in a small cave with his Hawaiian sling...and Bam...EC slammed THROUGH his face mask with one fang piercing thru his maxillary sinus into the roof of his mouth and the other canine going through the side of his nose and coming out of the roof of his mouth(the EC has two large caines in the middle of his jaw)...fortunately EC let go fairly quickly and he was able to get to the surface ok and everything healed up ok with antibiotics(this is a pretty tough dude- though he probably lost 2 units of blood that day and should have had plastic surgery... but he did'nt mind having his facial bones crushed in a little...just another EC encounter).
Anyway...a word to the wise to any of you who want to try and get up really close for a photo shoot of this critter...its not your typical smiling "hey take a picture of me looking evil" Moray eel....this eel's appearance unfortunately match its attitude. Obviously reflecting back...if we had not been spearing fish in the eel's hole...there would not have been so many bad experiences...but this eel was far and away the most aggressive of all the other Moray eels in Hawaii. Sometimes just looking in a hole was enough to provoke it charging out of its hole, or a fish on a stringer going by its hole would definately cause it to chase that fish ...or whoever was towing it. Just not your typical Moray! Thanks for bringing back some old memories and let me know if you find some schools of hammerheads. Peace...saildiver

 

[BrianKon]

Just had an encounter with 3 scalloped hammerheads last week at Pyramid Pinacle, they swam over our group within about 20 feet heading North. Best guess in size was 10 feet, 8 feet and probably six feet or smaller. of course they looked much bigger than that at 20 feet. only the third time in as many years I have seen them.