Kona-Hawaii Trip report 8-15 thru 8-23-10

[LeadTurn_SD]

I was also wondering about the overall effects of depth on fish abundancy around Big Island. We never did boat diving there, only shore diving and snorkeling, and got a strong impression that there is nothing in deeper water. Snorkeling near Cook's monument or in the bay by the Outrigger or in Lapakahi park, or at 69 Beach was like swimming in a fish soup, and diving near Puako or around Place of Refuge was also pretty good up to maybe 40 ft. But once we tried to go deeper, every sign of life just vanished. So do divers actually see anything there on boat dives (I assume, boat dives are deeper than shore dives) besides manta rays? ;-))

Friscuba nailed it his post above. There are things to see deeper; but the vast majority of fishes are in the brightly-lit shallows.

I read a quote the "80% of the sealife is found in the first 80 feet of water". I think that is pretty accurate as far as Hawaii's reefs go. I'd go one step further and say that 80% of that "80%" is found in the first 50 feet here in Hawaii.

It is rare that I go below 60 feet on the Big Island's reefs; most of my dives have a max depth of 45 - 50 feet, with a awful lot of time spent in the 15 - 35 foot range.

Best wishes.

 

[tarponchik]

Thanks you both for replies. I was also under impression that Hawaii waters are less transparent than Caribbean, so it gets darker sooner when you go deeper. Can this be the reason why at grand Cayman or Utila dive sites there is plenty of stuff at 100 ft? In fact, sometimes I would forget that I am at >100 ft, so abundant the sea life around is.

 

[friscuba]

Kona has pretty darned clear water as far as Hawaiian waters go, 60 viz is a bad day and 100+ is really more typical due to lack of runoff and sandy beaches. I've no idea how it compares with Caribbean seas.

Geologically the Big Island is very young and the reefs are very young too. In another million or two million years it's likely that the island will have subsided and eroded a bit and there'll be a bunch of nice beaches about where Queen Kaahumanu highway is, maybe somewhat inland of there, and the current reef will be the deep reef and what is now lava fields, town and resorts will be a nice fringing reef that extends out a half mile or more... but that's a ways off, 'fraid even with advancements in health care none of us is going to see that.

 

[smellzlikefish]

Agreed that most of the fish biomass is relatively shallow, but I tend to focus more on rarities and go to Kona for the easily reached deeper water as opposed to Oahu where the same depths are a mile or more offshore.