Endangered

photo by mike wakashige

One of the best things about my work is getting paid to take people that are on their vacations out for some dives. I don't do this every day, but when I do, it usually makes for a good day. Diving for a profession has it's ups and downs.....get it, ups, downs....nothing.....tap tap tap, is this thing on? Anywho! This day started off rainy and cloudy, not exactly something to get excited about when it comes to a day of diving. After all people are paying us their hard earned money to show them a good time on their vacations. No pressure! Trying to find a good enough spot to go diving in weather like this can be challenging to say the least. Granted, a bad condition day here in Maui is often times, 100 times better than the best day of diving in let's say, Monterey Bay. I mean come on, 80 degree water vs. 68 degrees if you are lucky isn't hard to surpass in terms of a good day.
So today was shaping up be a stellar day of diving. At least in the minds of the everyday dive professional here in Maui. But I have an obligation to give it the old college try, and sell it as the best dive the customer has ever had.
So I set about my process, with the help of my trusted companion, Divemaster Candidate "Dirty J" (Jaron) and we got the show on the road.
Today's divers were repeat customers. I had started the whole process with them just about a year ago this time when I had convinced them that getting certified to SCUBA dive was a good idea. Once they completed their certifications last year, I got the task of taking them on one of their very first dives as certified open water divers. They had a blast, and to make a long story short, they came back again this year to go diving. They also requested that I take them diving again this year. To a small business, a repeat customer is invaluable, and as a dive professional I do my best to retain as many new customers as I can. So when they ask for me specifically, it is a high compliment in my books!


Rare Harlequin Shrimp

So we set out on our undersea journey at the same dive site that they were trained at one year ago. Now, divers tend to get tired of the same dive site after spending two days of their diving at the same place, seeing the same fish, same corals, same ol same ol. But the fact is, this dive site is usually pretty dang good when conditions elsewhere may not be so good, hence why we use it for our training of new divers. The job then becomes, show them something new, something different, something unique.
Long story short, I was able to accomplish this with just a little luck and cooperation from old mother nature. We checked out some cool stuff, but one of the unique things that I was able to show them was this beautiful and rare, Harlequin Shrimp. These little creatures are amazingly colorful and interesting to look at, and thanks to Uncle Mike, I know where to find one. This one thing alone was enough to make it an awesome dive, but then we lucked on to a turtle just chilling on the reef, which at this particular site, isn't a common place occurrence.
 So we finished the dive, and it went very well. As we exited, another dive professional that had been out in the water at the same time asked me if I had seen the Monk Seal. We had not been so lucky, but hell, the customers had a great dive, they thoroughly enjoyed it and stated just how awesome it had been.

Hawaiian Lion Fish

On the way to the next dive site, the sun started to peek out of the clouds a bit and it was looking up from there. I found free parking, which is next to an impossibility, but I found a spot and we commenced our next dive. In the briefing I mentioned that "wouldn't it be cool if that Monk Seal came cruising down to the dive site we were at, and I told them to keep an eye out, because you never know!

Spiny Lobster (Dinner on Sept 1st)

Right off the bat, Divemaster Candidate Dirty J found a rareish Hawaiian Lion fish, these are not exactly the easiest find, but my boy is earning his stripes quickly! Sweet! So we keep on kicking, finding turtles, nudibranchs, eels, you name it we were finding it. Hell we saw one HUGE lobster, and I was wishing it was September 1st, (lobster season) but this big ol boy didn't get that big by being stupid.
It was right after this siting, that out of the corner of my eye I see something big and grey. I quickly turned my head to see a HUGE Monk Seal looking right at me. I grabbed my clanker to get Divemaster Candidate Dirty J's attention along with the other divers, and this big ol mammal looked even closer at me. You can see the beast in the picture that Jaron shot! The day had just become complete, and we weren't even half way done with the dive! As quickly as it appeared, the Monk just swam away effortlessly, no chance of us keeping up.


Endangered Hawaiian Monk Seal

The Hawaiian Monk seal is on the endangered species list. There is fewer than 1,100 left in the world, and only found here in Hawaii. Living in Maui, it is not necessarily uncommon to see a Monk Seal, but it certainly isn't an every day occurrence. These animals tend to favor the northern area of the Hawaiian islands, and to see them in Maui just makes it that much more special. This will be my third underwater encounter with a Monk Seal, and my 5th time ever seeing them (twice I have been privileged to see them hauled out on the beach taking a nap in the sun). Amazing animals indeed. I feel blessed to have had this chance to witness this graceful behemoth (500lb) animal under the water, and to get paid to do so, well, it don't get much better than that!

Camouflage

As the Belle, the Beauty falls in love with the Beast, Heidi Klum was to Seal, Heather Locklear was to David Spade, well, you get the idea. The point is, that these unlikely pairings of beauty and maybe not so beautiful at first glance, brings to mind the saying that beauty is only skin deep. At one's first glance of the Commerson's Frogfish, they appear to be an aberration of God, a mistake, an ugly mistake of God. However when you come to know these creatures and learn a bit about them, you take a liking to and even gain extreme appreciation for their existence. Don't get me wrong, I dig Seal's music, David Spade is always good for a chuckle, and Beauty and the Beast, well, that story just goes along with my point. Which is that underneath it all there is beauty, to someone. 
We dove Mala Ramp today! This is my favorite place to dive on Maui. It was my first dive I took when I moved here, and it caught my heart with it's amazing beauty. Having my son Jaron here for the summer has afforded a dive buddy and more opportunities to dive on my days off. Also along for the dive were some friends of mine. Uncle Mike came out to dive with us this morning. This was a rare treat, because Uncle dives every day for work and it is hard to get up and go dive when you get a rare day off during the busy summer season for our shop. So much mahalos to uncle! Also along for the ride, and the reason we drove over to Lahaina on our day off to go explore this outstanding dive site, was Emily, a research diver that is working on her PhD. Emily doesn't get much free time to dive for fun, due to her busy research schedule, and it was her last day on island for a while. She really wanted to dive Mala Ramp, so we decided to help her, and ourselves to a relaxing, non working dive. Also along on the trip was Mark, a dive instructor who used to dive for the shop, helps Emily out with her research when she is on island.

I have titled this blog Camouflage, and as you look through the pictures they will show you why. First up we had Uncle find the elusive Frog Fish for our photographic opportunity. These fish are one of my favorite to find and to the untrained eye, very hard to find on the reef. I can not take credit for finding these particular froggies. Uncle knows right where these fellows hang out so he can find them a lot more often than I ever could. He found TWO specimens on this dive, both in the same spot, a rare treat. The first is one is yellow and looks a lot like a particular coral that is common here, but this fellow wasn't too difficult to spot. In that picture, you can see his eyes and mouth that distinguish him from the corals on which he is typically hiding. It took me a couple of head shakes to re-focus and find this fellow to shoot him. Kind of embarrassing really, but I wasn't up close when Uncle pointed him out. He then held up two fingers, signaling us that there were two! So it comes my turn to get in to get some shots, and I am there just looking at this area, I see nothing! Finally I was able to see this big yellow fellow! I was getting close to take the shot and then finally out of the corner of my eye caught This orange fellow sitting right there next to my hand as I was looking for a place to grip.
In this picture that I got of him, you can barely make out that this is a fish at all. He really looks like an orange sponge. If you look closely at this shot you can make out part of a fin on the top left of this orange blob. Take a minute to look at it, I will wait. Tough one eh? So yeah! We saw two frog fish in the same spot, just chilling out, waiting for their next meal to come along. These are in the angler fish family, and have a small "lure" on the top of their foreheads that they dangle to attract smaller fish for dinner, lunch, or even an mid day snack. With one big gulp they swallow their prey whole, and both of these appeared to be quite adept at their fishing skills!
From here we continued the journey onward, and several turtles decided to come and hang out with us. I have so many turtle pictures that I took, as one in particular was very curious and even stopped to pose for several minutes with us. Uncle calls this fella "Money" as he is usually very cooperative with us so we can get shots of divers with turtles and make a little beer money on the side!

The turtles are great, but no pictures for this blog. Perhaps I will do a turtle blog, but for now I will continue on with one more camouflage animal that I was able to discover under a chunk of this collapsed concrete pier. The reef sharks tend to hang out under these ledges and swim through areas and as I was under one maneuvering for a shot I noticed this fellow hanging out in a corner. Do you see him? Looks just like a chunk of rock or cement with different sponges growing on it. Now look at this next picture and you can see some of it's legs protruding out from underneath. This is a sponge crab. These things are so fun to watch when they are cruising around at night hunting for their dinner. These crabs get big and they have modified pincers that they use to impale pieces of sponge or really anything that they can attach for camouflaging themselves.
A very interesting creature indeed, inedible however, so no I didn't have myself a nice crab dinner!
So there you have it! One of my favorite things to do during a dive is attempt to find the elusive and hard to find creatures that exist. It makes diving a lot of fun for me. Now I realize that sharks are not masters of camouflage, but shark week is coming so since this dive site is one we call our shark dive, I thought I could end this adventure by posting a couple of pictures of the reef sharks that were out during the dive. This big fellow came pretty close a couple of times and I was feeling my heart race just a bit as he would look at me then sharply turn away. Just to make it even more intriguing and heart racing, there were two of these amazing creatures just cruising back and forth between the parts of the pier giving us several photo op's that I go looking for on a dive!

Just Hangin Around

 Back in the water after two and a half months is a long ass time for a dive professional. I mean come on, I live on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
To be fair to myself, I did have some rehab going on with my bad back, not to mention I took a trip to the mainland, and all in all it has been "mo bettah for surf" on the island than for diving. But I digress.
At last I am back in the water with my oldest son Jaron, who is here visiting for a few weeks before he heads on his mission for the L.D.S. Church. But this is not about him necessarily, though I do so enjoy diving with all of my children, but he is the only one here with me at the moment, so we went diving down in Makena at a dive site that I particularly enjoy diving called 5 Caves 5 Graves.
There are actually more than 5 caves at this dive site, but there are 5 graves right along the trail that you have to hike down to get to this dive site. I like to tell divers that I take diving at this site that those are the remains of 5 divers that went into one of the caves below and they didn't make it back alive. Tourists will buy anything you are selling, but to all of my tourist friends that may be reading this blog, this doesn't apply to y'all. Ok maybe it did at one time, but I took all of your money to be my friend! Not that I need to pay people to be my friend, because, well hey, I mean come on, I believe I am somewhat likeable after all!
Getting to the title of the blog, Just Hanging Around....Jaron and I hit the mooring for the many snorkel boats that come to this spot to snorkel and decided to take a picture of him swinging on the rope. I thought it was just a fun picture to take.
On our first dive we ran in to a nice female white tip reef shark that happened to be pregnant. This is a very cool thing to see in the wild and I posted a picture of her here, though it is not the best composed picture, you can definitely see her bulging belly. These sharks are very unique amongst sharks as they do not have to constantly swim in order to breath. They can actually pump water over their gills, thus we are able to find them consistently to enjoy and photograph. Gestation period is 10-13 months and it appears this gal is getting up there and ready to have her pup or pups, up to six.

 Below is another pic of a silhouette of her in the cave that I thought was kind of a cool shot to share.
These sharks are not aggressive towards humans, in general they are very docile and trying to sleep during the day, save for the divers that are always seeking them out to sneak a peek and a picture. Now I'm not saying that I am brave enough to back them into their caves trying to get pictures of them, but I have been pretty up close and personal with these sharks, and many of you have seen some of these shots on my Facebook page. I also didn't want to stress her out too much since she was pregnant so once she let me know that she didn't want me bugging her I moved along and let her be.                           

The next picture is of a particularly hard to find, rare, Harlequin Shrimp. There has been a pair of these beautiful little creatures hanging out at a dive site that we use a lot for training new divers.
I was able to spend time with my son while he worked on getting his rescue diver certification with my good friend Uncle Mike Wakashige. For about a year now, these little creatures were hanging out in this particular spot, and I have not been able to go see them in the wild. Day in and day out I have watched new divers come and go that have had the privilege to see these shrimp and today was my turn! I got several pictures and this was a nice shot that I liked. 
Last picture is of a rare Hawaiian Lion Fish. Again thanks to my Uncle Mike for showing this tiny and beautiful specimen. I have had these in captivity before, and they are actually becoming a very invasive species in the Caribbean. They are indigenous to this part of the world and have not over taken the reefs here, in fact quite the opposite. I have seen these fish in the wild twice since I have been here diving and have been lucky to do so.
So after a long hiatus from the ocean, I have once again re-wet my gills and am feeling good about it! Hopefully it won't be another two and a half months before I get to dive again!        

Dive Write

Blogging was once an active hobby of mine. I have many hobbies actually, come to think of it, too many.
Writing has always been one of those hobbies that I turn to when I find myself in a pensive, creative place. I once had a goal to write something on my blog every day, but sadly I lost interest.
When I stopped blogging consistently, I had been going through some crazy life experiences that inundated my world and left my creative well dried up when it came to writing.
As with most of my hobbies a passage of time came, and the spark of interest that created my drive to do something began to smolder and I have been able to fan that spark into a creative flame.
So here I sit in Maui Hawaii, some might say Paradise, managing a Scuba Shop and diving for a living. The ultimate dream as it were, and decided to start a new blog. For myself, and for you, the reader (if there are any of you out there!).
I began posting pictures, on Facebook, of the animals that I was seeing while I was scuba diving here in Maui. I realized that there are many friends and family that have never and may never get to see these creatures up close in the ocean. I always use the phrase "Look what I found on the reef today!" in my status update and then attach pictures for people to look through. Hence the name of the blog.
I had the notion that maybe I could make this an interactive blog for divers that want to post photographs and share their experiences of diving. Logistically I have not thought this through, and it may not even come to fruition. However I will attempt to utilize my new found desire to write on a regular basis and post at least weekly, no promises though!
Regardless, here is my first posting on my new blog "Look What I Found On The Reef Today!!!"

This is a Green Sea Turtle. He is not named Green because of the algae that you see growing on his shell. Actually it is not the outside of this species of sea turtle that they are named for, rather the color of their insides, the meat, of which was at one time considered to be as the native Hawaiian's say, "ono kine grinz brah!"
In redneckese that would roughly translate to, "that's some good eatin' right there."
If you look at this little fella right here, it appears that he is just resting on his elbows. I like to think he is meditating down there at 25 ft. below the sea, centering his chi pondering his place in the universe and perhaps what he is going to have for lunch today. What to eat for lunch is one of those age old questions that we all try to answer every day. Of course Praka Lahsa here, (I named him that because he is a turtle guru) he has the added stress of hoping there isn't a big ass tiger shark out there asking himself that same question, and thinking to himself, "some turtle sounds pretty good right about now."
At least young Praka here doesn't have human beings as a major threat to his well being any longer. I say major because although we may not use them as a food source, Human Beings are still damaging them indirectly. The Green Sea Turtle has been a protected species and as a result they have made a strong come back in the world and now have numbers that no longer require protection by the federal government. Fortunately they are still protected and we as divers have the good fortunes of spending time with Praka Lahsa and his family while we are visiting their under sea homes.
As a Dive Master, I have the pleasure of seeing a lot of creatures while I am doing my job, and turtles are always willing subjects for having their pictures taken. I also consider myself an ambassador to the sea, and feel a responsibility to Praka and others that make the ocean here in Hawaii their home.
It is important to remember that despite their come back, despite their good nature and willingness to accept human beings into their homes, we must act as guests and protect our oceans. 
Millions of people visit Hawaii every year, and I am fortunate enough to have a job that affords me a platform to educate and share experiences with people traveling through our islands.
So if you are a diver or not, come enjoy the sea vicariously through this blog, hell come on down to Maui and lets go diving! It's not as difficult as you make think!
AlooooooHA!!!!