Capturing the Moment

  The Safari Explorer loads up guests for a week long adventure through the islands at the Kona Pier in downtown Kona. Before I meet my expedition cruise ship, the Safari Explorer, and sail out between the Hawaiian Islands, I wanted to take in our cute starting town of Kona, on Hawaii's southernmost island, the Big Island. Being on the most isolated island chain on earth, it does mean that it takes a long flight to get here...from pretty much anywhere. The closest large landmass is 2,400miles away. But as I walked out of the Kailua-Kona airport, I was greeted with a beautiful rainbow, swaying palm trees, and that fresh salty air. I felt invigorated to walk the town and really take it all in. So come along with me and check it out! The town of Kona used to be the capitol of the Hawaiian Kingdom back in the early 1800's. After Kamehameha, a chief from this island, conquered all the islands, he returned here to live out the rest of his life. His personal temple can still be seen h...

  A spinner dolphin leaps high out of the water as a local boat looks on. Today we spent the morning exploring the picturesque, and historical Koloko-Honokohau National Historic Park. At one time, an ancient Hawaiian village thrived here, with numerous fish ponds, fresh water springs, and plenty of coastline to fish and collect shells from. However, lava flows from nearby Hualalai Volcano covered and destroyed most of the village. Now the area has been turned into a National Historic Park. There are paths through the lava flow, connecting the visitor center with the inland brackish fish ponds and the beach. My goal today was to share the history and beauty of the place with my guests. I wanted to show them the remnants of an ancient heiau or temple, some petroglyphs in the rocks, and also the fish ponds, some of which have been rebuilt. But another big mission was to go birding. Different birds can be seen out over the water, along the shoreline, in the strip of forest, and in the ...

   The mantas that frequent the Kona coastline have been not so frequent of late. In fact we've been getting skunked way more than normal this past year. So it was very refreshing to have multiple mantas back at the campfire for the famous Kona manta night snorkel last night.    At one point we had six mantas in our sight. The plankton was pretty dense in the cove and the mantas were definitely enjoying the plethora of food. We watched them glide over the scuba divers at the bottom, before swimming straight up under the snorkelers at the surface. These pictures of of the manta as it barrel rolled inches under our board. Our underwater lights lit up the white underbelly of the 8+ft coastal manta. The black spots and splotches on the belly are how we identify individual mantas. Over a hundred have been identified at this spot alone on the Big Island.   It is always a good time when you have to remind your snorkelers to lift up their feet so they don't acci...

   The oceanic white tip shark, ( Carcharhinus longimanus) can often be encountered swimming with pods of short fin pilot whales off the Kona coast of the Big Island of Hawaii. They are present in all tropical seas and responsible for most of the injuries and deaths during big shipwreck and airwreck disasters, like that of the USS Indianapolis in 1945 made famous in the retelling in the movies Jaws.       I have swam with these sharks on two different occasions and both times the curiousity of the shark was evident. You can see in the video how the shark is not scared at all, and swims right towards me. This is how it checks to see just how easy a meal this new creature might be. I take solace in the fact that I also appear as a predator, with my eyes facing forward and swimming with confidence, in the crystal clear Hawaiian waters.   There are often small pilot fish that hover around these sharks, picking up morsels of food that the sharks di...

Swim-by on Dive 1 Kona Dive Company   Kona Manta Ray Night Dive Now known as the "#1 Night Dive in the world", the Manta Ray Night Dive in Kona, Hawaii is something not to be missed. It can be done as a snorkel if you are not a certified diver , or as one of the most spectacular scuba dives anywhere on Earth. Diver, Manta, and Bubble Ring     I take people snorkeling here once a week and I still can't get enough. In fact, this dive is one of the first things I looked forward to doing after getting off the boat. It is right up there with grabbing a cold beer (no drinking on the boat), and having a good surf session. People often can't believe that all I want to do after leading people through the Hawaiian Islands for work is to get back in the water.   The crazy thing about this manta dive is that there is no pattern to let you know when there will be lots of manta rays or when there will be none. It doesn't seem to matter about moon phase, cu...