In 1996 I decided I'd rather live on an island again and after looking around a bit I decided to move to the island
of Hawaii, known as 'The Big Island'. I lived there for three years and, as you can imagine, did a lot of diving and
photography.

Hawaii is a unique place to dive. Because it is so isolated in the middle of the Pacific it's difficult for fish species
to reach the islands from other regions. The ones that do make it over often evolve into species endemic to
Hawaii (found nowhere else in the world.)

As a result you don't see the variety of hard and soft corals that you might see somewhere else like Fiji or Palau,
but the fish diversity, big animals and amazing topography make up for it. I lived on the Kona (west) coast of the
island. The Kona coast is world-famous for its calm, clear water and easy diving.

All photos were taken with a variety of cameras: a Nikonos V and Nikon N90 film camera, an Olympus 4040, a
Nikon D70 and a Nikon D300 digital cameras. Underwater light was provided by two Sea & Sea YS-120 strobes.

Click on the small image to see it full-size.           Click here for slideshow.           Google Maps

Map of Hawaii	Waipio Valley, looking toward the sea	Thousand-foot waterfalls at Waipio Valley	Hamakua Coast, north of Hilo	Waipio Valley

Pololu Valley	Lava river beneath the surface	Noth Kona	Kona sunset	Art Koch tries underwater photgraphy

Diver and a Spanish Dancer nudibranch eggs	Black and yellow flatworm	Diver at Paradise Pinnacle	Diver and moray eels at Honaunauw	Plate coral formation at Honaunau

Diver photographing a Frogfish	Lizardfish	Hairy Hermit Crab	Stocky Hawkfish	Diver at cave entrance

Diver photographing barracudas	Hawaiian Lobster in cavern	Hiding in the sand	Nudibranchs and eggs	Colorful flatworm

Divers on a reef	Longnose Hawkfish	Scrambled-Egg nudibranch	Diver on the reef	Crown-Of-Thorns starfish

Hairy Hermit Crab	Blue Dragon Nudibranch	Hawaiian Turkeyfish	Gold-Lace nudibranch	Female Harlequin Shirmp, with small male

Diver and Raccoon Butterfly Fish, Honaunau	Female Harlequin Shirmp, with small male	Diver and Longfin Anthia, Honaunau	Hawaiian Lobsters in cavern	Hawaiian Lobster in cavern

Scrawled Filefish	Octopus	Hawaiian Turkeyfish	Scrambled-Egg nudibranch	Spotted Boxfish

Bullseye Lobster in cavern	Threadfin Butterfly Fish	Juvenile Rockmover Wrasee (aka 'Dragon Wrasse')	Whitetip Shark in cavern	Diver at Honaunau

Potter's Angelfish	Longnose Hawkfish	Shortnose Wrasse	Flameback Shrimp	Yellow Tangs

Spotted Eagle Ray at Honaunau	Spotted Boxfish	Tinker's Butterfly Fish	Flame Angelfish	Thornback Cowfish

Arc-Eye Hawkfish hiding in coral	Green Frogfish	Tinker's Butterfly Fish	Diver and sunken sailboat, Kailua harbor	Lava meets the sea

Tang in color phase change	Flame Angelfish	Spinner Dolphins	Bluefin Trevally	Diver at cavern entrance

Snowflake Moray	Crown-Of-Thorns Starfish	Longfinned Anthia	Longfinned Anthia	Longfinned Anthia

Longfinned Anthia	Hawaiian Lobster in cavern

Wire Coral Gobies are very small fish that live on Wire Coral. Wire Coral grows in long,
thin wire-like strands from the reef, hanging out into open water.

Wire Coral Goby	Wire Coral Goby	Wire Coral Goby	Wire Coral Goby	Wire Coral Goby

There are hundreds of Green Sea turtles living in Hawaii. You can often see them sunning themselves on the
rocks and beaches and in special places in the ocean they come to have fish clean parasites from their skin.
Turtles can be shy but if you approach them slowly and from below you can often get right next to them.

Green Turtle	Green Turtle	Green Turtle	Green Turtle	Green Turtle being cleaned by Tangs

Turtle in a tide pool	Green Turtle and divers	Green Turtle	Turtle silhouette

Kona is world-famous for its manta rays. These creatures can grow up to maximum of 25 foot wingspan, although the ones
in Kona are usually around 12-14 feet. Manta are nonaggressive. Unlike stingrays they have no 'stinger' on their tails.
The manta ray dive in Kona is done at night. The divers shine their lights through the water, attracting plankton. In the
photographs the white spots you see in the pictures is light reflected off the plankton. The mantas come to eat the plankton.
It's quite something to see a 2000-lb fish looping through the water a foot away from your mask!

Manta Rays	Manta Rays	Manta Rays	Manta Rays	Manta Rays

Manta Rays	Manta Rays

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