Official dive vacation thread

[Craigdillman]

Originally Posted by Treebeard

Agreed! We are staying at Mi Casa, $610 for two weeks and about 2 blocks from the water. We have not booked a dive op yet but thinking about going with Aldora based on their great reviews.

Yea that's the place we stayed at mi casa was awesome we got the room with a kitchen and bought our own breakfast stuff cause we were too early for their breakfast usually before our dives good spot


Also yes we did dive palancar reefs while there man took so much more video in Indonesia and as I'm editing it I'm regretting it lol

[Delphinus]

Just came back from the Big Island where I was able to get a couple tanks in. Not as much as I'd like, next time there's an opportunity for me to do "diving while on vacation" I hope it can be more of a "diving vacation." (Not that I didn't appreciate all the other things we did though, I love it in Hawaii.)

One dive was down to 80' and unfortunately a little overcast so my non-extra-light GoPro pictures are not terribly good. When time permits I will see what I can salvage and share.

One heartbreaking thing I saw was a lot of coral bleaching. One reason I keep going back to the Big Island was just how vibrant the coral colours were, porites, pocilliporas and others, lots of pinks and yellows ...... this year so much white.

On closer inspection I could see that the coral was still alive, just bleached. So one thing we can say, with the experience we get in this hobby .. is that we know that if conditions allow, they can recover. The flipside though is that, with the experience we get in this hobby ... is that if things don't get better quickly, the potential to dieoff is also there. So it is with no small measure of mixed emotions on my part this time around.

[Treebeard]

Tony, did you give any consideration into doing the manta ray night dive?

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by Treebeard

Tony, did you give any consideration into doing the manta ray night dive?

We did it as a snorkel 2 years ago which was pretty amazing becaus they come a lot closer to the surface than the bottom, but I think you'd get better pictures looking upwards from the bottom so I did want to do the dive this time around. Unfortunately circumstances caused us to cancel that. Basically we ran out of money. The USD exchange rate right now is brutal. :-(

[Myka]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

One heartbreaking thing I saw was a lot of coral bleaching. One reason I keep going back to the Big Island was just how vibrant the coral colours were, porites, pocilliporas and others, lots of pinks and yellows ...... this year so much white.

On closer inspection I could see that the coral was still alive, just bleached. So one thing we can say, with the experience we get in this hobby .. is that we know that if conditions allow, they can recover. The flipside though is that, with the experience we get in this hobby ... is that if things don't get better quickly, the potential to dieoff is also there. So it is with no small measure of mixed emotions on my part this time around.

Ugh...that's no good. I can't imagine the conditions in the ocean changing quickly to reverse the bleaching...

[daplatapus]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

One heartbreaking thing I saw was a lot of coral bleaching. One reason I keep going back to the Big Island was just how vibrant the coral colours were, porites, pocilliporas and others, lots of pinks and yellows ...... this year so much white.

While I'm sure there are tons of reason's for coral bleaching, there was an interesting article in DAN's Alert Diver that's a good read and a fairly seeming simple remedy if more people knew...

http://www.alertdiver.com/Sunscreens-Coral-Bleaching

[rishu_pepper]

My wife and I will be going to Okinawa, Japan in March 2016, diving at the Zamami Islands. We've never done any scuba before (taking the cert in new year), although I have done some snorkeling in Hawaii many moons ago. Really looking forward to it!