Big Island Part 6: Exploring the Island Caves, Zoo, Manta Rays, & Tiger Sharks

The last several days have been amazing! On Monday, Shelley and I got up early and drove nearly 300 miles exploring the island. This island is big. Here is the route we took. This took us through rolling green hills, cloud forest, dry wastelands, rainforest, lava flows, a zoo, and giant swells hitting a cliff.

 One of our first stops was a cave that continues for miles. I went 100 yards until I couldn't see the entrance and stopped trusting my flashlight. On my out I snapped this photo of Shelley at the entrance.

One of our favorite stops was at a zoo. There was less than 20 people at the whole zoo and the animals were very friendly. These nice donkeys walked over to us when we talked to them and let us pet their noses (which are as soft as a puppy's belly).

 This photo kind of reminds me of this. 

 They had a neat pigeon too.

This is the largest bromeliad I have ever seen. Between each leaf was a small ecosystem. These plants are what poison dart frogs breed in, but there are not any dart frogs on the big island.

 Here is Shelley next to a lava tree. This is the result of hot lava hitting a very moist large tree.

We found this wonderful state park (no one was there but us). The part is a huge Ironwood tree forest right on the ocean cliffs. The sea was angry.

 

Here are some of the waves and Shelley's "stay 50 feet from the cliff rule"

 

On Tuesday, we got more diving in and had maybe our most memorable experience with Green Sea Turtles from shore. Humuhumunukunukuapua'a (the Hawaiian state fish) are fairly easy to find, but difficult to photograph. I have several hundred bad photos of these fish where they are blurry and swimming away from my camera. When photographing fish, I have learned, many ignore you if you ignore them, but as soon as you face them, they swim away. I wanted a good triggerfish photo and I saw this fish in about 5 feet of water and he had just gulped up a huge scoop of sand (probably eating a crab) he turned to me and spit out the sand (through his gills) as I snapped his photo.

One of my favorite fish are anthais. These are some of the most colorful fish but usually live in places too deep to dive. I have been following another divers blog and he has wonderful long-finned anthais photos. He talked about a particular site he sees them and I followed his lead and found this little guy. This is the first one I have ever seen and he was not shy at all and allowed me to take tons of photos of him as he gulped plankton from the water. 

Some of the turtles here are not shy either. This one (which I think has been fed by people) would come over to Shelley's voice and rest his head near her feet. We didn't touch the turtle but did take good photos of it.

In other news, our dryer was broken in our original condo, so we were "upgraded" to a different condo. The view is more ocean and we can see the cruise ship that comes every Wednesday. Here is our view:

Thursday night was certainly a highlight of this trip. Here is the story: Shelley really wanted to do the night dive with Manta Rays here on the Big Island. To my surprise, Shelley suggested we just climb in the ocean after dark and swim several hundred yards around a point out to open sea to the spot the boats take the divers (which they charge $150 each). To be honest, it sounded pretty scary to me, swimming in the open ocean at night is a little intimidating, but I didn't tell Shelley it sounded scary. The photo below is Shelley getting her gear ready after dark. The shore was dark, so we tied glow sticks to each other and to the lava cliff we climbed in at to mark our exit route. The dive was amazing. The video below is amazing (its Shelley in it).

 

Earlier in the day, I got some great photos of a rare fish. And also a not so rare fish. If you learned to draw a fish in kindergarten, you probably learned to draw a fairly accurate Sleek Unicorn fish. These fish strangely look just like goldfish crackers. 

Whomever designed the fish of the world wanted to kill scuba divers. The most colorful amazing fish in Hawaii are mostly found in deep water that lures divers into depths that are dangerous to dive. The Hawaiian long-finned anthias is a perfect example and is usually found 100 feet or more below. The female is the most beautiful of the species (uncommon in the animal kingdom, except for humans of course).  The male is show a few post before this. I found this little fish swimming upside down near the ceiling of a small cave at about 100 feet down. 

The highlight of the trip from me, had to be seeing a tiger shark from shore. Seeing a tiger shark underwater is a rare event. I know divers with 12,000+ dives who have never seen one underwater. On this trip we have made Sandwich Island Divers (now out of business) our dive shop and the owner Steve has provided us with tons of tips and some awesome stories from his decades of diving here. He told us we had a good chance of seeing a tiger shark if we dove near the harbor. This "tip" kept me away from the harbor for most of our tip, but seeing the large groups of dolphins off shore eventually lured me into the water. The first dive was a little a spooky as I hoped I didn't run into a tiger shark (which grown up to 18 feet). The dive ended with no shark and no dolphins. Shelley refused to dive the site so the next day I headed out alone once again looking for dolphins. About 30 minutes into the dive I ran into a couple of divers who signaled to me they saw a shark, they pointed in the direction I was headed. I keep going in that direction and saw my first Fishers Angelfish (3 actually), but no shark or dolphins. After the dive Shelley and I walked over to some rocks near the dive site and I spotted a large dark figure swimming right off the rocks, "There it is!" I yelled to Shelley "Do you see it?" She did.

We spent the next several hours on the rocks watching a 14 foot tiger shark swimming around. He was hard to film with the glare on the water, but below is what we got. In the second video he grabs something at the surface (maybe a snorkel?). In the last few weeks, many divers here have seen the tiger underwater, but I not interested in seeing it alone. Diving alone in a know tiger shark territory is asking for it.