Winding Down

I have about 6 weeks left on this assignment in Hawaii. These last few months have been focused on the transition from consultant-lead support to local support and ultimately, sustainability. I wish I had several more months, but it will all be over the first week of May. After that, I will return to Virginia and see where my next assignment will be.

It's a lot of work during the week but I'm also trying hard to maximize my weekends as well. Mostly, that means I'm doing my best to go Scuba Diving as often as I can. Weather this time of year often conspires against the scuba diver, but I have managed to get in at least one dive.

This past weekend, I went diving with my buddies at Hickam Air Force Base on Saturday. We went a mile or so off of Pearl Harbor down about 60 feet to a very nice coral reef with lots of fish. After the first dive though, the waves had gotten pretty large. The forecast has said 2-4 feet waves, but everyone was joking that the weather service had gone metric (2-4 meters)! Several people were seasick, so we returned to port after one dive.

Sunday, no one wanted to go diving, so I left my stuff at home and took a drive along the shoreline looking for hiking opportunities. When I arrived at Shark's Cove, I found many people diving and snorkeling. The water was smooth and very clear! I struggled with the thought to drive home and get my gear because it was already afternoon, but I decided to go for it, so I drove all the way home, dumped my gear into the car and returned.

There were still many people diving, so I just kind of joined-in along side a group. I had a wonderful 62 minute dive before driving back home around 5:00pm. So I risk providing another series of boring underwater pictures (I haven't figured out how to take pictures of myself while scuba diving yet).

At about 60 ft down, everything pretty much looks blue. The camera can only do a limited amount of color correction. Still, you can see the yellow on this fish. The coral reef is in the background as well as more fish. If you look closely, you can see some of my diving buddies behind the fish.

A large lobster trap was wedged under a rock outcropping. No lobsters, but you can see a large coral tree on top! Someone did see a small lobster - about 2 inches long. I call them crawdads...




This is as close as I can get to a self-portrait while diving. I'll keep working on it! Hopefully you can see that I am smiling because Shark's Cove is such a great diving site! Shark's cove doesn't get much deeper than 40 ft deep, so the 'blueness' is a little less pronounced.

There are many rocks and lava tubes and caves at Shark's Cove. Many have a "skylight" which makes for great pictures like this. I explored many caves from the outside because I didn't have a dedicated buddy for this dive (remember, I was just following along some other people's dive).

Needle fish are sometimes hard to see, but they are curious fish. If you swim slowly and let the current move you, they will often let you let very close. This picture was taken about 18 inches away. You can see his iridescent blue stripes down the length of his body.


It's not unusual to see schools of fish at Shark's Cove. Here, a long, large school of fish make their way to another rock to search for food. I sometimes find myself surrounded by fish who seem to consider me a moving shelter when they swim around.


So there you have it, another weekend in Hawaii. I will miss the access to stuff like this - of course, there are many new adventures awaiting me when I leave!