This time, instead of posting a trip report promising photos to follow, I
finally got around to actually posting some photos on my very own new (in
progress) website.  I promise a trip report will follow.

Greg Mossman
http://users.adelphia.net/~gmossman/

Ah, what the heck, I'll get it over with quickly.  In a nutshell, we dove
three days, eleven dives, with Jack's Diving Locker in Kona.  Jack's is a
very professional dive op, perhaps a bit too professional.  Still,
professionalism aside, the staff is still friendly and usally quite
accomodating.  It was a surprise to see Lance again, a DM I last encountered
with Ocean Frontiers in Grand Cayman, another dive op that is perhaps a bit
too professional.  The museum-quality dive shop displays a few photos of
Jerry Garcia and sells Grateful Diver T-shirts and stickers; unfortunately
they only supply tanks of nitrox and no nitrous oxide for the aprez-dive.
Like the rest of Hawaii, Jack's is pricy ($15 a tank for nitrox?!?), but a
relative bargain compared to even pricier ops in Maui like Ed Robinson's.
The boats got a little crowded on some of the dives, but we managed to have
a good time anyway.

The two four-dive days consisted of a morning/afternoon two-tank dive,
followed by a sunset/night manta dive.  We managed to repeat one spot,
Kaiwi, and both sets of sunset/night dives were at the same site, Garden
Eels Cove.  Other sites were Pyramid Pinnacles, Koloko Arches, and
Driftwood,   But the sites proved interesting enough and the three-dive day
brought us to a couple of their 'advanced' sites which offered some rarely
seen critters, Black Castle and Paradise Pinnacle.  The manta night dive was
truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and the second time was fun too,
though I doubt I'd ever want to do it a third time.  Similar to a shark
feed, the dive ops attract the mantas to the feed by planting lights (and
divers with lights) on the rubbled bottom in about 35'.  Light attracts the
plankton which in turn attracts the habituated mantas.  We had six visit us
on each of the night dives and when the show gets going, it's a thrill.
Mantas swoop everywhere, turning somersaults, often heading directly at
divers' heads only to veer right over causing hair to stand on end.  A few
bumped me on the first dive since I was kneeling trying to take photos.  I
say trying, because when a 15' manta swoops right at your head it's hard to
hold the camera steady, partly for fear of hurting the manta and partly for
fear of the manta hurting my camera.  Plus, as you can see from some of the
shots (and most of the shots which I didn't post), the abundant plankton
makes backscatter a bitch.  I left the camera behind on the second dive so I
could truly enjoy the mantas' feeding rapture and become one with them.

I find Hawaiian coral a bit monotonous and the fish life was sparse in most
areas.  But we found numerous eels, a few turtles, eagle rays (spotted and
non-), and a host of the indigenous odd-behaviored fish that Hawaii is known
for, like razor wrasse that dive in the sand, sponge crabs that carry
sponges on their backs, psychedelic wrasses and flame butterflyfish (both
way too skittish to sit for my photos), and plenty of spinner dolphins and
flying fish on route to the dive sites.  I even finally got to see a spinner
do his spinning thing.  Water was 78-80 at the surface, with a few
noticeably colder fresh-water influxes.  Overall it was a good time, though
I'd consider taking the Kona Aggressor the next time in town if I wanted to
do that much diving again.  We missed the Ironman by one day
(intentionally).  Weather was very, very nice.  The new Sheraton is still
under construction but we didn't notice during our dive days since we got up
before the 9 a.m. hammer banging.  Northwest had us stuck on the plane for a
three-hour delay in taking off, purportedly due to a defective part.  We
missed the last connecting flight from Honolulu to Kona and had to spend the
night in Honolulu, so I'll only settle for direct flights to Kona in the
future.  Even on the way back, it was still a pain in the a.s.  And why do
so many of the return flights have to be red-eyes?  I hate red-eyes.  And I
lost my credit card.  End of report.