Busy Week

Aloha,

What a busy/fun week we've had out here on Maui.  We started the week with a bit of a windstorm, which kept us diving locally around the Carthaginian and Turtle Reef.  Even though the wind was strong, the visibility was awesome underwater.  We got to do a bit of teaching and even to certify a few new people.  Plus, Lahaina Divers does a discover diving program, which is a program that enables anyone to go diving even without a certification.  Some friends of ours have enjoyed this program over the years too.

We were also busy off the boat in the office getting ready for a couple of projects we're working on this month. We've gotten ask to help out with a car commercial, a biomedical company shoot, and a product shoot for a small company.  It's a lot of fun, and a lot of work.  We're really hoping that these extra projects will help create our next journey.  We'd love it if we could work with T.V. and big companies on shows and commercial material more often.  We are working with some fun production companies that seem to like the work that we do, so we keep getting phone calls, so we're hoping that's a step in the right direction.

The wind finally died down on Wednesday morning and we were able to make it out to Molokini to dive the Backwall.  In fact, the weather was beautiful and we had a strong current which makes drift diving a blast.  We were lucky enough to be in the right place to have three large Pelagic Chevron Manta rays swim by us while we were diving.  Unfortunately we were only able to get two of them on film, but it was still amazing.  One of the coolest parts of the encounter was the way in which the Remora were acting.

Remoras are the fish that attach themselves to a larger pelagic animal to catch a free ride through the ocean.  The host animal doesn't gain anything from having the Remora attached, but it also doesn't lose anything from the relationship.  The Remora eats leftovers from the host's meals and is said to also eat the feces of the host.

Anyway, there were two Remora on one of the large Manta's and one on another.  The two large Pelagic Manta came near enough to each other that the Remoras were swimming from one Manta to the other.  It was really cool to watch, it was a bit to far away to capture on video though.  The scene got even more interesting when a couple of large Giant Trevally decided that the Remora might make a good meal.  So two Giant Trevally were swimming around the slow moving, graceful Manta's trying to bit at the Remora.  the Remora were swimming all around their hosts like they were ants on an apple.  We wish that we had some cool video to share, but all I can do is tell you about it today.  Just another reason for us to keep diving and hope that we can get some evidence to share next time.

I do have some clips to share from the Manta's and some clips from the Turtles at the Product shoot.


Manta's and Work from C3 Submerged on Vimeo.


Stay in touch everyone, it's great to hear from all of you.

Talk soon,

C3