The Big Island Tour 2010

See All This on The Fair Winds II Eco-Tour out of Kealakekua Bay

Kealakekua Bay	These underwater photographs were shot with the Fuji Finepix Z33WP digital camera. Most have had some processing done to them using either GIMP or Paint Shop Pro XI. GIMP, which is free(!) and very similar to Photoshop, actually worked very well. I'm still working on exactly how to make the pictures look right, so these show a work in progress.	Underwater Hawaii	As noted on other sites for processing digital photos, some pictures can't be fixed. I'm having alot of trouble getting the the overall shading right as I wasn't the one who took the pictures so I have no way of knowing what it really looked down there. Other photo sites say that the red channel is missing in underwater photographs and that is what has to be enhanced. I used channel mixing to copy the green channel into the red.
Kealakekua Bay	My wife who took these pictures says that I have washed out too much color. I can't seem to get the color back in to the appropriate levels. Still, they're not bad. We tried a little disposable camera in the same location last year and ended up with 27 pictures of nothing.	Kealakekua Bay	See the fish?
Kealakekua Bay	And another fish.	Kealakekua Bay	And yet another.
Kealakekua Bay	another fish or two.	Kealakekua Bay	Yet more fish.
Kealakekua Bay	Another picture of fish. Well maybe not.	Kealakekua Bay	One more.
Kealakekua Bay	Again.	Kealakekua Bay	And again.
Kealakekua Bay	There were lots of fish to see.	Kealakekua Bay	How did that fish get in there?
Kealakekua Bay	A picture of fish.	Kealakekua Bay	And another.
Kealakekua Bay	And another	Kealakekua Bay	And one more.
Kealakekua Bay	Only two more to go.	Kealakekua Bay	Only one more to go. Note: There are few whales this far south along the coast as the water gets deep fairly fast. Just a few miles off the coast of Kealakekua Bay, the water ws some 10,000 feet deep. I guess that's good for deep sea fishing.
Kealakekua Bay	Last one.	Waikoloa Bay	Humpback whales just a couple of miles from the hotel beach. Waikoloa Bay is pretty much the southern-most location for whales around the Island of Hawaii. The water is realtively shallow and drops off going to the south. The whales prefer the shallow water as predators are absent there. The maximum depth was supposedly 600 feet in this area, but most of the time you could clearly see the bottom.
Waikoloa Bay	We had been watching the whales from the hotel beach not knowing that they were really close. We took a whale-watching trip thinking we would be miles from shore. We were never more than 4 miles from the hotel beach and seemingly never more than a mile or two from shore.	Waikoloa Bay	The whale-watching trip was outstanding. The gentleman doing the narration clearly had more than a passing interest in the whales.
Waikoloa Bay	This was late March, and the whales were all about to head back to Alaska where they feed. They spend pretty much half the year in Hawaii and half in Alaska. While in the Hawaiin waters, the whales do not feed.	Waikoloa Bay	We boarded the boat in the Waikoloa Bay on the beach at the Marriot Hotel. The boat essentially grounded itself on the hotel's beach and we walked onboard. It was pretty slick. We must have been out for two hours or so and saw at least 4 pods of whales--a lot of activity according to the boat's crew.
Waikoloa Bay	One pod of whales headed across the bay at flank speed--about 20 mph. Our boat paralled their course at some distane, but clearly we couldn't have kept with the whales' pace for very long. I suspect we would have had some sick tourists if the captain had pushed up the speed to follow the whales.	Waikoloa Bay	This whale was in a pod of whales that were very active. While we kept our appropriate distances, the whales went where they wanted to. This particular one had passed under the boat before popping up just a few yards away.
Kealakekua Bay	Kealakekua Bay is the site of the Cook Monument and is an underwater state park. The water was much clearer than near our hotel, which was about forty miles north of this location along the west coast of Hawaii.	Sweet Ride	And for a few dollars more...Sharon got us a brand new Mustang covertible. Now I'm not a great lover of Fords or convertibles, but this was pretty nice. Amazingly, it was quieter with the top down even at 55 mph. But it was real retro except for the radio. It was the first car I have driven that was designed without a gas cap. The exterior lid was an integrated gas cap. Very strange.