Humpbacks playing off Waikoloa

high five

Tail slapping


Four tons of tail


Peduncle arch with Waikoloa Village in background


Pectoral fin and lava flow


Tail Identification


Dorsal fin upclose and personal


Breaching off the Orchid at Mauna Lani



more frolicking

Hawaiian Aerial Photography

Note: My friend and airplane partner, Brian Powers has taken a series of thousands of photos of the Hawaiian Islands from our plane. This short story tells about it and has a link to the free site..ALL PHOTOS BY PERMISSION OF BRIAN E. POWERS, HAWAIIAN IMAGES, COPYRIGHT....It is worth checking out....aloha jeff

Hawaiian Coastal Aerial Photography Project

I completed a website in 2005 that showed every foot of the coastline of the island of Hawaii as seen from about 500 feet above. Flying my own airplane with one hand, I took 1,400 aerial photos using my other hand, in sequence, of the shore of the Big Island of Hawaii. I placed them onto a map on my website allowing anyone in the world to click their mouse on a location and view in great detail all of the islands coastline. I also included on the site 3,500 additional aerial photographs showing many of the other beautiful scenic locations throughout the island.

The website, http://www.hawaiianimages.net/, became hugely popular after a series of stories about ran in newspapers and on online news sites. The number of people viewing my site on a daily basis jumped from around 3,500 to 600,000 overnight. It had become a worldwide story that you could now see Hawaii’s entire coastline from 500 feet above for free on any computer.




Shortly thereafter I began receiving e-mails wanting to know when I would be making the rest of The Hawaiian Islands coastlines available to view online. Realizing how successful the Hawaii Island site had become I decided to begin photographing the remaining Islands. Although I shot all the Hawaii Island photos alone while simultaneously flying the aircraft I felt that it would be wiser to illicit the help of another pilot when doing the rest of the state. Captain Jeff McConnel, a good friend of mine for over thirty years agreed to come from California to be my co-pilot for the upcoming aerial photo assignment.

Jeff and I began by flying from Kona to Kahoolawe, the first island on our list. We dropped down from our Alenuihaha Channel crossing altitude of 6’500 feet to well below one thousand feet to begin photographing the islands shoreline as we flew counterclockwise around the deserted red island. Three hundred and thirty six photographs later we had completed Kahoolawe and banked to the north to capture Molokini followed by a low level race to Lanai to shoot the four hundred and eleven photos showing all Lanai’s beaches and cliffs. Our day’s work finished we pushed the throttle forward and began our climb home to Kona.




Over the following ten days Jeff and would I fly above the shorelines of each of the other five major Hawaiian Islands as well as the ten smaller, lesser known islands such as Mokuhooniki and Lehua. Jeff and I would end up spending just under twenty-four hours aloft flying our single engine Piper to complete our aerial photography mission. Flying from Kona to each of the outer islands and back home again we would cover over two thousand miles of over water flying. By The time we were done shooting the last shot off of Kae’na Point on Oahu’s North Shore I would have over ten thousand aerial photos showing every foot of coastline in the state of Hawaii.




Now came the task of organizing, color correcting, naming, numbering and preparing over ten thousand photos to some how be placed on a yet to be designed website allowing people from anywhere in the world to view them. Unlike when I photographed the Island of Hawaii, I was now able to connect a GPS unit to my Nikon D200 camera that would embed each photo with the exact latitude and longitude location where the photo was taken. Unfortunately there was no software currently available that would translate the GPS data to a corresponding map of the Hawaiian Islands; it would have to be created from scratch. I turned to David Cook a master of cutting edge web design and he was able to write a brand new type of program that would read the data on each photo and allow it to be automatically placed in the proper location on an online map of the islands.

As I am a single dad raising three kids, two cats and a dog while trying to run a freelance photography business and pay my mortgage, it took some time before I could complete all that was needed to get the photos on the internet. It took a year in fact. But now, anyone anywhere in the world can sit down at a computer and look down at every inch of Hawaii’s beautiful coastline as if they were flying above and beside it at five hundred feet!
I have lived in Hawaii for almost thirty years and have never met anyone who could tell me what the island of Niihau was like. Now, you can fly around this secret island and see its beautiful beaches, cliffs and the small town of Pu’uwai, which seemed to be the only sign of humanity on the island. People can now see the incredible towering vertical cliffs along the north shore of Molokai, the leper colony of Kalaupapa, Shipwreck Beach on Lanai, or Mokuhooniki Island between Maui and Molokai.

After the website went live I began to receive messages from all over the world. Expatriated Hawaiians living in the mainland told me of how excited they were to see the house on a cliff in Ninole where their Tutu lived. Others told of how much they enjoyed seeing and showing to friends the beaches that they played at as kids. The website is now being used by researchers studying sea levels, wedding planners looking for new locations to hold beach ceremonies as well as divers and fisherman trying to find better places to either enter the ocean or cast their lines from.

As far as I know this is the very first time that this has been done in Hawaii. I am quite proud to have not only created a permanent detailed visual record of the entire coastline of
The Hawaiian Islands as it now exists, but to have also made this record available for anyone anywhere in the world to freely see.


Brian E. Powers
Hawaiian Images Photography & Video
75-5834 Melelina St
Kailua Kona, Hawaii 96740
808-329-7880
himages@aloha.net
http://www.hawaiianimages.net

A Special Winter's Day in Hawaii

From tales of whales to whale tails, Sargassum to enchanting megaptera novaeangeliae songs while freediving, the "Sea Smoke" takes Chris and Jeff for a memorable ride.

Sometimes being out on a vessel without "having" to entertain or be responsible for a group can feel completely different than a working charter. We headed offshore a couple of miles from Waikoloa in flat calm seas with no wind to watch and photograph whales. We stopped during a "slow" period to shut down, lower the ladder and freedive next to the vessel...knowing that the humpbacks would be singing loudly. As we descended further and further down cobalt columns shimmering in the bright sunlight, the sound of the songs was dramatically increased. Only ascending when it was absolutely necessary to catch a breath, slowly leaving the mysterious melodies of countless whales. Our energies were increased by this "other world" experience, for there is nothing to compare the experience. We saw more whales together in a "heat run", where several males were competitively seeking the attention of one female, and tons of love.



A peduncle arch as a humpback prepares to sound


The whale uses the several tons of weight to begin the dive with the aid of gravity

The underside revealing the unique "fingerprint" of the individual whale. These are catalogued and are essential in tracking the individuals and their annual migrations to and from Hawaii and Alaska.




The surface of the sea was full of flotsom and jetsom, "stuff of all sorts", from tree branches, old logs, leaves and even some polypropolene line. I decided to retrieve the line. Upon shaking the water out of the line I noticed two fishes had fallen back in the ocean, they were hitching a protective ride with the clump of line. I was able to snap a couple of pics of the fish before we left them, feeling naked, at sea. . .


There is no Sargasso Weed in the Eastern or Central Pacific, so the histrio histrio Sargassom Frogfish take the next available protection...polypro line.

I felt like an ocean steward and homewrecker all at once, life's choices. I am sure they found one of the branches nearby and are still huddled underneath drifting thousands of more miles in the Pacific.


Every day is an adventure!


Stay tuned for the upcoming pics of the first "Seahorse" I have ever found in the waters off Hawaii in over 30 years.

Papua New Guinea Diving 2002

I had the opportunity to dive offshore of Papua New Guinea with a friend in 2002. We met up in Cairns and took a small commuter aircraft to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. We were met at the airport by the crew of the "Golden Dawn", our liveaboard dive boat and home for 14 days. We were escorted through the town and taken directly away from what we would learn was a rather wild and violent society that was rife with unemployment, STD's, and crime. As our driver avoided potholes deep enough to loose a motorcycle in we glanced on at hundreds of locals lining the streets and not looking overly happy about their situation. We were to learn later that PNG wanted "self rule" a few years back, voted in local tribesmen and made it clear it no longer wanted Australia's economic influence to dominate their country. Unfortunately the age old "bad blood" between hill tribes and lowland tribes led to much bickering, downright fighting and nepotism. Australia's business owners were packing up, banks were moving away, unemployment skyrocketed and infrastructure came to a halt. What was left is the closest thing to anarchy I have witnessed in all my travels. Needless to say, a trip out to the Coral Sea, 140 miles offshore was even more attractive after the drive through town.We spent the next two weeks at sea out of sight of land in an area that has some of the world's most pristine reefs rarely visited by any humans. Only one dive boat, "Golden Dawn", visits that area, usually only once a month during the good season. By far those dives were the best I have ever had since being certified back in the sixties.


We were diving with nitrox on generally two or three of the four or five dives per day. We found that a greater amount of oxygen helped keep the nitrogen levels a bit lower and seemed to leave us less exhausted at the end of a day. The virgin areas we dove rarely saw humans, so many fish were not afraid of the proximity of divers. We did have a couple of organized (if that is possible) shark dives where we hauled bags of tuna scraps, heads, guts, etc. down to lure them in. This was one time when the animals were expecting to be fed. When we entered the water column there were no less than sixty sharks cruising around the boat. They knew that they were going to be fed soon. Several varieties were there: white tip reef sharks, grays, silver tips, black tips and we thought possibly a Galapagos shark.







fly over of a ten foot shark

On one of the shark feeds we had a problem (think feeding frenzy gone wild). Normally one bag of tuna parts is opened and the sharks manuever in and start chomping. They generally are not interested in the humans with all the camera gear. This particular feed went awry when a silver tip reef shark decided to open the second bag and go for it at the same time, this split the attention of the sharks, food seemed to be everywhere and chunks were being carried around and slopily dropped at different depths.








One excited shark spotted something shiney and went in for the kill, unfortunately it appeared to be the neck of the Russian girlfriend of the captain. The shark instantly had her flopping around like a rag doll, side to side as it shook her. Her partner was one of the crew. He was trying to punch the shark off of her to no avail. This lasted for what seemed like countless minutes, however, I think it was probably all over within a minute. I have to admit, I froze. Sharks were flying in from everywhere it seemed, over the top of me, from the side, straight down like dive bombers. The speed of the sharks was amazing, bursts of speed over twenty knots. I did not move, I found myself clutching the reef and trying to be invisible as I was certain that we were all soon to be chum.




The shark finally let her go. Amazingly I saw no blood, the shark had been attracted to the sparkle of her ponytail rubberband and had been shaking her by the hair the whole time.




Captain Craig and his Russian girlfriend Julia




I thought the dive would be cancelled immediately, but as things settled down a bit and no one was "bit" we started taking pictures of the feeding frenzy. I never got a single picture of the "attack" of the sparkling ponytail. We dove for another twenty minutes taking pictures until the sharks got bored without any "easy tuna", decended the seventy-five feet up to the "Golden Dawn" amongst cruising sharks. In all the situations I have ever been in this would rate as the most fearful, frozen feelings I have ever felt, like a bad dream when your feet don't move when you need to get out of the way of a train!

This was just one of the fifty-five dives we thoroughly loved in the Coral Sea.


Four foot long Barracudas






Rhinopias....a type of scorpion fish




Clown Triggerfish





Christmas Tree Coral Polyp




Silver Tip shark





Coral Trout


Hawksbill Turtle


Green leaf scorpionfish




Tridacna (man eating clam)


Tridacna mouth




Schooling Jacks, (twenty pounders)



140lb Dogtooth Tuna eats Jacks




Lionfish



Nudibranch