Here are 20 images I captured in September 2015, while diving off the west coast of Hawaii’s Big Island from a liveaboard boat.

Last month I shared a gallery from the incredible manta night dive. The images in this gallery are daytime captures of reef and critters. I will be doing one more gallery from this trip, from night dives, which were great!

I hadn’t been diving in Hawaii since I was a newbie, way back in 1997 — long before I even dreamed of becoming an underwater photographer. I was pleasantly surprised to find some very pretty reef structure on some of the sites we dived, and an interesting array of marine animals to photograph. Although Hawaii does not have the amazing biodiversity of destinations like Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, etc., it does have a significant number of endemic species — that is, stuff that is only found in Hawaiian waters, and an impressive population of eels! I saw several varieties on this trip that I had not seen anywhere before.

Hawaii is an easy five-hour flight from hubs on the west coast. Our group chartered the Kona Aggressor, and had a fine time cruising up and down the west coast of Hawaii, enjoying the five dives a day on offer. The Kona Aggressor has an excellent crew, and is well set up for live boat diving (so no transferring self and gear to dinghies to get to the dive sites — all dives are done off the main vessel). The Kona Aggressor has also set moorings on the sites that they regularly dive, which is really great, as they are not damaging any reefs by repetitively dropping a big anchor on them. This is a standard that all live aboard and day boats should aspire to.

Judy G is a traveling underwater photographer. Check out her blog HERE and follow her on Facebook: Judy G Diver

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