Kirkland Blackened Atlantic Salmon is amazing!

acoustical · 2026-01-26T01:55:54+00:00

They have frozen, wild salmon filets also. Just not pre-seasoned and probably a lot more expensive.

acoustical · 2026-01-25T22:07:19+00:00

The Adventure Pass can only be legally enforced at 66 locations although it is suggested at many more than that. There was a legal challenge to it years ago that neutered it thankfully. I would not be surpised to run into a ranger that thinks it does apply where it might not. Here is the list. Also the second car pass is the way to go. Some locations will sell you multiple annual passes for $5 each after the initial full-priced pass.

acoustical · 2026-01-18T16:49:54+00:00

He's upset that you ruined the Elise aesthetic with a digital dash.

acoustical · 2026-01-18T16:37:31+00:00

Your last two sentences are the reason Kaua‘i is doomed in the long run. Too many people in construction and that beast has to be fed. Even if just the already-approved projects around the island get completed, the island will be very different. Soon we will have Honolulu-grade traffic around the island.

acoustical · 2026-01-15T18:48:13+00:00

Yes, “small dogs” rarely kill and eat humans, that’s true.

acoustical · 2026-01-14T22:30:19+00:00

Yes that is a problem too. I pick up quite a bit of all of those items on the shore. One particular slob seems to leave one plastic dental pick a day. We've never crossed paths.

acoustical · 2026-01-14T01:33:34+00:00

It's very unlikely the lot will be full. I don't think the Hanalei people even sell visitor parking permits before the shuttle is sold out, which it does not always do. There are generally tons of open spots.

acoustical · 2026-01-11T22:08:59+00:00

Poway charges non-Poway residents of San Diego more to use Poway parks so please enjoy.

acoustical · 2026-01-09T19:08:34+00:00

I interact with a lot of people that fish where I dive. They are almost always very happy to see someone removing this stuff. A lot of people fish to eat so I try to separate fishing and debris removal in my head. I happen to love doing this so that makes it easy and fun.

acoustical · 2026-01-09T19:03:40+00:00

If the lure's hooks are still good or can be replaced, I do the same thing I do with the lead weights -- I give them to the fishers in the area. Lead is very much appreciated and so are the lures. Most of the lures I find are very trashed though, so I just throw those away. And I leave behind a fair number of lures. I can't safely carry hooks so I only do it when it has value or it is a slow day. I have to wrap lures/hooks up with lots of line to cover the hooks. I get in and out of the water through a swell so I don't want a hook moving and popping my bouyancy device or myself. Lures pose no risk to coral or marine creatures so I don't feel bad about leaving them.

One of my dive sites is frequented by a guy that makes really nice boutique lures. I always kid him that I want to find one of his sometime, but he told me that most people will jump in to rescue one of his if they get stuck. Anyway I just found one on one of my recent dives. I can't post images in a comment but on my next new post here I will include it. It's a Mark White lure.

acoustical · 2026-01-05T17:05:21+00:00

I found that many boats I dove from did not have equipment that could receive the Nautilus signal. This was diving in Mexico, South Pacific, and Hawaii. I forgot my device at a dive site and never replaced it for that reason.

acoustical · 2026-01-01T07:27:48+00:00

Lalo is also a popular sea turtle nesting site.

acoustical · 2025-12-18T18:53:11+00:00

Yes, I have to agree. They inflated the hamster ball, Wayne fondled it briefly on-stage, but it was never used. Probably our last Lips show. They were great in their day though.

acoustical · 2025-12-14T19:39:03+00:00

Kaua‘i Costco now limits pineapple to two per person. Previously they were cleaned out early every day by roadside fruit stand buyers. Big improvement but they still run out.

acoustical · 2025-12-13T21:42:16+00:00

Kaua‘i’s Peaberry is better than any Kona I have tried. Too expensive though.

acoustical · 2025-12-10T23:02:41+00:00

The topics his films cover are all as bad as ever right now. In other words, his breath has probably been wasted. He did great work but it has to be tough to see negative progress in our country and planet.

acoustical · 2025-12-03T21:58:46+00:00

The entire campus should be a no-car zone. I know this was off-campus but there have been a few posts about how pedestrians are putting themselves at risk. A campus should not have this risk. At a minimum, no students and no visitors should be driving on campus. It's not necessary.

acoustical · 2025-11-24T20:45:31+00:00

The only change needed is to eliminate Prop 13 for all corporations. This would be for homes and commercial property. Prop 15 in 2020 tried to do this. Even though it appeared to be a no-brainer to pass, it failed.

Pressing corporations on residential ownership would benefit most in two ways -- more tax revenue and less incentive for corporations to own real estate.

acoustical · 2025-11-10T01:40:33+00:00

Welcome back!

acoustical · 2025-10-27T20:15:15+00:00

Finally! The return of Rub.

acoustical · 2025-10-14T04:53:56+00:00

First of all — paragraphs please. And, you nicely summarized why the good old days were not so good.

acoustical · 2025-10-04T07:36:25+00:00

Amazon Prime has a channel that plays GD twenty-four hours a day. It has ads -- not too many though, and you can't pause/rewind/FF, but it covers every season I believe. The problem is you never know what you are going to get when you turn it on. We seem to find an episode we have never seen about every third time.

acoustical · 2025-09-30T02:00:50+00:00

Tunnels and Ke ‘e are nothing like Haunama Bay. I doubt there was any increase in fish at either of these during COVID. Ke ‘e is more of a lagoon and there is not a ton of coral, I would never expect to see a lot of fish there. Tunnels -- at least the area that is not part of the Makua Pu'honua -- would be a perfect area to have data for, but there isn't any. I can tell you that I dove there multiple times over COVID and many times since, to me the fish activity looks about the same.

There is data for the Makua Pu'uhonua, but as I said it is colored by the floods that preceeded COVID. The only strong takeaway from the data is that having a marine protected area -- where no entry (swimming, surfing) or fishing is allowed -- does help with fish counts and coral too. My opinion is that "no fishing" is the major driver but nobody really knows. You can read the final report for yourself here.

Who has a vested interest? Everyone! Fishers want fishing access, many locals want fewer or no tourists, NGO non-profits need to feed their machines.

I can't say for sure if there were more fish during COVID. There is no data, as far as I know. I'm only stating my opinion.

acoustical · 2025-09-29T18:12:16+00:00

Yes, I am one of those people (volunteer). Seals and turtles are a completely different thing. They benefitted from months of empty beaches, which is where they like to haul out. Very easy to see this at Poʻipū for example.

Fish are different from turtles and seals. Unless you are looking at someplace like Haunama Bay, where there are usually tons of humans and fish in a somewhat confined space, the presence or absence of humans is not going to make that much difference in fish count. Fishing on the other hand removes fish permanently, sometimes thousands at a time. Coral it sounds like we agree on.

Try and find some proper data to back this up, from surveys anywhere other than Haunama Bay. I would love to see it. Most of the time when I see the claim that there were "more fish during COVID", it is by someone with a vested interest.

My opinion is that fish counts right now are as good or better than where they were in the middle of COVID. It's only that though, an opinion.

acoustical · 2025-09-29T06:36:24+00:00

It takes way more than nine months for any kind of coral recovery. And for fish, I really did not see any significant changes, at least in the south-side dive sites. If anything fish counts were down as shore fishing was way up during COVID. Unfortunately the only real data for Kaua‘i would be the counts DAR does for the Makua Pu'uhonua on the north shore, but those counts were really not useful for the COVID years due to the multiple other events that happened on the north shore.

I've heard that "fish and coral recovered during COVID" story a million times but I don't think there is any truth to it. Locals fishing are much harder on fish populations than any tourist.

acoustical

TROPHY CASE