okinawa dive center
Dive Shop Bluefield

Can you see a baby growing in an egg here?
They have laid eggs in March – April, then now it’s the time for the babies to hatch. They hatch from their eggs in the middle of the night, then been seen around the surface of the water in this time of the year.
Aren’t they cute?

Okinawa in May
Wind: Mostly South with some days mild North Wind
Air Temperature: between 23-28 C (73-82F)
Water Temperature: 24C (75 F)
Cloth: T-shirts / No sleeve Shirts
Wetsuits: 3mm / 5mm full suits

Hello everyone,

Sport Diver Magazine May 2011 issue has an article about diving in Okinawa, which we helped organizing the dive trip and shooting in the Kerama Islands and Tonaki Island.
Here are some images of the article.

Last October, we hosted a Special FAM tour with Okinawa Convention and Visitors Bureau.
With the writer and the photographer from Sport Diver Magazine, as well as some dive agents from USA, we dove Tonaki Island and Gishippu Island (Kerama Islands).

Dive Sites:
Blue Hole (Tonaki Island)
Guruku no Saki (Tonaki Island)
Tamana Farm (Gishippu Island, Kerama)

As the objective of the article is to explore our diving styles in Japan, we discussed a lot about how diving style and culture in Okinawa are unique in many perspectives. You can find very detailed observation and thoughts on dive sites and divers in Japan, by Ken Alpine in it. Very interesting.
I had so much fun diving with them and chatting with them.
Please enjoy Jeff Yanover’s beautiful photos! Thank you very much Ken for nice text!

Please visit Sport Diver Magazine ‘s website for more info on subscribing the magazine or obtaining a digital version of the article.
Miho

Hello everyone.

May 5 is Children’s Day in Japan.
Carp is a symbol for healthy kids growing up. It’s a tradition in Japan to display Carp Streamers (Koinobori) to wish good for their children.
Now, we just had a festival in our river with many carp streamers in our river. We volunteered to help the festival with our catamaran boat, B-Flap to take the local kids out to cruising the sea a bit.

Hundreds or kids and hundreds of carp streamers.
Beautiful ocean and good sunny day.

B-Flap needed to go out more than ten times. Work rewarded by kid’s smiles.

Hello everyone,

Here is a news from Okinawa. Anemonefish started laying eggs recently.
Below is a Clerk’s Anemonefish in Ariga, Tokashiki Islandm that I found the other day.

You can see the eggs’ close up here:

Photos by Yuto

Okinawa in April
Wind: North or South
Air Temperature: between 22-26C (72-79F)
Water Temperature: 23C (73.4 F)
Cloth: T-shirts + Jacket
Wetsuits: 5mm full suits + Hood Vest

When we have wind from south, it’s very very hot like summer! However, when it’s north wind, it’s a bit chilly still.
Make sure to bring a jacket with you!

Hello there,

Today, I would like to share this great picture of cuttlefish eggs, taken by Naoki.

When you come visit diving in Okinawa, you may find one of these among coral reef.
Cuttlefish come here in winter, then mate and hatch eggs. If you are very very lucky, you may be able to witness them doing that!

Please check out our archives from last year about diving in March:
2010 March: Cuttlefish Mating Season
2010 March: Nudibranch Season

Okinawa in March
Wind: North or South
Air Temperature: between 15-25 C (59-77F)
Water Temperature: 21-22C (70-72 F)
Cloth: T-shirts + Jacket
Wetsuits: 5mm full suits + Hood Vest

This is a season when the wind direction changes a lot.
When having a North Wind, we have big ocean and very cold air temperature.
When it changes to South Wind, we totally have a hot summer.
Since it’s hard to predict the weather in Okinawa in March, we would recommend bringing T-shirts and jackets to wear in case it’s cold.

Miho

A Happy New Year everyone!

We hope that 2011 will be a nice one and you have many good dives!

Upon this new year, we have a big news for you.

We got a new Catamaran Boat from mainland Japan!

The new boat just arrived in December from a little island called Awaji-shima near Osaka. The brave captain, Takashi, and other brave crew, Akira, and Yuto arrived safely after a long drive spending 10 days with big seas.
Now, we got this new B-Flap and SWIFT, planning many good dive trips for this year.
You can see the details of this luxury boat’s layout and images below. She got nice big cabin with a kitchen inside as well. Would you like to enjoy cruising and diving in the Kerama Islands and have BBQ for lunch? Or, would you like to just take it easy doing island hopping  spending a half day with B-FLAP?

More information to come soon!

It’s a season now when Jawfish come back to Inanbishi.
There are 4 or 5 of them spotted recently.
It’s so cuuute to watch them doing some maintenance of their house.

Picture by Akira

Okinawa in November
Wind: South
Air Temperature: between 25-28 C (77-83F)
Water Temperature: 27C (80 F)
Cloth: T-shirts, Long sleeves,  shorts, or long pants
Wetsuits: 3mm / 5mm full suits or shorties

In October in Okinawa, we see many Cowry Shells mating and laying eggs.

It’s quite interesting to observe Cowry Shells itself, but even finding their eggs like the picture below on the right is fun.
In the each eggs which are about Cod Roe size, there are hundreds of tiny micro eggs in them.

We are finding them in Kerama Islands and Okinawa West Coast lately.

Okinawa in October
Wind: South & North
Air Temperature: between 25-28 C (77-83F)
Water Temperature: 27C (80 F)
Cloth: T-shirts, Long sleeves,  shorts, or long pants
Wetsuits: 3mm / 5mm full suits or shorties

Hello everyone,

Akira got some nice pictures of an interesting moment he had on his night dive at Sunabe.
These are the pictures of some starfish hatching eggs!

Many people really don’t care so much for starfish, but isn’t this beautiful?

Miho

The ocean is very calm in August – September, with mild south wind.

We have been finding dolphins a lot lately.
The ocean is so calm that it’s easy for us to spot the dolphins – they are so cute!
They would always come close to our boat, and play with us for while.

Yes, we do have occasional typhoons visiting Okinawa’s Ocean, but dives are canceled just 1 or 2 days in a month.
After the typhoons, the visibility of the water increases, and here we go, we have very beautiful ocean like this.

Okinawa in August – September
Wind: South
Occasional Typhoons

Air Temperature: between 30-34C (86-93F)
Water Temperature: 29C (85 F)
Cloth: T-shirts, no sleeves, tank tops, shorts
Wetsuits: 3mm / 5mm full suits or shorties

Miho