It's Time for an Ono

I've been diving for a little over two years now, and I've yet to land my dream fish, an Ono. I've seen them on multiple occasions and I've even shot one in the past. Unfortunately the shot I took didn't penetrate through the entire mass of the fish and the Ono got away. Ever since I picked up the sport of free diving and spearfishing, it has been an on going goal to shoot and land an Ono.
I am so happy that I can now proudly say that I have indeed, landed a nice Ono. On a recent dive, we ran into a school of these fish and I was lucky enough to get one. This is how it went.... so we, Brandon and I,  were diving at a regular spot on the east side, around 45ft of water. We were diving the reef for a while and we decided that we should move out to deeper water, in hope to find easier fish ( the fish at 45ft. were a little skittish.) So we got in the boat and motored out to deeper water, we haven't really dove the deeper waters to where we were diving. So we just jumped in the boat and blindly drove out looking for a deeper reef. After driving for a couple minutes, we decided that the water was probably deep enough; I threw in the anchor and jumped in the water to see what it looked like. When looking in the water I was surprised, it was deeper then I had expected, it looked like it was 90ft deep and it was completely barren. I quickly looked up to Brandon and said "this spot sucks, there's no fish at all," I then stuck my head back in the water for one last look before getting in the boat, and to my surprise, there was a large Ono swimming toward me a couple feet under the surface. I quickly responded energetically and yelled to Brandon, "there's Ono's!!!" I then grabbed my gun as he grabbed his and we both jumped in the water. After taking a better look, there appeared to be 5-6 Onos. We played a little stalking game with the fish for about 5min as they slowly became more comfortable with us, and swam within distance of our spearguns.
As one of the Onos swam close to me, I pulled my gun in front of me, looked down the shaft to aim, and took the shot. I was filled with adrenaline, as the shaft left my gun towards the Ono. The shaft hit the Ono, and the fish instantly flipped to the side, I stoned it, shot right in the spine. The fish was actually pretty far away and had I not of stoned it, it would of gotten away, because my shaft then fell out of the fish; It didn't even puncture all of the way through the Ono. The fish was upside down going through some sort of epileptic seizure. Brandon swam towards it to try to grab it, but it was progressively moving away in its seizure act. So, he shot it one more time as a back up shot.

I then reloaded my speargun at the speed of light, and handed it to him so that he could try to shoot one of the Onos. They stuck around for the next 5 mins as I grabbed hold of my Ono. Unfortunately, from that point on, none of the fish came within range for Brandon to take a shot. I secured my catch and brought it into the boat as we got back on. We talked about the exciting event, I was filled with cheer. It was an extraordinary event, that I will remember for the rest of my life. I'm so lucky that I got such a great shot on the fish, I'm so lucky that we ran into the school, and I'm so lucky that I landed the fish. We  later cleaned, cut, and ate the Ono. I distributed a lot of the fish to friends, as there was too much meat for just our families to eat. It was delicious fish, Ono is my favorite to eat. The Ono ended up weighing 50lbs. It was a great day of diving, I'm blessed and can't be more thankful for the opportunity that was given to me... So stoked I live in Hawai'i.  Always looking forward to that one more drop....

Molokai Round Two

Recently I got to once again dive in Molokai. It was the same as last time in the sense that we took the sail boat with Captain Vic. It was the four of us this time, Mike Hatcher, Derek LeVault, Captain Vic, and myself. The conditions were a lot better this trip and the water was water was relatively clean.
We got to Molokai a little after sunrise, and we dove the whole day. We ended up with plenty of invasive fish as well as Uluas. Derek shot 3 Ulua and I shot 1, I was especially excited on my Ulua, because it was the first one that I ever stoned. The biggest Uluas were 35lbs, and the smaller ones weren't much smaller.
All in all, it was a great experience and I was stoked on landing that Ulua.

Kaoru Lovett

Photo Shoot

I finally got a chance to do a photo shoot and work on my photography skills. This is a pic I took of my girlfriend Malia Funk, on the south side of Oahu. It was a great experience to play "photographer" and capture stills of such a beautiful girl. Doing this photo shoot definitely fuels my ambition to become a better photographer as I learn about lighting and ideal scene selection in a photo, through real life practice. I'm looking forward to the next photo shoot!

HDRI image at Hilton Hawaiian Village

Learned about taking HDRI (High Dynamic Range Image) in school the other day. I really like the photos, the images really come to life, though they almost appear unrealistic with the heavy dynamic range. Heres a photo a took and created through Photoshop.

Moloka'i Diving

I was extremely blessed in past couple of days for my opportunity to go up to the island of Moloka'i for a diving trip. My buddy Derek LeVault invited me to sail up to Moloka'i with him and his friend Victor to go and do some spearfishing. Victor the boat captain sailed us through the channel on his 32 ft sailboat overnight in relatively ruff seas. I was surprised on his sailing abilities considering how little sleep he got. The weather wasn't too great during the trip and because of the north swell we weren't able to dive on the north side of the island. We ended up doing well though, we got a bunch of good fish and found some nice reefs to dive on. It was also really cool to see lobsters in some of the reef holes in moloka'i, though we didn't end up catching any.  I was especially stoked on the mus and uku I shot. Heres a pic of some of the better fish i ended up shooting. We also got a bunch of uhus, goats, rois, and other reef fish. 

New Pet

This is a short Time-lapse i made of my new pet Sulcata Tortoise,Squirt . The time-lapse consists of close to 250 photos of 1 photo every 10 seconds. The clip was then slowed down through edit. 

Project Roi

I've been compiling footage and begun the ruff editing of the next dive video. This new video is gonna be focused towards the invasive roi, and the clean up of the reef. It is going to incorporate footage from both myself and my dive partner Brandon. I hoping to produce a video thats really up beat and to the point, minimizing boring shots and trying to keep it action, and by that I mean just action of Rois -> to keep it focused on invasive. I'm thinking that this video will be popular in many spearfishing groups throughout Hawaii, as the eradication of the invasive peacock grouper (roi) has become an apparent issue and mutual goal to eliminate. I hope that you guys are looking forward to the next video. I look forward to posting it!