He dived, he saw, he came back

Imagine risking your very life in a cramped little vessel to dive seven miles down to one of the deepest spots in the ocean and all you end up seeing are "tiny, shrimplike creatures" — amphipods.

Amazingly, the actual diver — movie director James Cameron — did not find this depressing.

"I see this as the beginning," he said. "It’s not a one-time deal and then you move on. It’s the beginning of opening up this frontier."

That’s the spirit, but at the moment it doesn’t seem like his dive in the western Pacific will make for a very interesting documentary by National Geographic, which helped sponsor it.

Maybe Cameron’s next few dives will yield better results — like monster jellyfish or prehistoric sharks, or maybe even a hitherto unknown human civilization that fled land for the ocean deep eons ago. Time to channel our inner Jules Verne.

Take TheBus, save some bucks

So Hawaii has the highest gas prices in the nation again? Sigh. Typical.

Also typical: We have the fewest escape hatches open to us. On the mainland, consumers respond to higher fuel prices by reducing consumption. Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks sales, reported Americans have pumped 3 percent less gas every week for the past year, taking fewer trips and staying closer to home. But here, residents seemingly have less leeway in how much they travel.

What they do have, at least on Oahu, is TheBus. It will be interesting to watch ridership trends in the coming months, as gas prices seem unlikely to come down soon.