I've (Rob has) been diving out here for the last three days.
Explored the Coral Gardens first, which gets used for training novice divers. One could tell. The name is neat and it might have once been a great site, but the newbies have damaged a lot of coral and scared most of the more unique life away. On top of that, the weather was cloudy, which cuts down on the color.
On the second day, Connie let me dive Molokini Crater. The back wall is awesome! I was the first one in and I spotted two white tip sharks trying to get at something about 50 feet below me on the wall. They descended out of our view as the rest of the divers entered the water. We spotted another gray reef shark who came up to see what we scared out of their holes while passing. There was a lot of beautiful stuff to see on the Molokini back wall as well as in the crater and I intend to dive them again next week.
The last dive of day two was on the deep water side of "Turtle Town", where hundreds of Hawaiian Green Sea Turtles sleep in the ledges and caves formed by two volcanic lava flows partially eroded by the sea. One has to be careful there. One legally cannot touch the sea turtles; however, the turtles don't care what they "touch." One of our group had a video camera and was trying to film one of the turtles, who seemed more interested in trying to get out of his camera light and get a little sleep. Behind him the entire time, another turtle was trying to get the diver's attention. Eventually, this camera hog got tired of waiting for the diver to figure out who should be the REAL star of the show and goosed the diver good with his nose. The diver jumped and nearly hit his head on the ledge top. With that, oh so personal, audition, both diver and turtle made the movie of their dreams.
Yesterday, day three in my set, I did a shore dive off of Makena beach with just a divemaster and no one else. Mark, was happy to show me around solo instead of having a crew of people some of whom can barely dive (Apparently, word got out I tip well). It is an amazing dive and I got to see my first octopus out there. At the far end of the dive is Turtle Town, which really should be called Turtle City from the look of this side. There were literally hundreds of turtles and it became a challenge to avoid them. There is some competition for sleeping spots and as soon as one turtle slips off of a ledge another one or two go after the spot -- a little like people trying to park in a large parking lot (collisions and all). Some of these turtles are a big as small cars as well. In one case, I went into a cave to take a picture of a white tip shark that was resting with them. One of the turtles decided she (he?) was done sleeping and left nearly bowling me over as I contorted to avoid touching the turtle and ticking off the shark (another really bad idea). As I turned to leave the cave, I half-see this turtle, about the size of a VW Bug, barreling at me around 15 mph. Bang! The bottom of the turtle shell impacted with the top of my skull and I was seeing stars for a minute. The turtle, unaffected and with an "out of my way" frown on his face, settled into the newly empty spot. My dive master was laughing through his regulator. The turtle had no insurance and was swimming without a valid Hawaii License %). I saw a lot more at Makena and it was an awesome dive series I intend to do again. On the other hand, I will stay out of Turtle Town's "parking lots."
-Rob
:)
