Shore Diving Madness

While the ladies were relaxing after the journey here to Maui, I hit the water with shore dives at White Rock and Ulua Beach. Like last time, I had the divemasters with the Maui Dive Shop lead the way. It costs a little bit to have someone local lead or act as dive partner, but it beats diving alone. There are always the risks of current and dangerous life in unfamiliar waters and, despite being rated a divemaster myself (or maybe because of), I know the advantages a local diver brings to a dive.

Greg was my divemaster for the the two morning dives. We decided to explore a beach area known as "White Rock"(Palauea Beach). Closer to shore there was very little beyond fish. Farther out, we found lots of turtles, spotted eels, octopus, crabs, small shrimp, and nudibranchs.

The second loop around the rocks north of the beach was fairly similar. Visibility was about 50 feet and the water was cold for Hawaii at 21 Celsius (69F). I got a nice video of one octopus Greg scared out of its hole. Fortunately, the octopus never inked. I am not a big fan of harassing the wildlife for customers, but I took advantage of it nevertheless.


After dark, Michelle (another Divemaster from Maui Dive Shop) and I slipped under the waters of Ulua Beach for a night shore dive. Again, nothing much near shore, but she wanted to drop down before getting too deep so we wouldn't pull in a tiger shark, which sometime come shallow at night to feed on carrion in the water. The Whale song was extremely loud and verbose. Multiple males were clearly at it within a mile or two of us. Unfortunately, our lights were lucky to penetrate more than 50 feet. After swimming out a ways further along the bottom, we were able to spot multiple octopus hunting along with a yellow-faced eel and an anemone crab. There were also the usual schools of colorful fish as well, but most were embedded in the reef and they quickly sought deeper and darker holes when our lights passed over them.

For most of the dive there was a large dark gray shadow continually following behind us. The mystery fish was probably a shark, taking advantage of anything blinded by our lights. Michelle turned early into shore and I left the water with almost 800psi left in my tank. I thought Michelle had been unnerved by our large grey darting fish(?), until later when I realized that she had been shivering with cold when we got out.

Hawaii's waters are usually in the mid-70s at least. Most of the Divemasters out here have no body fat, so a drop of 5-10 degrees in water temperature is more than they can handle in a 3mm wet suit. Greg had been wearing an 8mm Pinnacle that I would have cooked in. Michelle clearly needs a heavier suit and/or a few good meals, so I tipped her a $20 bill anyway.

After a quick clean up back at Ed's Condo, I "kissed" my wife and collapsed onto the bed. Molokini is in the morning at 6am!