West Maui: Best Dive Shop?

[Steelyeyes]

Extended Horizons is a smaller boat. It runs on biodiesel so it smells better. The crew is very professional. They ask you enough questions to make sure you're grouped with people of similar skill levels, if possible. My GF and I did a dozen dives with them and really appreciated the difference between them and the cattle boat operation in town, who we dove with on two other days.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Dive Mala Wharf, particularly (I hear) as a night dive, very nice dive.

I did this as the second dive with Lahaina Divers (first dive, the Carthaginian). While it is an awesome dive site, it is a shore dive site, so I wasn't happy to pay for the privilege of being dropped off there. I'd highly recommend it for a night dive though. I loved the night dives on Maui.

 

[Steelyeyes]

We dove the Mala Wharf at night and it was very impressive. Saw two frog fish, a few white tips, and tons of eels out hunting.

 

[Skeptic14]

Yes, we did it as a shore dive, but not at night. It was a great day dive, but I've heard it's even better at night.

 

[UWSojourner]

Another vote for Pauline Fiene at Mike Severns.

Also, Maui Dreams in Kihei is a good operation to get tanks/weights, service regs, etc. They're a great operation.

 

[VirginiaScubaGuy]

Lahaina takes one boat over to Molokini every other day but it's likely going to moor in the crater to cater to less experienced divers. Often the Backwall is a live drop/drift so they have to be able to recover everyone.

The West Lana'i drifts are an advanced dive. They do it once? a week. At one time they required AOW or equivalent - don't know if that's still the case. It's an e-ticket ride....

Extended Horizons only takes 12-15? - smaller boat. In groups of six. One other advantage they have is AL-80's are standard. Someone recently reminded me that Lahaina Divers dives 72's.

Your 3rd Lahaina boat option is Hawaiian Rafting Adventures - they have a big RIB. IDK the capacity although we saw it once out there and quite a few divers splashed.

For shore diving in Ka'anapali, Tiny Bubbles gets good reviews. They're at the Ka'anapali Beach Club resort. They have scooters since you need them in that area to get out to some depth and also will dive Mala Pier in Lahaina - arguably one of the better dives in that area. Sammy and Banyan Tree are shore diving only also. Mala is a shore dive also - or a night boat dive with Lahaina Divers.

I agree about the Kihei drive, it could be an hour from Ka'anapali (resort workers go to work on the same road) and the boats like to leave the ramp at or b4 6am. Severns especially, they like to be first out to Molokini.Maui Diamond II is a smaller boat in Ma'alea which is a slightly shorter drive than the Kihei boat ramp but they're likely mooring inside the crater also as they take snorkelers.

About the only really named advanced diving is with Ed Robinson's in Kihei. Possibly Severns also, IDK them except by reputation.

While l like Lahaina Divers also, the picture of the two full boats in their website header seems to be typical. Although once I caught them on a slow day. 6/8 of us had the big boat to ourselves. Normal summer season so IDK why. It was years ago though.

Great information! I appreciate it. I would like to do a drift dive at Molokini back wall and also at Molokai where they do hammer head diving. I have never done drift diving before though. My buoyancy is reasonable, and I think I would do a few regular dives prior to the drift dives. Think I would be OK?

 

[VirginiaScubaGuy]

Lahaina takes one boat over to Molokini every other day but it's likely going to moor in the crater to cater to less experienced divers. Often the Backwall is a live drop/drift so they have to be able to recover everyone.

The West Lana'i drifts are an advanced dive. They do it once? a week. At one time they required AOW or equivalent - don't know if that's still the case. It's an e-ticket ride....

Extended Horizons only takes 12-15? - smaller boat. In groups of six. One other advantage they have is AL-80's are standard. Someone recently reminded me that Lahaina Divers dives 72's.

Your 3rd Lahaina boat option is Hawaiian Rafting Adventures - they have a big RIB. IDK the capacity although we saw it once out there and quite a few divers splashed.

For shore diving in Ka'anapali, Tiny Bubbles gets good reviews. They're at the Ka'anapali Beach Club resort. They have scooters since you need them in that area to get out to some depth and also will dive Mala Pier in Lahaina - arguably one of the better dives in that area. Sammy and Banyan Tree are shore diving only also. Mala is a shore dive also - or a night boat dive with Lahaina Divers.

I agree about the Kihei drive, it could be an hour from Ka'anapali (resort workers go to work on the same road) and the boats like to leave the ramp at or b4 6am. Severns especially, they like to be first out to Molokini.Maui Diamond II is a smaller boat in Ma'alea which is a slightly shorter drive than the Kihei boat ramp but they're likely mooring inside the crater also as they take snorkelers.

About the only really named advanced diving is with Ed Robinson's in Kihei. Possibly Severns also, IDK them except by reputation.

While l like Lahaina Divers also, the picture of the two full boats in their website header seems to be typical. Although once I caught them on a slow day. 6/8 of us had the big boat to ourselves. Normal summer season so IDK why. It was years ago though.

Looking at Lahaina Divers' website, they do have a lot of options for different dives. Might have to scope it out more carefully.

 

[diversteve]

Check with Lahaina because the channel over to Molokai is one of the roughest in Hawaii so in winter (the big waves roll in then) they may not be doing it. Also all the reviews I've read have been in summer and a few mentioned it's the optimal time to see the sharks there so maybe there's none there in winter?

You should be able to do the Molokini Backwall. It's frequently a live drop meaning the captain just cuts the engines (no mooring) and everyone goes together and live pickup at the end of the drift but that's about the only difficult part. I think it's a little rougher also in winter for the same reason as above. The hard bottom is 300' in some areas but with good buoyancy that shouldn't be an issue.

The cool thing in winter is you should hear whalesong reverberating off the Backwall also. One winter a friend was diving there when they were joined by a 20' humpback (about 50' away) when it sang she said she could feel it in her chest - not just hear it.

I dove Sharkfin Rock once - it's on Lana'i's west side. Inside the bay was pretty benign but insta-buddy and I decided to do the outside - big mistake. We probably spent 20mins. on the bottom in some convenient lava depressions mostly crawling/kicking from one to the next.

It was amusing to note that while I was making no forward progress kicking as hard as I could, 500 Moorish Idols were staring at me while holding station 20' away pretty efffortlessly...

 

[VirginiaScubaGuy]

Check with Lahaina because the channel over to Molokai is one of the roughest in Hawaii so in winter (the big waves roll in then) they may not be doing it. Also all the reviews I've read have been in summer and a few mentioned it's the optimal time to see the sharks there so maybe there's none there in winter?

You should be able to do the Molokini Backwall. It's frequently a live drop meaning the captain just cuts the engines (no mooring) and everyone goes together and live pickup at the end of the drift but that's about the only difficult part. I think it's a little rougher also in winter for the same reason as above. The hard bottom is 300' in some areas but with good buoyancy that shouldn't be an issue.

The cool thing in winter is you should hear whalesong reverberating off the Backwall also. One winter a friend was diving there when they were joined by a 20' humpback (about 50' away) when it sang she said she could feel it in her chest - not just hear it.

I dove Sharkfin Rock once - it's on Lana'i's west side. Inside the bay was pretty benign but insta-buddy and I decided to do the outside - big mistake. We probably spent 20mins. on the bottom in some convenient lava depressions mostly crawling/kicking from one to the next.

It was amusing to note that while I was making no forward progress kicking as hard as I could, 500 Moorish Idols were staring at me while holding station 20' away pretty efffortlessly...

hey Steve. yeh it's pretty amazing the way sometimes humans in the water tend to look like... well... fish out of water... hahahaha.

so i'm going to assume you're right about the hammerheads for now. Lahaina Divers does have a drift diver specialty class which does Molokini Backwall and Lanai drift dive so i would probably do that so i could get some individual attention and a little more info on how to do it. since i dive once a year mainly i'm always a bit nervous at least the first couple of dive.

i was going to ask you how long the boat ride is from the Lahaina area to Molokini Crater. It looks so close to Wailea or Kihei but far from Lahaina. I remain convinced that I should make Kannapali my base camp and do everything out of there even it means a couple long drives. I'm going by myself, and I like to have options to do things at night even though often I do just go home and snooze.

 

[diversteve]

I don't know the boat ride time for Lahaina Divers from Lahaina to Molokini as I've never done it.

I'd base around Ka'anapali also for other things to do. We've stayed up and down the coast at different times and it seemed like the most active area. There's some stuff do around Whalers Village (small mall) and up and down the boardwalk. The other activity is on Front St. in Lahaina - places like Bubba Gumps etc. in one area. Cruisers also come in from moored ships nearby so there's a lot of shops/galleries. etc.