Dive report (brief)

[k374]

Did 6 charters with Lahaina divers here in Maui and thought I'd write up a brief report on my experience.

Opinion about Lahaina divers: Great friendly staff, extremely well organized, good boats. They did not micromanage your dive PROVIDED you have a dive computer and summarize your experience in advance. You generally can't do your own thing since it is a guided dive but if you have extra air they let you hang out near the boat. Despite diving 72cuft tanks I never managed to hit 700psi on any dive since many times I was the last diver around and everyone had already exited the water. Max dive time I hit was 50 min and shortest was 24 min due to my buddy hitting 700psi when I had 1800psi left :shocked2:

Day 1: Turtle Reef
Summary: Nothing much to see, local diving here in CA is way better. Viz about 50' or so.

Day 2: Lanai
Summary: The 2nd Cathedral was decent, not even close to the incredible swim troughs found in Cozumel... I would rate this fair.

Day 3: Molokini
Summary: This was a good site, lots of marine life, tons of beautiful coral. Unfortunately this particular charter tended to attract the most inexperienced divers I have ever seen in my entire life. Many of the divers were doing jumping jacks in the water to control their buoyancy and some were out of control and would crash into me even though I was pretty STILL in the water column. It's a miracle they didn't crash into all the coral but it's bound to happen sooner or later I hit 110' on this dive but avg was around 75-80' or so.

Day 4: Molokini back wall
Summary: This was absolutely fantastic! The viz was 150+ and I could see the sheer drop of the wall which was spectacular. A few whitetips but nothing other than that in terms of marine life. There were only 7 divers on this charter and most were more experienced divers than myself, couple with similar experience to mine. I surfaced with some older guy who knew his navigation really well, dude was awesome!! Doing my safety stop while looking down into the 300+' blue was incredible. The sea was very choppy with huge swells and getting back on the boat was well..."interesting"!!

Day 5: Molokini again, Lanai drift was canceled so did another day at Molokini, same as previous.

Manta Point twilight dive: Tried to spot some Manta rays at this site, for 40 mins didn't see a damn thing, then last 2 mins saw 2 huge mantas make a guest appearance for a minute and dash off. Viz was poor, around 30' or so.

Mala pier Night dive: This dive was ok, just a broken down pier, piles of concrete. There was a whitetip among the rubble. Water was a warm 77F.

Day 7: Aquarium dive at the Maui Ocean Center
Well, I know this is not a ocean dive BUT... it was SPECTACULAR Was able to feed a spotted eagle ray, observe hammerheads, whitetips, tiger sharks and other species from just a foot, sometimes inches away

 

[TSandM]

Oh, I'm sorry you didn't like the Mala Pier! That's my favorite shore dive on Maui. I've never done it at night, though. In the daytime, there are always big schools of grunts and other fish, usually one or more white-tipped reef sharks, and I've seen lizardfish and a variety of nudibranchs there as well. I love the structure for swim-throughs, and they make great photographs, too.

 

[DiveMaven]

I have to agree with TS&M about Mala. Our experiences have been the same with her, finding white tips and many, many different nudis. Interesting that you didn't see much at Molokini...were the guides looking and pointing things out??

IMO Lahaina Divers isn't the best operator for the experienced diver. There are far better choices for the experienced diver on Maui, though I do think Lahaina Divers has historically been a great choice for the beginner, inexperienced, or occasional diver.

 

[deeper thoughts]

Thnx for the report, I would have expected much better from Hawaii

 

[k374]

@TS&M:
I wasn't able to see much unfortunately, maybe I wasn't looking in the right places? I don't know...all I saw was concrete, there was no sign of any fish. This was my 2nd night dive. My first night dive was in Cozumel where I saw a ton of stuff so the comparison is relative.

@DiveMaven:
DMs did point stuff out, both Molokini and it's back wall stood out as impressive dives, the others.. I wouldn't say they were "bad" but just average, nothing out of the ordinary. On the Molokini BW dive also got to see a barracuda out in the blue which was awesome and on the front side many garden eels closeup.. I was trying to refine my buoyancy control skills by creeping as close to the eels as possible without scaring them off, got within about a foot over them but the DM came and motioned enough of that and pulled me away...grr, this is the problem with guided dives..you have to dive someone else's plan which usually doesn't coincide with what I want to do.

@deeper thoughts:
I can't speak for the rest of Hawaii as I only dove in Maui, I would definitely say Molokini and back wall is worth it for sure! The rest didn't impress me but I wouldn't necessarily say they were bad either. By comparison all the sites I dove in Cozumel were A+!!