OK, I have not read the FAQ's and Stickies....looking at all the recommended Maui operators from a future, current, ex, and not in a thousand years employee perspective, the most logical reason for the boats not allowing unguided diving is because most experienced divers with similar experience to you are unable to find or appreciate the unique flora and fauna in Hawaii's waters. Then they come on the internet and say Hawaii diving sucks.
There is no way to so control the shore diving, so we often see posts from experienced divers with similar experience to you coming on the internet after unguided Maui (state of Hawaii) shore diving and saying Hawaii diving sucks.
My best advise to such a no details question is; do the boat dives early, and then perhaps some guided shore dives, so you can absorb the spiel of a few experienced guides with respect to the unique reasons Hawaii diving is pretty great. Then you might be able to find cool unique experiences on your own.
Even good operators sometimes make questionable calls. Yesterday I guided friends on a more than 25 minute surface swim shore dive, because the near shore conditions in South Maui were predicted to be murky. At the dive shop renting gear, divers who had had their guided morning shore dive canceled were moving their bookings to other days. My group, diving back to shore from more than a quarter mile out, found the near shore reef to be not terrible (well, OK). That reef is only a quarter mile up the coast from the one where the dive shop canceled the shore dive. Other divers were picking up and dropping off rental gear when we were picking up and dropping off gear, for diving on the North Shore, which looking at forecasts from weather men should have been better; but their report on their dives indicated conditions were about the same (just OK) as my group saw on our return to the shallows.
It is very hard to explain the County regulated quagmire of guided shore diving on Maui, but the short story is that all the "legit" operators are confined to a very few dive sites, on one side of the Island or the other. Only a kind of non-legit operator has the flexibility to do ANY dive site on the Island. With the changing conditions of small Island in the middle of a big ocean diving, it seems the kind of non-legit guides have the most flexibility. All my non-resident dive friends "tip" me
at least $50 per head, per tank, and sometimes "buy" photos from me.
Well, I have just primed your thread sufficiently for a spirited discussion if the interim version of ScubaBoard has enough knowledgeable participants anymore.
