My wife and I spent three days diving with Seasport the first week of January. The weather wasn't good. It wasn't the ops fault, but there wasn't a lot of sun and the surf was big, so the viz was fairly low and there was a fair bit of current and surge.
Every morning we met at their shop, just up the street from Koloa landing. They had us park across the street from the store (there wasn't a ton of parking, but we were always able to find a space) and took all of the divers and their gear down to the boat en masse in a van. We were also forced to sign a seperate waiver every day - the first time I'd ever seen a shop require anything more than a waiver filled out the first day. It wasn't really a big deal, but when I asked about it they just shrugged and said 'This is the US, not the Caribbean'.
At $115 per two tank boat dive, plus $20 per day for Nitrox, the diving wasn't cheap, but that seemed to be in line with the rest of the other shops on the island. Unlike a lot of other places I've been, they didn't have a discount for pre-paying multiple dive days.
We were on their bigger boat, the Anela Kai, all three days. The boat was fairly typical with a bridge on the upper deck, and a lower dive deck that was 1/4 out in the open and 3/4 enclosed that doubled as the dive and passenger spaces. There was a dedicated rinse bucket for cameras, and water, juice and cookies were provided between dives. The DM's and captains rotated, but we found them all to be capable and professional. A couple of the guides were a little more comfortable touching and man handling some of the aquatic life than I would have liked. No question, it was a bit of a cattleboat. Every day we had between eight and fifteen divers onboard, and they would have put up to 18 on the boat. The shop sends a maximum of seven divers with each DM. Even on the days we had eight and fifteen divers, only one over their self imposed seven divers per DM limit, they still sent two and three DMs. They claim that only intermediate and advanced divers go out on the morning trips, but that didn't hold true. I'm ordinarily not a snob about that, but our first day we had a twelve year old out for his first dive with his more experienced father, and it took him almost ten minutes to equalize and get down, which was frustrating and wasted a whole lot of underwater time for the rest of us.
The briefings were good and comprehensive, generally including guidebook pictures of the fish we could expect to see during the dive. Their diver tracking system was interesting. A numbered tag corresponding to each divers gear station was attached to each divers gear before they boarded. That number was then recorded on the dive roster. After each dive they did a roll call by number, and the tag wasn't removed until everybody was up from the last dive.
For the six dives we only hit three sites. They made every effort to poll the divers before each dive to figure out where everybody had been and where they would like to go that day, but because of the conditions, our options were limited. For our dives the first dive of the day was either at Fast Lanes (twice) or Brennecke's Ledge on the one clear day we had. At Fast Lanes the second day I saw a Manta swim by about forty feet off. The second dive every day was at Kauai's south shore signature dive - Sheraton Caverns. The diving was pretty good. At Brennecke's Ledge we found a Longnose Hawkfish amongst the black coral under a ledge. At Sheraton Caverns I lost track of how many Green Sea turtles we saw - sleeping under ledges, floating beside the boat and swimming right up to us, past us, around and over us. They seemed pretty much oblivious to us, and I got some great pictures.
They preferred that we treat each dive as a guided dive, but they didn't force us all to come up when the first person ran out of air. They did leave us circling the boat from the time the first diver ran out though. They required everybody to dive with a computer - and they provided them for anyone who didn't have their own. The company had some fairly specific rules, limiting us to recreational diving depths and a maximum of 55 minutes per dive. Apparently if a diver exceeded rec diving depth they were supposed to make us sit out the second dive.
They shutdown Ni'ihau charters in the early fall, so that wasn't an option for us, but overall, in spite of the weather, the diving was good. Going in, I expected that the fish and life would be similar to Pacific Costa Rica, but they were closer to the South Pacific than Pacific Central America, with a healthy dose of endemic fish found only in Hawaii. The conditions weren't ideal, so it may not be fair for me to judge, but we went on to the Kona Aggressor the week after we were in Kauai (though the conditions weren't a whole lot better there, we did a lot more diving), and overall, I thought the Big Island diving was better than what we saw on Kaua'i. I did see a lot more Milletseed and Bluestripe butterflyfish on Kaua'i though.
Every morning we met at their shop, just up the street from Koloa landing. They had us park across the street from the store (there wasn't a ton of parking, but we were always able to find a space) and took all of the divers and their gear down to the boat en masse in a van. We were also forced to sign a seperate waiver every day - the first time I'd ever seen a shop require anything more than a waiver filled out the first day. It wasn't really a big deal, but when I asked about it they just shrugged and said 'This is the US, not the Caribbean'.
At $115 per two tank boat dive, plus $20 per day for Nitrox, the diving wasn't cheap, but that seemed to be in line with the rest of the other shops on the island. Unlike a lot of other places I've been, they didn't have a discount for pre-paying multiple dive days.
We were on their bigger boat, the Anela Kai, all three days. The boat was fairly typical with a bridge on the upper deck, and a lower dive deck that was 1/4 out in the open and 3/4 enclosed that doubled as the dive and passenger spaces. There was a dedicated rinse bucket for cameras, and water, juice and cookies were provided between dives. The DM's and captains rotated, but we found them all to be capable and professional. A couple of the guides were a little more comfortable touching and man handling some of the aquatic life than I would have liked. No question, it was a bit of a cattleboat. Every day we had between eight and fifteen divers onboard, and they would have put up to 18 on the boat. The shop sends a maximum of seven divers with each DM. Even on the days we had eight and fifteen divers, only one over their self imposed seven divers per DM limit, they still sent two and three DMs. They claim that only intermediate and advanced divers go out on the morning trips, but that didn't hold true. I'm ordinarily not a snob about that, but our first day we had a twelve year old out for his first dive with his more experienced father, and it took him almost ten minutes to equalize and get down, which was frustrating and wasted a whole lot of underwater time for the rest of us.
The briefings were good and comprehensive, generally including guidebook pictures of the fish we could expect to see during the dive. Their diver tracking system was interesting. A numbered tag corresponding to each divers gear station was attached to each divers gear before they boarded. That number was then recorded on the dive roster. After each dive they did a roll call by number, and the tag wasn't removed until everybody was up from the last dive.
For the six dives we only hit three sites. They made every effort to poll the divers before each dive to figure out where everybody had been and where they would like to go that day, but because of the conditions, our options were limited. For our dives the first dive of the day was either at Fast Lanes (twice) or Brennecke's Ledge on the one clear day we had. At Fast Lanes the second day I saw a Manta swim by about forty feet off. The second dive every day was at Kauai's south shore signature dive - Sheraton Caverns. The diving was pretty good. At Brennecke's Ledge we found a Longnose Hawkfish amongst the black coral under a ledge. At Sheraton Caverns I lost track of how many Green Sea turtles we saw - sleeping under ledges, floating beside the boat and swimming right up to us, past us, around and over us. They seemed pretty much oblivious to us, and I got some great pictures.
They preferred that we treat each dive as a guided dive, but they didn't force us all to come up when the first person ran out of air. They did leave us circling the boat from the time the first diver ran out though. They required everybody to dive with a computer - and they provided them for anyone who didn't have their own. The company had some fairly specific rules, limiting us to recreational diving depths and a maximum of 55 minutes per dive. Apparently if a diver exceeded rec diving depth they were supposed to make us sit out the second dive.
They shutdown Ni'ihau charters in the early fall, so that wasn't an option for us, but overall, in spite of the weather, the diving was good. Going in, I expected that the fish and life would be similar to Pacific Costa Rica, but they were closer to the South Pacific than Pacific Central America, with a healthy dose of endemic fish found only in Hawaii. The conditions weren't ideal, so it may not be fair for me to judge, but we went on to the Kona Aggressor the week after we were in Kauai (though the conditions weren't a whole lot better there, we did a lot more diving), and overall, I thought the Big Island diving was better than what we saw on Kaua'i. I did see a lot more Milletseed and Bluestripe butterflyfish on Kaua'i though.
