Kona/Maui Trip report

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dianna912

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Messages
197
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Location
Virginia
# of dives
200 - 499
I'm super late at this, and going off memory, so please forgive me for any lack of details.

We spent the first 16 days of September in Kona, then Maui. The Maui portion of the trip was partially a work trip, and if I were there just for leisure, and knew what I know now, we would have spent our entire trip on Kona. Alas, we only got 3 days to enjoy the big island. Enjoy it, we did! :)

We started off with an extremely ambitious itinerary, because schedules would not work out otherwise. My husband really wanted to do the blackwater dive, and I really wanted to do the Manta dive, so we figured out how to fit them both in. We arrived in Kona around 4pm from mainland, and at 7, we met Kona Honu Divers for the blackwater dive. We were certain for a moment that we were doomed, after our flight had electrical problems before departure and they had to reboot. Thankfully, the pilot found a shortcut and got us to our tight connection on time! Anyways, I was equal parts nervous and excited for the blackwater dive. What I imagined was a sea full of luminescence. What I got was horribly sea sick, and a sense of impending doom. This is a dive that you either love or you hate, and I fell solidly in the hate category. I did enjoy the pictures that the dive master showed us of his amazing finds on this dive. He actually had a shot of a baby octopus riding a seahorse! That was the extent of my enjoyment, though, because the underwater experience was horrid for me. I could not control my buoyancy to save my life, so I bounced around from the bottom of the rope to the surface on multiple occasions. I'm usually pretty darn good with bouyancy, but out there in the dark is a whole different ballgame. I tried to watch my dive computer, but if there is a way to keep the light on, I couldn't find it. The critters were not luminescent, they are simply translucent. And tiny. I didn't see anything particularly memorable, until we were up on the boat and a seahorse floated on the surface. It was the first dive that I've surface early because I was mentally exhausted from stressing about buoyancy and I was getting seasick. If I could do it over again, I would just snorkel this one. I feel like it would be a much better experience for me. They tell you most of the cool stuff is right below the surface, anyways. So, super long travel day followed up by a terrible dive=not so great start to our Kona trip, but that was okay. We had four more dives the next day! :D

Our first two dives the next day were good dives, With around 120 dives under our belt, it's the first dives we have been on in a while where we felt like the novices. The people with us were incredible! I've never seen such amazing buoyancy control (we are talking hovering 2 inches off the ground for extended periods of time, without touching anything.) We were the first group in, and the last group out of the water, clocking about ninety minutes on each dive. When we surfaced, they told us they had around 1k dives each, so that pepped us up! Golden Arches was the first dive and Malik's Pond was the second. They were very macro-focused dives, with lots of fun small stuff. Our favorite was the Pom Pom Crab!

Our day only got better from here, with the two manta dives. The first dive, right before sunset was absolutely incredible. I was having fun checking out a flounder when I looked up and noticed a Harlequin Shrimp chilling just inside a small cave. It was incredible! Our DM said he's never seen one in the open like that. Next, the Mantas decided to show up for dinner a bit early, so we got to see at least three of them swimming around us. While I was filming the mantas, I hear the dive master tap tap tap. I couldn't fathom what could possibly be more important than the mantas, until I heard the squeal of a dolphin pod! These dolphins swam right up to me, even splitting to go around me! I was one with pod! :yeahbaby:I don't normally love "staged" dives, but the Manta night dive was out of this world. Now, I was in two wetsuits, totaling 8mm, so I was buoyant as I could possibly be. I had something like 20 pounds in my BCD, plus three rocks on my lap, and I was still tippy. Plus my arms were DYING from holding up the light (against the resistance of two wetsuits) so don't judge the periodic tip overs and lowering of my arm in the video. I was trying to just be in the moment, and let the videoing be secondary. It was way more challenging than I expected.

The next day, we did Preacher's Arch and Turtle Heaven. Preacher's Arch was a lot of macros again, and Turtle Heaven was turtles, of course, and a tiger shark in the distance.

Kona was quite amazing to us! I will post the videos shortly, along with my Maui report. :)

I was EXTREMELY impressed with Kona Honu divers. So much so that I actually want to quite my day job, move to Kona, and work with them. It was a top notch group.
 
Wow it takes forever to upload long videos on youtube! Anyways, on to Maui!

Maui was beautiful, of course, and we did have some incredible diving experiences there, also. We dove with Lahaina Divers and Maui Dive Shop. I wasn't overly impressed with Lahaina divers. Maybe we were spoiled by Kona Honu (I suspect that is the case) but, really, neither dive op in Maui was super impressive. Lahaina had us piled in like sardines, which I can't stand. We had two (super skinny) tank widths of space per person, so it was claustrophobic while sitting and waiting to enter the water. The surface intervals were crazy short, and I frequently fought them on it. I like to relax for a minute between dives, but with as many people as they had on the boat, we were literally getting on the boat, and gearing back up immediately. 35 minutes on my dive computer. I complained after the first day, the Hammerhead dive, and they said it was only because of the rough seas at the dive site. A couple of people were getting sea sick so they were trying not to keep us on the surface too long. I took them at their word, but the next day we went out with them, it was the same thing. I ended up cancelling our extra dives, changing our package to a smaller one. Also, we saw zero hammerheads on the dive. No group saw a single one. I know they can't control that, but at close to $500 for two people, that's a really expensive boat ride and swim in the blue. Now, I have never ran a dive op, but I appealed to them multiple times to cut us a deal on going back out. There was no way my husband was going to pay another close to $500 to risk not seeing hammerheads again, but if they would have cut us a deal, I might have talked him into it. This is the one thing that I have yet to see. They would not budge on it. Again, I was spoiled by Kona Honu, who has a policy on their manta dive that if you don't see a manta, and if they have room on the boat, you get to go out with them again for free. I can't imagine that it gets used often, and according to what I've heard about the hammerhead dive, zero sightings is pretty rare. Most people wouldn't be able to use it anyways due to schedule conflicts, but we were there for two weeks, so we would have benefited from a similar policy, if even just a significant discount. Unfortunately, they didn't budge, and neither did my husband, so no hammerheads for me.

We did have some pretty awesome dives with Lahaina. I liked their pace (underwater, at least) and they let us have our freedom on the easier dives, which I really appreciated. The Molokini back wall was stunning! The visibility was insanely good, and I loved looking up and seeing the waves crashing on the reef. It was an incredible experience. The Carthaginian was a fun dive, with the submarine making an appearance at the end. We did the pier multiple times, the first couple of times ourselves. The first time was pretty bleh. We couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about. The second time, well, that was a different story. I actually screwed up majorly, and got the time of the Carth dive wrong. We showed up at the marina at 7 am ready to go. Whoops. So, we headed to the pier. It was absolutely incredible! I have NEVER seen so many turtles on one dive! I could not turn around without running into one! Then there were white tips swimming around. I even got video of a white tip and a turtle spooning! It was amazing! I took forty different videos on my GoPro on the one dive. My husband was less than thrilled that the second dive after Carth was going to be the pier.... until we got down there and immediately found an octopus! It's the best video I've ever been able to capture of one. Those guys are tricky! We also found two frog fish together on that dive. It was incredible!

We also did the Lania 3 tank dive. They were fun dives, but nothing remarkable.





 
Onward to Maui Dive Shop: it was the best food we've ever had on a dive boat. Absolutely amazing! Breakfast burritos in the morning, along with a fantastic make your own sandwich spread. We were not going hungry on this boat! As you can tell, I like food. :) We liked Maui Dive Shop. The guides were super friendly and pretty laid back, at least on the boat. It's definitely geared more towards beginners, though. We were by far the most experienced divers, with the next highest diver clocking in with 25 dives. The first day with them was supposed to be Molokini Crater, but unfortunately, it was rough seas so we ended up doing a site right off the coast. The only real complaint I had was that the pace underwater was crazy. It felt very ADD. I like to explore the nooks and crannies, but it seemed like we were just darting around from one area to the next. There were a few channels that I would have loved to have explored, but we would just stop at the end of it, and head off across the sand again. Right at the beginning, there was a tiny clump of coral in the sand that I was finding goodies in. There were baby Dascyllus, and a whitespotted toby. There was a ghost shrimp. I was there for a while, having fun looking in the nooks and crannies when I noticed a super strange "leaf." It was a Leaf Scorpion Fish!! Our group was long gone at that point, so I got the other group, who happened to be close by, to come and check it out. We also got scolded because we found an octopus right at the end of the dive, and my husband didn't hear the DM tapping and had plenty of air so just stayed watching it for a bit. The way we saw it, we weren't able to go to the crater, and ended up on a 10 meter dive we probably could have reached ourselves from the shore. If we wanted to use more than half our air, it shouldn't have been a problem. (We both had over half at this point.) I do understand that they have a schedule to keep to (they actually didn't have afternoon dives, so that wasn't the issue) and apparently the owner is very strict about anyone going over an hour. It is a great dive op for beginners, just not for our freedom-loving selves, so keep that in mind. If we went with them again, we'd be tempted to pay for our own DM if we could. I actually really really liked them. They were super friendly, and accommodating. I lost my new and beloved Kona Honu hydro flask bottle off the top of the boat, and they were awesome enough to turn around and get it, even though I downplayed it and said they didn't have to.

We dove with them for two days, one was the abandoned molokini crater trip, the next was Cathedral 1&2. We saw some fun things on both Cathedral dives. A bandit angelfish, sponge crab, and another leaf scorpion fish.

We did a lot of shore diving on our non-boat days. We ended up on Honolua Bay a few times. Olivia was coming through, so currents and silt weren't kind for most of the other shore dives. It was still silty, and wow, that walk is a killer! We did get to see some awesome turtles and other fun critters.

Five Caves was probably my favorite dive. We did it from two different directions, from Makena and from Five Graves? (I get confused on those names.) Makena makes for a super easy entry and exit. We actually went from the tough entry and just went south, got out at Makena, and hubby went and got the car. That was probably our favorite way to do it. Unrushed, laid back, and beautiful.

We did this dive at least three times. There were car size turtles hanging out in the the caves, along with white tips. I saw a nudibranch crawling in the sand in one cave. Our last dive there was truly memorable. We were close to the halfway point, right next to a mooring line when a female juvenile manta came swimming in. She was quite curious, and swam around with us for more than 5 minutes. There was a dive instructor on the surface, teaching a couple, and he descended a bit, and gave me the motion to take a picture. I couldn't figure out how he expected me to get a picture of him with the manta to him, since we were probably parked in different areas. It didn't dawn on me until later that what he was signaling was for me to get a shot of the belly. As soon as we realized that, we uploaded the footage, and started scanning it. Blessedly, right at the end, the manta turned her fin up, exposing her belly to me, and making for a great screen grab.I submitted it the the Manta Research Foundation, and she had not yet been identified, so we got to name her.

Meet Samanta:

MPRF Maui ID Catalog :: Samanta

I'm still working on getting more videos edited, so I will share those soon, but I think that pretty much covers the trip report. Kudos to you folks who are diligent with these trip reports!! They take some serious commitment!

Now we are off to Bonaire! :)
 
wow...great reading your report...thanks for sharing.
 
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