AevnsGrandpa
Contributor
The first week of the month my wife and I celebrated 35 years together with a trip (our 4th) to Maui. Of course I wanted to get a dive in and wanted to go somewhere I have not been and do more than a regular dive. So in searching the various shops web sites I came across Extended Horizons (I have dove with them before) Reef clean up dive.
This sounded like the ticket so I called and reserved me a spot. These are shore dives (something I had not done on Maui) and when I showed up the instructor chose Black Rock (never been there!) It was only 3 of us, the instructor Harmony (very knowledgable scientist and easy going gal) and Ben a Dive Master.
Parked in a extremely small lower level parking garage with about 20 spots and hauled our gear quite a ways to get to the north side beach. Water temps were low 80's I believe and vis was 100+.
She gave a little training and explanation as to why we need divers doing these cleanups and that it was a world wide effort. Max depth was only 35' so all of us went around the black rock site and came out on the south beach with over 1000psi of air left.
The really neat thing about this dive was that we were ok to really get close to the reef and coral so we could pull out the fishing line, wire, lead weights and anything we saw that didn't belong there. I pulled out a lot of line and it really gets itself wound around the coral. We also found hair ties, a cell phone display, about 3 foot of like 4 gauge copper wire, etc. 10 pounds worth when we got back and weighed it. That is also part of the effort is there is an on line part where you list and track and describe all the junk you pull out and where.
Of course you really get a chance to see a lot of sea life. Saw the normal list of hawai'ian fish, sea turtle sleeping, reef white tip shark, few morays.
I personally had a lot of fun, met 2 wonderful people and helped take care of the environment we all dive in.
Note that this is also a PADI speciality but other than the presentation she gave (while sitting on the back of her truck) nothing was pushed or said about it.
Mahalo!!
Jeff
This sounded like the ticket so I called and reserved me a spot. These are shore dives (something I had not done on Maui) and when I showed up the instructor chose Black Rock (never been there!) It was only 3 of us, the instructor Harmony (very knowledgable scientist and easy going gal) and Ben a Dive Master.
Parked in a extremely small lower level parking garage with about 20 spots and hauled our gear quite a ways to get to the north side beach. Water temps were low 80's I believe and vis was 100+.
She gave a little training and explanation as to why we need divers doing these cleanups and that it was a world wide effort. Max depth was only 35' so all of us went around the black rock site and came out on the south beach with over 1000psi of air left.
The really neat thing about this dive was that we were ok to really get close to the reef and coral so we could pull out the fishing line, wire, lead weights and anything we saw that didn't belong there. I pulled out a lot of line and it really gets itself wound around the coral. We also found hair ties, a cell phone display, about 3 foot of like 4 gauge copper wire, etc. 10 pounds worth when we got back and weighed it. That is also part of the effort is there is an on line part where you list and track and describe all the junk you pull out and where.
Of course you really get a chance to see a lot of sea life. Saw the normal list of hawai'ian fish, sea turtle sleeping, reef white tip shark, few morays.
I personally had a lot of fun, met 2 wonderful people and helped take care of the environment we all dive in.
Note that this is also a PADI speciality but other than the presentation she gave (while sitting on the back of her truck) nothing was pushed or said about it.
Mahalo!!
Jeff
