Maui dive reports

[Mark Derail]

I'm surprised there isn't someone from Lahaina divers monitoring these posts and commenting.

Including Halemanō we'll be three of us; a minimum for a boat trip I believe. So if Lahaina's DM wants to kick way ahead, fine, the three of us will watch him solo. Sylvie and I each have an 8 foot inflatable orange buoy to flag down the boat.

Also, money talks, so if the DM wants a tip...You can be sure I'll be posting my experience.

 

[K9evans]

I would definitely go with extended horizons guys. I have been with a few other operators on Maui and my expieriences with them were great.

 

[Mark Derail]

Both diving days, Halemano was our personal guide & photographer. Money well spent.

Sunday - did Molokini with Mike Severns

- dive 1 - a 90-100 foot dive in the crater, did not see much activity or variety. Rather disappointed.
- dive 2 - a 60 foot dive on the coast line, was better than the crater.

From Mike Severns company, we had topside AJ and Andy; Seth was the DM/Guide. They did a good job, overly serious. You cannot opt out of the 10 minute "how to use the toilet" lecture. Seth was cool in explaining all the signs, what we might see and did see.
Crew helps getting you setup and into the water. Good food.

Monday did the two cathedrals with Extended Horizons. Diving with them is like the Mike Severns company, but Extended Horizons takes it up a few notches in every department. Bonus, they make it fun. Extra bonus, Victoria takes pictures of & with her group and you can buy the cd with all the pics. I can't vouch for the pics, as we had our own personal guide.

- Dive 1 - small cathedral (or first one). Victoria took her group to 80+ feet for a particular fish that nests at that depth. We split off with Halemano and explored in the 60 foot range.
- Dive 2 - main cathedral - this was the most spectacular dive.

I rate the Molokini crater a 5/10, shore reefs had more variety. Too many snorkelers, too many boats.
Cathedrals are just as good as Cozumel diving was, a solid 9/10.

 

[WoodyLompoc]

Mark Derail,
Your profile says you have less than 50 dives, yet you think Andy's breifings is too long and they are overly serious?

Just mt .02, but is seems like a good idea to start on the safe / professional side and avoid ops who try to wow you with tales of near death experiences.

 

[DiveMaven]

Mike Severn's is well known for their long mini-marine biology lessons and extremely long briefings.

 

[Mark Derail]

Their entire speech time, given by multiple people, was a rather longwinded affair. The "How to use a marine toilet" will remain etched forever in my mind kinda like the Internet Meme : what has been seen, cannot be unseen.

While I may have less than 50 dives - something like 26 now, at least 20 of those were boat charters with about 7 different companies. Never had such serious speeches before.

IMO, they should just let Seth talk, rather than have Seth talk, then the captain, too much back & forth.

You're right, having a DM talk about near-life encounters is not endearing to Scuba tourists. Seth was quite detailed on lots of things we could possibly see, did not see.

Frankly his dive profile was terrible for the level of divers that were on the boat. Next time I get a boy scout like him I'll say, sure, ok, I'll tag along halfway up following you.

IOW, by the time anything interesting was coming up, we were over 30 mins into the dive, at nearly 100 feet, with 3/4 of my air used up. One other experienced diver from Russia kept up with him to the end.

Had I simply followed above the wall, I too could have seen the shark ledge. At the wall's edge was plenty of nice stuff to see. At 100 feet it was quite barren.

I only blame myself, "MOLOKINI" is in all the brochures, and Mike Severns was the only "quality" dive boat going there last Sunday.

Mark Derail,
Your profile says you have less than 50 dives, yet you think Andy's breifings is too long and they are overly serious?

Just mt .02, but is seems like a good idea to start on the safe / professional side and avoid ops who try to wow you with tales of near death experiences.

 

[Mark Derail]

Mike Severn's is well known for their long mini-marine biology lessons and extremely long briefings.

This exactly did happen, with the Captain adding a long marine toilet discussion as well as boat safety. I'm sure he had a bad experience recently; he was *that* serious.

Just to be clear, I did not "dislike" diving with Mike Severns and will recommend them for someone diving to Molokini. However, I will discourage future divers into skipping Molokini altogether and dive elsewhere.

The very deep dive profile at Molokini, then not staying there for a second dive, and high-tailing it back closer to dive near the ramp in front of the Four Seasons hotel, just seemed weird.

The guys & gal working the boat were all excellent top-notch. The dive itself was not. A deep extended that "got rid" of the newer divers so the more experienced divers, able to keep up with Seth, got to see interesting stuff.

 

[DiveMaven]

Although I admit that Molokini isn't my favorite area to dive in Maui, I've rarely been disappointed diving there. What site were you diving that you dropped to 100' and stayed there?

After 80+ dives in the crater, I can't think of one site where staying at 100' would be considered "normal". One of the beauties of Molokini is that dives are typically multi-level profiles, allowing you to go deep if you want (like Shark Condos at 130'), then work your way up the wall and still get a 50-60 minute dive. I tend to not go deeper than about 80' at Molokini, keeping most of my dive between 40-50' where most of the critters are.

Like you, I find the S. Maui dive sites to be more interesting and better than Molokini overall, but at the end of the day, as long as I'm wet, breathing compressed air, and get back on the boat safely, I'm a happy camper!

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

OK, failed to find this until today;

At Molokini, we were tied up to one of the Enenui balls, the one closest to the big boulder. One of Ed's boats was on the next ball "inside", Maui Dive shop's snorkel boat was on the next/last ball "outside" and Ocean Explorer, a PWF snorkel boat, was on the 100' ball, 20 feet off our bow.

As a guide for ProDiver, I never guided this site deeper than 60 feet; the reason for a planned 95 foot depth is a Flame Wrasse colony, but with the roto-tilling, arm flapping nature of a couple guests, on their first dive ever below 60', even waiting 3 minutes after the group moved on I was unable to get a decent pic of Mr. Flame.

Then at a cleaning outcrop between 90 and 100 feet, we spent a few minutes looking at a nice sized lobster and some Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse in action. Before we could make it back to the boulder, where the baby shark has been resting, Seth was down to two customers with air.

As I was finishing my SS with the Derail's, Seth signaled to me that there was a Frogfish on the boulder, so I scooted over for a few shots. Didn't bother following Seth and the Belarus with gils to the shark.

The second site was Wailea Point, where we dropped anchor in ~55 feet. Turtles, Lionfish, Marble and Cleaner Shrimp, another batch of Lionfish, and a Leaf Scorpionfish were the highlights, although we did not cover much ground and were deeper than 40 feet the entire dive.

With Extended, we were off the leash. First dive was No Name, where I coaxed a full grown Octopus to change hideouts, Mark "found" a Devil Scorpionfish, got really nice pics of the Derail's with the Blue Stripe Snapper school, surged through the "lava tube" and had a juvinal turtle on the surface above us for much of our swimming SS.

Second site was Second Cathedral, where we saw Yellomargin Moray in a cleaner hole, the Chandilear of course, Bandit Angelfish, Regal Slipper Lobster babies and much, much more. Oh yeah, and Mark took a pic of some wild man "holding" a Crown of Thorns.



I will add some pics to this post tonight.

 

[Mark Derail]

I still think the Mike Severns boat should have simply moved to a new site at Molokini for a shallow dive with a Square profile to 50-60.

Strange how perception can be. We got well drilled on boat safety, boat use, sign language, National Geographic course, but only a few minutes just before the dive, what kind of dive it was going to be.

The contrast with Extended Horizons is huge (attitude, feelings), even though both boat operations are Top Notch. Just little things like smiling and being happy can go a long way...

Halemano - the fact that I had misplaced our dive computers have anything to do with it? The captain was VERY surprised when I gave two fivers tip after retrieving the last of our gear.