SoCalOffshore:
What shore dives are good for the divers and non divers alike? My wife and I would like to do a shore dive or two and will be with a non diving couple. So a nice beach with some snorkelling would be good. What are the best stops? We are going to dive with Mike Robinson's for 3 days and want to sneak in a couple of shore dives. Thanks for any info.
If you're diving with ED Robinson's I assume you're staying south in Kihei/Wailea. So Airport Beach and Black Rock are a bit of a drive.
Although Black Rock might be a good joint dive/snorkel trip. But there's a LOT of snorkelers/divers in the water there all the time. I've also dove Airport Beach, it's kind of flat and shallow in places, but there's a couple of good lava/coral formations a little further out. The coral starts in less than 10' in a couple places so your friends would have something to do while you dove. And there's some old masts/pipes left over from the sugar cane boats that used to moor there, most are coral encrusted with little critters in them.
We actually used scooters to get farther out there, you can rent them at Pacific Dive in Lahaina.
If you're staying up north or not near Kihei, might want to rethink your dive op choice, it's a good 30-45 min. drive from Lahaina to Kihei when there's traffic - which is just about every day.
Close to Kihei in Wailea there's a couple of sites that might be of interest:
Wailea Beach Park, it's just south of one of the big resorts, there's parking - at least early in the morning on weekdays, it's pretty popular on weekends, and it's a small lot. The nice thing is that the diveshop for the resort is less than 100' north so you can get air there. It's a couple hundred yards to the beach so it's better to drop your gear by the bathrooms first and then try to find parking. If you see a space while driving down the hill, have your friend jump out and hold it, otherwise it'll probably be gone by the time you get back. We had to wait about 15min one day for someone to leave.
It's a short swim out to a 40' reef that's snorkeled all the time as well since some of the rocks are above the surface. Tell your friends not to get too close to the point there or they'll get pushed into the rocks by the surge. There's a second reef a little further out that's probably 50-60', and I was told of a small wreck out there but we never found it. Ask at the diveshop, they can point out the area from where they're located. We saw dozens of 2-3' long pipefish, several big puffers, lots of triggers and hundreds of tangs out past the first reef. The fish aren't tame, but used to visitors. Also supposed to be some resident turtles there but we didn't see any.
However that's about all that's there, the rest is pretty much sand with occasional coral outcroppings. It's a nice beach because of that. So not the best dive site, but it might be good to share with your friends.
Near there is 5Caves/5 Graves. It's a good site unless the waves are up, then go elsewhere, even if you fight past it, the viz will suck. Most people go to Makena landing when this happens.
There's also a kayak dive/snorkel trip out of La Perouse Bay on the far southern end. We didn't do it, but there's supposed to be lots of turtles.
We were in Wailea in summer 2001, so some of this might have changed.
Good maps/descriptions of all the shoredive sites are here:
http://www.shorediving.com/Earth/Hawaii/Maui/
Steve
