Photos from Molakini Back Wall in Maui

[diverhead.com]

My wife and I were lucky enough to dive the Molakini Back Wall today in Maui! We saw a white tip reef shark, eel, several octopus, several barracuda, and thousands of reef fish. This was my first real dive with my new Sea and Sea housed Fuji S2 rig and I was awesomely impressed with it's capabilities. Shooting wide angle on this dive made it challenging to find subjects and properly compose my photos. We weren't blessed with the appearance of really "big stuff" within close range, so most of my shots ended up being 'buddy as subject, big reef wall, tons of specs that are reef fish'. Still, I am happy with the way a few of my photos turned out.

Make sure you check out the rest of my Molakini Back Wall Photo Gallery!

 

[Al Mialkovsky]

Well maybe it's more like I'm jealous. Great photos. I'm stealing a couple of them for myself.

Who did you dive with back there? What outfit?

 

[diverhead.com]

Hey Al, we went ahead and dove with the Maui Dive Shop. I have had some bad experiences with them in the past, but this time they were professional.

 

[Al Mialkovsky]

We stayed at the MDS lodge (apartment behind store) for the entire month of may. Since one of their boats burned up at the dock during our stay they had to rebuild it out in front. As a gift for our inconvience they gave us a 3 tank boat dive including the backwall and reefs end.

It was well done. I prefer B&B Scuba but the MDS did a nice job and the dive leaders were enjoyable.

I watched one of their fremale instuctors conduct part of an AOW course. She was very thorough with the deep dive and impressed me.

We also did the Lanai dive to the Cathedrals with the MDS and I wasn't nearly as impressed. But different days, different people.

 

[diverhead.com]

I agree that B&B Scuba is the way to go. I dove Molakini Reef's End and Red Hill with them about a month ago and they were great! It was nice to arrive early before the rest of the boats and "own molakini". Photos from that trip can be found at my Maui 05-2003 Photo Gallery. Enjoy!