Perhaps due to excesses of youth causing failing memory, my most recent dive is generally my most memorable. On the other hand, perhaps my existance here on Maui with my own boat means that I am generally living pretty well.
I had two great dives in the past few days. Most recently, I went up near the north tip of Maui, near Honolua and Slaughterhouse bays of winter big-wave surfing fame, and anchored for a dive in the preserve off a place called Hobbitland. It's usually very rough with a strong current called the Molokai Express making diving there a challenge, but the day dawned very mild.
It wasn't very deep, my computer maxed out at 42', but the bottom had intense colorful coral of many varieties, carved up by distinct long sand channels about 6' wide. the Coral stuck out and into these channels, so they made wierd shaped appendages overhead. The place was teeming with morays sticking up from the coral and rocks and waving their teeth around, and octopusses were crawling all over the place. I saw an inhabited rainbow colored nautilus shell about 18" long, wedged in a creviss. Too nice to disturb. We found a very old anchor, mostly buried in the sand. We cleaned it off but left it in place. It looked like a whaling remnant, it was so old. Water visibility was at least 300'.
A few nights before I went out after a hard day of work with my buddy Lyle on an evening shallow beach dive off the Ahihi preserve in Makena. We hit the water in time to watch a great sunset from a ways offshore, as we back swam out around the point to the La Perouse lava flow. It was getting dark as we descended, and finned for over an hour in a true wonderland of color and structure. We saw sharks, and turtles, and big lobsters, and while parrotfish sleeping in their cocoon are a common sight, we came across a huge one that was in transition from red-brown male to green female. At least that is what I suspect, because it looked tie-die psychedellic, and at first I was sure it was a fish shaped bag of man made material. I never saw anything underwater with as many different colors.
Of course the dive a few days before that, 100' down at Molokini was pretty good too... But I think I do remember the last one the best.
Aloha,
Jonathan
kalepa@maui.net