Will I be disappointed with the front side of Molokini?

[Otter]

Have done both every year for the last 3 years. Had to do the backwall the first time to say I had done it. Over the 3 years, the wall was ok, current is strong so its basically a drift dive. Saw some stuff, nothing special, and always faced away from the crater wall to do my safety stop. Pretty cool being totally enveloped in blue.


In the crater, the diving was much more leisurely. Saw lots of Octopi, eels (even the famous Garbanzo), Mantas (two out of three years), and small gray reef sharks. That is of course in addition to the normal reef fish that you can see on shore dives off of Maui (normally).

In Aug 2000, shore diving was assume. Viz was great. Aug 2001 and Aug 2002, viz was bad by Hawaiian standards (20-30'), but totally acceptable for SoCal! So we opted to do some shore and more boat. You need to check with the LDS and find out where viz is best (North or South).

Bottomline, if I only had one dive to do on Maui, it would be inside Molikini -- 99.9% chance of great viz, lotsa life, and a load of fun. If you want to 'dive the only wall in the United States', then do the backside.

Otter

 

[Al Mialkovsky]

That's one thing I love about diving. There is something to enjoy for everyone. The best thing to assure yourself of a good dive is don't set your heart on a single location. The dive boat captain will make a call on the way out usually. He wants return business so trust him to take you to the best spot for that day. On Molokini you will always get a good dive in the mornings.

On our last backwall dive we saw something I've never seen before. There was a huge school of yellow butterfly fish swiming down in a crack. It looked like a yellow waterfall. Of course I didn't have my video with me on this dive.


Let us know what dive you did and how you enjoyed it.

 

[Craigus]

We've dived Molokini something like 12 times, about half on the back wall and half "around front". The person who suggested Reef's End was on target. It's our favorite Molokini dive. No, you won't be disappointed. You'll see quite a few white tipped reef sharks as well as all those gazillions of tropical fish Hawaii is so famous for. If your skipper wants to know where you might dive after Molokini, suggest Red Hill. Turtle Town is fun, too, but a lot of the snorkle boats are there sometimes. The shore diving on Maui is incredible. This time of year you should check out the northern areas of West Maui - Honolua Bay, etc. You'll see a lot of turtles all up and down Maui's west coast. One word of warning if you shore dive tho - don't leave anything in your car if you park it along some of those roads up north of Napili. The car rental companies freak if you don't lock your car, but we never do up there - it beats a broken window. It's no big problem tho - everybody just deals with it.

 

[Al Mialkovsky]

We just came from Honolua this morning. Normally this is a great spot this time of year. It was great two days ago. But when we came around the corner and saw over 100 sufers in the lineup because of the overhead waves we knew it wasn't going to happen. Really weird to have a swell working from that direction, but it happened.

Yes don't bring anything north of Napili that you don't want taken. We never lock the doors and we always leave the windows down. No problems.

We went south end this morning and the vis has really cleared up. IT was great.

Our buddy dove the backwall this morning. Well the reefs end part. There are a zillion baby sharks out there right now. We'll have to see for ourselves in the morning.