Maui

When I was about 6 years old, I remember traveling with my family to Maui. On this trip, we took a Frogman boat out to a crater in the ocean. I remember snorkeling from the boat and being terrified because my dad and brother went scuba diving and I could see a shark down where they were from the surface. At the time I thought this was the craziest/scariest thing. It doesn’t help that I have recurring dreams about sharks (and whales).

This is a vivid memory for me but I am pretty sure of three things now: 1) it was almost certainly a completely harmless reef shark that I saw, the type which I now make a point of seeking out when diving, 2) Frogman doesn’t offer discovery dives but instead allows participants to “snuba” a cross between snorkel and scuba, (who knew?) and 3) I am almost certain that giant crater I remember so vividly was Molokini, where Nicolas and I did two dives last weekend.

Molokini is a crescent-shaped crater about 50 minutes from Maalaea Harbor on Maui. Nicolas and I signed up for a charter that would take us first to dive the Back Wall, the less visited side on the outside of the crescent. Because it is exposed to the open ocean on this side and has a depth of 300 feet, it is not for beginners. (And as mentioned in the previous post, I am now officially an intermediate diver- take that Back Wall). We almost didn’t get to do the dive, though, because a south swell was coming in, making the waters erratic with high waves. Despite the conditions, our captain decided to let us go ahead with the dive and we got to see the magnificent wall on one side and the great big blue on the other.

Here’s a video just giving a sense of the dive site:

And here’s when we saw a gorgeous manta ray swim by and the dive master lost his composure.

We then went around and did the inside of the crescent for our second dive. This is the place I went as a kid. The specific site we went to was called Reef’s End. It was one of the best reef dives I’ve done, with spectacular visibility and a stunning reef system.

Here’s one friend that we made:

I am including the final video below for two reasons: 1) to show you how hard it is to capture an octopus on film, and 2) because even though the video is shaky and you can barely see the octopus before it hides, I am still super stoked every time I see one of the unbelievable creatures.

It is hard to tell, but my guess is that it is a day octopus.

Did you see it? I know, I barely saw it. Disappointing. But also, exciting?