Swam with a Shark (and lots of turtles)

On my recent trip to Maui, Hawaii I decided to do a boat dive to Molokini. Molokini is a sunken crater a few miles off the south coast of Maui.

Image courtesy of aloha-hawaii.com

There are numerous ways to dive the site, dives inside the crater are popular for their reef sharks, manta rays and abundant fish with a max depth of 40 ft. I was more interested in the backwall dive, where the crater exterior plunges down to depths of 350ft.  This diving requires good buoyancy but is worth it for advanced divers. I was amazed by the clarity of the water, which made visibility nearly 200ft. I remember looking down from the surface while waiting to be picked up by the boat as the remaining group continued the dive. I had left them at about  80ft and I could see them as clearly as if they were 10 ft below, even more I could see the wall fading into the blue 50ft below them. Overall amazing topography on this dive. I was happy to see at least one large pelagic (my first shark!), unfortunately no whales or dolphins though those types of underwater sightings are more rare.

For the second dive that day we went to a site called 5 graves/ 5 caves. This site is named after the ancient Hawaiian burial grounds located onshore and for the caves and tubes formed by gas bubbles in lava flows that are now hardened rock. I managed to get some good footage of this site with my camera.

See my facebook album of the dives here.