Under the Sea
Lots of sunshine with light winds today while motoring out of Island Divers Hawaii Kai into Maunalua Bay. With a boat full of advanced divers we stopped and tied up to one of our favorite wrecks, the WW II Corsair fighter plane. Sitting at 107 ft. the group descended down to check out a sea full of garden eels dancing in the sand with hundreds of pennant butterfly fish swimming around the sunken plane. At the bottom divers spent time looking into the cockpit for a big green moray eel, frog fish and other critters hiding under the wreck. After a total dive time of 33 minutes the group boarded the boat again for a nice surface interval while we motored around the east side of the island past Hanauma Bay.
Preparing for our next dive the Sea Fox divers switched tanks and began a pre-dive safety check for our upcoming drift dive. With conditions just right we heading towards Palea Point! This time we broke into two smaller groups as we made a “parachute drop” and negatively descended below the boat to begin drifting, and drifting fast! Currents where strong as our dive group descended to a max depth of 60 feet along a sloping sea wall covered in hard corals and schools of damsel and surgeon fish. Along our drift we slowly began ascending to a depth of 40 feet, where we came across moray eels and sponge crabs hiding in holes along the reef. In a particular lava tube we found a white tip reef shark napping and a green sea turtles tucked away not much farther down the reef. Swimming through a a large swim through and around the corner we noticed several different kinds of bird wrasse and a school of Aha Needle fish. After a 42 minute dive the group moved away from the wall where we made a safety stop in blue water. Popping up to the surface right in front Hanauma Bay we were soon picked up by the Sea Fox. On our way back Captain Joe spotted Humpback Whales in the distanced as he turned on the under water microphone for us to listen to their song as we cruised back into the harbor.
There was a lot of active marine life underwater with great weather above. Another successful day spent under the sea!
W: Bradley (instructor) Larry (instructor) Joe (captain)
CONDITIONS: Sunny, Mid 70′s , 75*F water, visibility 60+ft
DIVE PROFILES: Corsair: 107ft max depth, 33min dive time & Turtle Canyons: 60ft max depth, 42min dive time
MARINE LIFE: white tip reef shark, green sea turtle, sponge crab, moray eel
