Come dive with me, let's dive, let's dive away!

Hello all!

It’s Saturday and we have been diving the past couple of days.  While on the one hand it is sad that the vacation is almost over, on the other hand, it has been a pretty good past couple of days.  I hope everyone has had a good Thanksgiving and Black Friday and whatever Saturday™.

On Friday, Stacy and I woke up at the ass crack of dawn to join Lahaina Divers in their trip to Molokai to see the Hammerheads.  To do this, you have to cross the Pailolo Channel which means crazy fisherman because you have to be crazy to fish out there.  It should be named Dramamine channel because without it, you are going to be sorry!  Seriously, the boat was a rollercoaster and if you were going up and heard the engines cut off, you better brace yourself because it was going to dive into a trough like a bucking bronco.  Lahaina divers kept saying “we are the only ones to do this dive” which has to be true because they are the only ones with a 46’ boat (I kept thinking “we’re going to need a bigger boat!”) and the only ones insane enough to do it. 

There was an older dude on our boat named Bob.  Bob has been diving longer than Jacques Cousteau (that’s the folklore, anyway).  Bob was diving with a rebreather which is a technical dive apparatus that basically lets him stay down for 3+ hours at a time and doesn’t give off bubbles.  The hammerheads are afraid of the bubbles to he goes down before any of the rest of us, grappling hooks himself into the floor (there is a TON of current) and then stays down during our 2 dives plus surface interval.  The reason I am telling you about Bob is: 1) the whole rebreather thing sounds pretty cool to do…initial training runs $1000!!!! And 2) I heard one of the DM’s ask the other why we were still trying to cross the channel with how bad it was and the other said “because Bob is on board”.  I am not trying to out the DMs, it’s just the conditions were the worst 20% you could have on that crossing and I got to experience it.  Or another way to look at it: if Bob hadn’t been there, we probably would have turned around and headed back to easier dives.  I wish I had a picture, but I was too busy holding on for dear life.  Let’s just say at many times did I look at the water thinking “that wall coming towards us is taller than the boat”.  We do some cray-cray stuff to go on dives…

We finally got there and got loaded up for the first dive.  The briefing had all these fairy tales about how we were going to be put in over here and then let the current take us over there and then happiness and joy would follow.  Well the current was stronger than I was thinking and I think we were dropped a little off where the briefing said we were, butwhatdoIknow.  All I do know is, we immediately saw a spotted eagle ray “swimming” standing still because the current was so strong.  We then passed over Bob fairly fast and then found ourselves near 3-4 hammerheads!!!!  Really we only got about 20 feet from them before they headed out for the hills.  Apparently they are more afraid of us than we are of them.  After that, the first dive was pretty tame…drifting along at 50 feet depth in ~120 feet of water.  Then out of nowhere a pelagic jelly fish came into view.  So cool looking.  Super happy I got photos.

 

No lasers on the heads of these bad boys

yeah...divers still in the way but whatareyougoingtodo

Boom!  Wait until they are out of the way.  There you go.  Hammer-freaking-head!

Pelagic Jelly (no alterations were done other than me setting white balance while diving)

a closer up view...how freaky is that thing?

Just for you, Julia...look in the background towards the right

Barracuda!! 

why they call it fish rain...

Bob down there with his rebreather on.  He was there for 3 hours!!

I thought we were kicking a lot but apparently not enough.  We came out of that first dive in super-duper rough water.  Remember those swells I was talking about in the channel crossing?  Well we came up in the middle of that kind of shit.  Hand’s down the craziest, scariest exit I have been a part of.  We were all on a line thrown from the boat and going one at a time handing our fins to one person and listening to the other telling us when to approach the boat trying to prepare for “big wave”.  Stacy lost her hold/footing and fell back into the water when she was half-way up the ladder.  It was bad enough that 4 of the 16 divers said “fuck that” on going in for the second dive.  I was queasy as a mo-fo for a while after getting out and had to stand and look at the horizon to calm the stomach.

Stacy and I did do the second dive and while we didn’t see the hammerheads again, we did see another eagle ray as well as why they call it “fish rain”.  There were so many fish there, it was like it was raining them.  This time, we kicked even more and made it to a more sheltered spot to get out.  The ironic part is the ride back, while still bucking bronco, wasn’t that bad after all the craziness leading up to it.

Last night we went out to a place called Monkeypod for dinner.  Awesome food but the reason I am bringing it up is they had Breakside Brewing’s IPA on tap!  Shout out to Portland brewing….and if I ever move to Maui, I know where one of my watering holes will be.

Today we went on a dive trip with Maui Dreams diving.  We hadn’t planned on doing a trip today, but a) we hadn’t seen a turtle on any of the dives b) they were going to Molokini crater where I had never been and c) they had space available.

Unfortunately the wind was blowing bad enough that NO one was going to Molokini, but we did do 2 dives off Maui proper: Stone Wall and (I think) Temple East.  Both good, relaxing dives where we not only saw turtles, we also saw octopi!!  The other group also saw a manta ray, but I didn’t so I can’t claim it.  We did see a monk seal on the ride back sitting up on a shelf sunning itself so that was pretty sweet too.

 

turtle!!

Whitemouth moray eel

trumpet fish

Octopus

More octopus

"scarmbled egg" nudibranch

realized I wasn't taking enough "look at all those fish!" photos...so here you go

Another turtle swimming away

'Nother moray (but super in focus...click to embiggen)

A school of moorish idol fish...tons of 'em

Thornback cowfish.  Super cool

Another scrambled egg nudi.  The yellow bits are it's gills (I think)

Bit of an octopus hiding in some coral

puffer fish (unpuffed, of ourse)

Turtle swimming away

The thing that looks like a leaf blowing in the wind (and moving fast so it was hard to keep it in frame) is a dragon wrasse which is a juvenile rockmover wrasse and looks nothing like it's end form.  Hopefully the compression doesn't totally pixelate this

Now we are getting ready to head out for the last dinner in Hawaii before going back to the real world. 

Hope all are happy and well!!

Remember: It’s our time, the people’s time!

Love you guys

Jim