Diving with Turtles and Corie on Maui's West Side

Mala Pier

 The sun was out and the wind was light as usual on Maui's west side. This bode well for a couple of scuba dives that I had planned to show off a bit of the Hawaiian underwater world to my friend Corie. The first spot we hit up was the wreckage of the old Mala pier, just north of Lahaina. This has always been one of my favorite sites to dive for underwater photography. The water here is almost always clear, the wreckage covered in beautiful coral, and charismatic megafauna abounds. 

Bleached Coral Head

 Imagine my surprise when I drop down and the first thing I see isn't clouds of fish, or turtles, or beautiful colors....it is a big vibrant white coral. It had almost entirely bleached. There has been a lot of news surrounding Maui lately with the increase in water temperature leading to mass bleaching events around the island. This happens whenever something like increased water temperature, sedimentation, acidification stresses the coral causing it to expel all of its color giving and food providing commensal algae, called zooxanthellae. If the stress is relieved then the algae can recolonize the coral. That is what I ham hoping happens here. Right now it looks pretty bleak on Maui's reefs but only time will tell.

 After swimming a bit deeper the visibility increased, and the coral looked colorful and healthy. Then we got into the turtles. A couple of young turtles and a few big old guys hung out with us for the rest of the dive. They were all Hawaiian green sea turtles.

 The turtles weren't the only big critters on the reef this dive. Four white tip reef sharks were patrolling the wreckage.

  The second dive we enlisted a team of divers to come along. Nate, Kelly, Ben C., Corie and I all tackled the long walk to Black Rock. We found more turtles and sharks with a few nudibranchs, lionfish, and an octopus to add to Corie's list of Hawaiian undersea critters. Now we will get to share this amazing tropical paradise with lots of people aboard the Safari Explorer.

Diving in Hawaii!