Another Beautiful Dive

Wailea point is quickly becoming one of my favorite shore dive destinations. A great place to find colorful sea slugs called nudibranchs and a site commonly used by snorkel tours to swim with Hawaiian Green sea turtles. It is also the location of our latest frogfish sighting. Visibility can range from incredible to pretty murky but scuba diving can be great even on murkier days. This past weekend Heidi and I lucked out with pretty good conditions and lots of wildlife. We explored a different part of the reef filled with big coral covered rocks providing lots of cracks, crevices, and even some caves to explore. The fist cave I stuck my head into was home to a resting white tip reef shark. He refused to be startled and stayed put as I clicked away several pictures. Just outside his lair a small white mouth moray eel slowly opened and closed his mouth pumping water over his gills.


After spending some quality time with these large predators I stating looking for small stuff. I would have missed this tiny wire coral goby hanging out on the lone wire coral on the edge of the reef if I didn't know what to look for. Then this white margin nudibranch with its feathery exposed gills slowly made its way across the coral. A beautiful fuchsia flatworm outlined in bright yellow was even easier to spot but the dwarf moray hiding in a tiny crevice would have been overlooked entirely if I hadn't of been looking in every nook and cranny. Just peering out of his crack the dwarf moray dipped back into safety moments after I took this picture.





It was shortly after this that Heidi began signalling me from farther out on the reef. She had found something and by the way she was rapidly hitting her tank banger and excitedly moving her legs I figured it must be something good. So I hurried over as she pointed out the biggest frogfish I have ever seen. I have only seen two other, both on the wreck of the Carthaginian but this guy was massive. Heidi posed behind him for a few pics and then like a supermodel the frogfish posed for a couple dozen pictures, perching himself on different parts of the reef. Believing in his ultra camouflage ability he would stay very still, a true photographers dream.