Maui's Unexplored Reefs

It is pretty amazing that I have such world class diving and marine life right in my backyard. And even more amazing that so many people that live here don't take advantage of it or even know about it. That won't be the case with me. Since Heidi and I have all our own scuba gear from out CIMI days all we need to do is go to our local dive shop, Maui Dreams, and pick up a couple of four dollar tanks. We did just that last weekend and went on two very cool dives.

Dive number 1 was my first at Ulua Beach. Its a popular tourist and snorkeling beach but when we went there was no one around...because we went at night! It was Heidi's first night dive, although she did get a taste of diving in the dark when we dove into the cenotes (underground freshwater caves) in the Yucatan. We saw lots of moray eels including a zebra moray eating a small slate pencil sea urchin, shrimp everywhere, a white stripe flatworm, and a big conger eel. The pictures didn't turn out too amazing, it looks like I might have to get a strobe to really take pictures with my camera at night.

Dive number 2 was a morning 'explore a new place' dive. We researched a place called Jody's Backyard that some of the scuba boats go to and it sounded promising so we drove until we thought we were close and headed through the beach break to find the site. We snorkeled on the surface until the reef gave way to sand around 40' and then descended. I think this place should be called the nursery for the amount of baby fish we encountered. More moray eels, fuchsia flatworms, oval butterflyfish like the one in the picture, and even a small hawaiian green sea turtle added to the already beautiful reef here.