Whale Shark at Molokini, No. 2

 I've been to Molokini many times but it never fails to surprise me. The beautiful water is almost always a constant but whats in it can vary greatly from day to day. Molokini sits a few miles offshore from the Maui coastline so swim bys by big pelagics are something I always hope for. Today I was in for a treat!
Right when I jumped in I looked down to see a 16ft whale shark cruising by under me. A whale shark! I always hope to see something like this when I jump in at Molokini but this time I was totally unprepared. I quickly grabbed my camera, let air out of my BC to start descending, tried to catch my breath, realized I still had my snorkel in instead of my regulator, kept descending, switched my reg to my mouth, kicked hard after the quickly disappearing whale shark, snapped a couple of pictures, and then it was gone. Phew. I also glanced at my dive computer and realized I was at 94ft. What a way to start a dive! I couldn't believe it. There was a much smaller (4ft) grey reef shark following the larger whale shark and a couple of giant trevallys cruised the area off the dropoff as well. I couldn't help looking up and out to the deep blue to see my whale shark swim back and while I didn't see him again I did see the giant trevallys cruising around and a big 4-5ft barracuda eyeing me from afar. It took a long time into the dive for my breathing to return to normal and my concentration to be direct enough to look for nudibranchs, which was my original plan. And find some I did!

  Luckily some of the nudibranchs at Molokini are really big. This blue dragon nudibranch can exceed half a foot in length! The first one I found was dangling on a tiny piece of algae, perfectly posing for the camera. Another giant was found snaking its frilly blue body among the hard corals.

 This white margin nudibranch is one of the more common ones that I see out here but in the picture on the right is a red spotted nudibranch which I've only seen once on the north shore of oahu. That rounded out the nudibranchs for the dive but with how long I spent looking out into the blue I may have missed many.

The views underwater at Molokini live up to its repuatation as a world class dive site. Typical sites are big schools of fish all throughout the water column, fish lining up to get cleaned like this surgeonfish, unicornfish, and goatfish on the left, and a rarely seen site like this species of lobster that I have yet to identify. All in all I think it is a pretty incredible site to have within striking distance of a kayak.