For an early birthday present Heidi surprised me with a dive trip to a location I have been wanting to go ever since moving to Maui. Off the coast of the island of Lana'i there are complex lava formations, one of which created a huge underwater cathedral type cave know as First Cathedrals. Somehow without me knowing she booked us a trip and got Ben, Diana, and Flora on board as well. We would depart out of Ma'alaea Harbor the next morning at 6:15am.
Its a long trip to Lanai from Ma'alaea so we kicked back, talked nudibranchs and what we wanted to see, ate some breakfast, and were surprised to see some large black bodied dolphins heading our way. I snapped this picture of what may be a false killer whale or perhaps a short fin pilot whale. Either way it was a very cool sighting and a great start to the adventure. Since Cathedrals is a relatively shallow dive at 50-60ft we headed a little past it for our first dive at a place called Wash Rock.
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| A juvenile rock mover wrasse |
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| Checking for nudibranchs on the Wash Rock |
We dropped down into beautiful water looking 70ft straight down to the bottom. And up ahead we could see a huge rocky pinnacle that shot up from the bottom and almost broke the surface. Unwary boat captains in the past have wrecked at this site before. Life lit up the sides of the wash rock itself and the coral reef extended all around it. A long tunnel swim through at this site called the 'tunnel of love' was a pretty neat added treat complete with a cowry graveyard within.
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| A Fellow's Nudibranch, quite rare elsewhere but we saw quite a few here |
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| The tunnel of love |
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| A Pustulose Phyllidia |
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| Fuchsia Flatworm |
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