Muck Diving Hawaii

If you have never heard of "muck diving" before it doesn't sound very alluring. Even when you know what it is its certainly not for everyone. Muck diving is all about diving off the reef in muddy, silty flats or sand covered rock accretions. The draw of muck diving for divers and especially for underwater photographers is that this underwater landscape houses and is the hunting ground for thousands of unusual creatures. Some of the most colorful, fantastic creatures won't be found on the reef.
Muck diving has become very big over in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. New and beautiful creatures are still being found by adventurous divers and photographers in this region. But I wondered if this kind of diving was limited to the far off reaches of Oceania or could be found closer to home. That is when we started discovering muck diving here in Maui, Hawaii. Everyone comes for the beautiful reef and blue water, but the variety of rarely seen creatures that can be found at some of these sandy dive sites would be enough to draw in even the casual scuba diver looking for something wildly different.

Here along one of the longest stretches of beach in South Maui my girlfriend and I began our muck diving search. Fifty yard off the shore a sandy rock accretion stretches out parallel to the beach. At first glance it is devoid of any life except for some orange sponges and a sparse cauliflower coral. But as we drop down and search the nooks and crannies we start finding moray eels, octopus, shrimps, and the real prize, nudibranchs!
Gloomy nudibranchs, white spotted, swallowtail slugs, imperial, kangaroo...we started to lose count. How all of these nudibranchs ended up here, and why they stay is still a bit of a mystery. Some are completely out in the open flaunting their bright colors and beautiful patterns. Apparently camouflage is not the name of the game here in the muck as it is on the reef.

We had been on hundreds of dives on reefs all over Hawaii yet each time we go muck diving we find new creatures we have never seen before. For those in the know muck diving has become a staple of any full diving itinerary. Now it seems you don't have to wait until a big Indonesia live-aboard trip to try it. There may be an undiscovered sight with new and amazing creatures much closer to home.