Nu'u Bay Scuba Adventure

Titan Scorpionfish

There are a lot of dive options here in Maui. We have easy beach entry dives, rough sea north shore dives, offshore pinnacles, shipwrecks, and a few caves and caverns as well. Many of these dives are hard to reach unless you go by boat, and then sea conditions along the North and East side of the island rarely permit good conditions. So I do most of my diving on the South and West sides. But every once in a while I make it off for some really adventurous dive like this one. Along the rugged recent lava flows along the south east shore of the island there is one dive that I have heard about since I moved out here at a place called Nu'u Bay. It is very far from anywhere, about halfway from Hana to Kula along the portion of the Hana Highway that goes past Hana and Seven Sacred Pools.

The fastest way to get there is to travel up the volcano about 4,000ft to Kula and take the back road to Hana. Once it reaches sea level it's just a few more miles before reaching Nu'u at the 31st mile marker. But because it's a deep dive you can't drive right back up the volcano the way you came, unless you wait long enough down at sea level to off gas the nitrogen that builds up in your system while diving at depths.

Egg-eating nudibranchs and their eggs

egg-eating nudibranch

Plus the road to get down to the water is a 4X4 road and still tough. But you can make it about halfway to a nice pull off spot (after a few scrapes of the undercarriage).

Venus Pool, a good way to cool off on the road to Hana

Once you finally make it into the water all your efforts immediately pay off. The lava formations provide hiding places for tons of reef critters. There can be a healthy current here but we timed it just right for slack tide. It's also one of the few places you can dive deep right from shore. The reef dips down to 110' at places. Even though we didn't see any big sharks or rays on this dive I can definitely see why it would be a great place to find them. We did come across a few different nudibranchs, including the biggest egg eating nudibranchs I've ever seen.
  Some big grey snapper swam through at the deepest point of the reef flaring up their fins and stayed just out of decent photo range. Then Heidi spotted a giant Titan Scorpionfish. It blended in with the rocks and coral until I took a picture. With the light from the flash it almost glowed reddish orange. I can't wait to go back and check out this site again and again!
  It is always great to have good adventurous friends visiting to motivate some of these rarely attempted endeavors. Snark, the captain of the Tole Mour (the tall ship pictures on the blog home page) payed Heidi, Ben, and I a visit and we thought this would be a great way to combine a trip to Hana and a scuba dive. Thanks Snark!