Wide Angle Photos at Molokini Crater, Reef's End

Soldier fish, unicorn fish, pyramid butterfly fish, and a snapper all together

  

Maui has wonderful shore diving opportunities but for wide angle photography it's best to find the clearest water, and that is offshore. Luckily we have Molokini Crater, a volcanic vent which shoots up from the submerged slope of Haleakala Volcano from 300ft deep to a height of 162ft above the surface. The beauty of this for underwater photography is the fact that this rocky crater is about four miles offshore set right in the middle of very clear water.

Descending into the sun lit blue

Yellow margin eel on the hunt

 I have kayaked out here before with scuba gear, and I drive out here for work all the time, but there is nothing as great as taking a dive boat on a day off for ease and comfort. I hitched a ride out with my friends on Maui Diamond II on a beautiful sunny day to find some great wide angle photography conditions.

Blue fin trevally at the dinner buffet

Trevally in the sun rays

Parrotfish and sidekick

As we descended on the tip of Molokini called Reef's End we were greeted with fantastic colors, beautiful coral, and a community of garden eels poking their heads up out of the sand and waving to and fro. Big blue fin trevallys cruised the reef on the hunt while moray eels slinked through crevices also looking for a meal. Rainbow colored parrotfish took off chunks of coral with their huge teeth and left puffs of sand in their wake after digesting. Also a rare sight, a huge school of pyramid butterfly fish swam out in the deep blue where the rim of the crater dropped down into the abyss. There are only a few spots to see these butterfly fish and to see so many was quite a treat.

Pyramid butterfly fish...lots!

  I often dive with a macro lens setup, looking for very small things like nudibranchs and juvenile fish. Diving with my wide angle lens really made me take in the big pictures from the suns rays, to schools of fish, to the entire underwater reef scape. Hopefully some of these pictures can help share the feeling of how amazed I am when immersed in the underwater world.