Dive into Oahu's Beautiful North Shore

Heidi exploring an underwater cavern
It is September here in Hawaii which means those big winter swells are just around the corner. Heidi and I wanted to get at least one more North Shore scuba dive in before the waves arrive so yesterday we drove across the island and rented tanks from Surf and Sea and headed to the left of shark cove for a shore dive.


  The conditions were still very nice for diving. The water was pretty clear but did have quite a bit of suspended sediment. The clouds above cleared and let the sun shine through. And the water temperature was hovering around 80 degrees.
    We found some amazing underwater rock formations. Lots of swim throughs, a huge cavern with multiples exits, and encrusting sponges and coral covering it all.


   On the hunt for unusual sea creatures and good photo opportunities we came across this young green sea turtle. I noticed it swimming toward the surface to replenish its oxygen so I waited for it to start swimming back down to the bottom where I was. Using a very small aperture I was able to turn the bright sun into a starburst, with my two strobes lighting up the underside of the descending turtle.

  I added these two pictures to show how different the photo landscapes can be at this site. Heidi is swimming about 30 feet down in this picture to the left and fish school in the shallows under natural light in the picture to the right.

   While we came across dozens of white margin nudibranchs, egg cases, a conger eel, and banded cleaner shrimp, the big find of the day was the spanish dancer nudibranch pictured below. The reds and pinks of this species of nudibranch are so vibrant. They are known to be sporadic swimmers, undulating through the water like a Spanish dancer's dress during the tango.

A Spanish Dancer Nudibranch (Hexabranchus sanguineus)

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