One Incredible Week in Hawaii

  It is pretty amazing what you can do with just one week, a boat, and an adventurous spirit here in the Hawaiian Islands. This past week onboard the Safari Explorer I had the benefit of a smaller charter group who had a focus on photography. I tried to go all out in their itinerary giving them ample opportunities for amazing photos and after looking through all of my photos I think the rest of the crew and I delivered big time.

  Some of the stops this week were the normal places we usually go with the Safari Explorer, however we added a few extraordinary ones with the focus on photography. One of these was a morning dedicated to snorkeling with spinner dolphins. This was a bit tricky for me to organize because on some islands this just isn't done (Maui County), and even on the Big Island it is only accepted in one area.
  Right in Kailua-Kona bay a circus of snorkelers and boats happens every morning, dropping people in with a small pod of resting spinner dolphins. The dolphins don't seem to mind, as they are able to dive down and relax, far away from the snorkelers. However, the day after day aggravation of this circus must play a small role in the behavior of these dolphins. But as far as an almost guaranteed place to snorkel with dolphins this is it. So off we went and had a wonderful morning hanging with wild dolphins.

  Something we do every week, and this week just happened to be extraordinary, is a blue water hunt for charismatic megafauna in the deep water off the coast of the Big Island. This easy access to deep water gives us the chance to encounter rarely seen deep ocean creatures like pilot whales, rough-tooth dolphins, and beaked whales. On this day we came across a flock of a birds that turned out to be black noddys, a wedgetail shearwater, a brown booby, and three black legged albatross all in the same place. A little while later some splashes and large black fins drew us into a pod of short fin pilot whales. Shooting photography from a moving boat and at a moving subject that only surfaces occasionally provided a nice challenge to all the enthusiastic photographers onboard.

   A few days later on Maui we spent an afternoon cruising through the humpback whale national marine sanctuary looking for whale encounters. We got lots of great photos of humpbacks competing for mates, and brand new baby whales. Then Hawaii provided again when a pod of false killer whales swam through the sanctuary.

  Finally on the backside of Lana'i we got the last encounter I was really counting on for this group, bowriding dolphins. Two playful bottlenose dolphins races in front of our boat for about fifteen minutes, riding the pressure waves the boat creates as it plows through the water. After trying to long exposure to show motion and stepping back to a wide angle to capture a photographer shooting the leaping dolphins I felt pretty good about the encounter.



 To go along with all of the topside animal encounters we had great snorkeling conditions on all the islands. Turtles on every island, sleeping white tip reef sharks, lots of colorful reef fish, manta rays at night, and even a spotted eagle ray. The turtles were definitely the stars since they gave us many close encounters which is what you always hope for when doing underwater photography.

 We had a professional underwater photographer onboard as one of the co-leaders of the trip, Michele Westmorland. You can check out her site here. It was fun having another underwater guru onboard to bounce ideas off of. And she really understood and shared in my excitement when I found several Commerson's frogfish on the wreckage of the old Mala Pier. With the small group I felt comfortable taking my big underwater setup with an Ikelite Housing for my Canon 5d mk2. It made getting these shots of turtles with sunburst above them possible.


   Then there was the landscape photography potential. From a photo tour of Lana'i City, to a photo hike to Pu'u Pe'e, to a small boat tour of the erosional sea stacks of Five Sisters, to finally a big boat cruise of the famous cliffs of Molokai, we had it all. These opportunities put all the photographers back on even footing as their skill in the ocean didn't play a part in getting good photos, only their skill as a photographer and the gear they chose to bring.

 One of my favorite stops was the small boat photo tour at Nanahoa, or Five Sisters. Blowholes erupted and sea stacks mixed dark lava rocks with bright orange streaks of iron ore. Waves crashed against the lower parts and only gave us a glimpse of what was to come farther down the coast of Lana'i at Sweetheart Rock.

  My goal of the week was to show these photographers as many different sides of Hawaii as I could, and to give them opportunities at photos that most tourist don't have. I'm starting to think that maybe I should just start running photo tours among the islands. What fun that would be.