Capturing the Moment

   Taking full advantage of living on Maui in the winters we spent the morning at a new snorkel spot and beautiful beach with our good friend Moser. Heidi and I were quite excited to check out a new place, especially since Catalina seemed perfectly content playing with Moser on the beach. That girl loves her giant sand boxes.    As I waded out in the crystal clear water I saw our first turtle before I even started to swim. It was cruising over the sandy bottom. The mid day light was shining through the water lighting up the turtles shell, making for some great photographs.   That first turtle led me straight into the second, and that is how this entire snorkel felt. Once I had enough pictures of those turtles over the sand I swam to find Heidi snorkeling over the reef. I was pretty shocked at how beautiful the topography of the reef was. There were lots of nooks and crannies for animals to hide, and the coral looked very healthy and colorful. ...

Turtles galore! Along the south shore of Maui anywhere you see black lava rocks at the shoreline you have a good chance of finding sea turtles nearby. They have been making a great recovery as a species. However I have not often gone out with the sole purpose of photographing these reptiles of the sea since those same rocky habitats often house nudibranchs as well. But I wanted to change that so I headed to a spot called Wailea Point. I was a little worried at first, only having one encounter as I kicked all the way out to the deepest part of the reef. But as I went farther out into the halimeda grass beds to find the satellite reef I found the turtle mother load. One turtle swooped in and pulled its best ostrich move by sticking its head into a crack in the rock. Shortly after another swam over from the blue but quickly left, only to be replaced by another, much friendlier turtle. This new turtle obviously wanted the same "hiding" spot as the first one and let it k...

 A couple hundred yard kick out from Wailea beach yields an expansive reef filled with graceful sea turtles, different coral formations, juvenile fish, and lots of hiding places for moray eels. Today the turtles were plentiful as I had the reef all to myself. No boats tied up and only the occasional fly over from a stand up paddle board which are become a hugely popular option with beach combers here in Maui. A couple of turtles were fast asleep in their caves, out of sight of any would-be predators in the area. And then I came across a couple of young turtles set atop the reef, covered with hovering colorful fish cleaning the algae off its shell. Surgeonfish, potters angelfish, and yellow tangs were all in on the feast, sharing the buffet of algae on the turtles shell.    Wailea Point is also one my of favorite nudibranch hunting reefs. Today was a bit light with only two Vericose phillydias, but while searching the nooks and crannies for slugs I came across ...