Capturing the Moment

Dive 1:Crystal Rock  It was an exciting morning aboard Amalia today as we listen to Nelwan give our dive briefing for our first spot, the famous Crystal Rock. The excitement comes from this spot being a high current, high intensity, big fish kind of dive. Heidi and Cristina would group together to do the deep dive part of her advanced diver certification course, while Tim, Mr. Han, and I would group with Nelwan. Tim holding on for dear life   We geared up, jumped in the small boat and prepared for a negative entry, which means we let all the air out of our jackets, and immediately descended once we rolled backwards off the boat. The entrance went well and we could feel the current rushing against us so we booked it down to the bottom. Once there we all grouped up, grabbed onto a big rock and enjoyed the fish show. There were big schools of jacks, tons of little colorful reef fish, and even a white tip reef shark swimming in front and above us. The current was so stro...

Can you see the frog fish?   As a scuba diver and an adventurer I spend a good deal of my time underwater. I always wonder if I just sat underwater for a while without moving what I would see come by. But I usually come to the conclusion that I wouldn't see quite as much as when I kick off in search mode which was again the outcome for this dive here. The dive boat Maui Diamond dropped us in for a drift dive just past the point in front of Pu'uOlai cinder cone on the south shoreline of Maui. Clear water and a depth of only 35 feet or so made for some great photos. We came across a couple of turtles including a huge one hanging out inside a big cave. It took me several tries to get an acceptable photo of the turtle in the cave because of the difficult lighting. I ended up using my strobe to light up the turtle in the foreground while keeping the bright light at the cave entrance from flooding out the background.   A few more turtles and nudibranchs were found after the...