Capturing the Moment

Titan Scorpionfish There are a lot of dive options here in Maui. We have easy beach entry dives, rough sea north shore dives, offshore pinnacles, shipwrecks, and a few caves and caverns as well. Many of these dives are hard to reach unless you go by boat, and then sea conditions along the North and East side of the island rarely permit good conditions. So I do most of my diving on the South and West sides. But every once in a while I make it off for some really adventurous dive like this one. Along the rugged recent lava flows along the south east shore of the island there is one dive that I have heard about since I moved out here at a place called Nu'u Bay. It is very far from anywhere, about halfway from Hana to Kula along the portion of the Hana Highway that goes past Hana and Seven Sacred Pools. The fastest way to get there is to travel up the volcano about 4,000ft to Kula and take the back road to Hana. Once it reaches sea level it's just a few more miles before re...

I am always looking for a new place to dive and explore so it was a thrill to try a new site along the south Maui coastline known as 'White Rock'. It is a little trek across some beautiful beaches and some sharp lava outcroppings to get to the entry point but it was definitely worth it. Right off the bat we had a white tip reef shark hanging out in this great swim thru. Then we started finding our treasured nudibranchs. The gold laced nudibranch on the left is always one of my favorites. Our big new find came when Heidi checked some Spanish Dancer eggs which look like a velvet rose and found some egg eating nudibranchs on one of the 'petals'.  You can see how small the nudibranchs are. They get their red color from the eggs they are feasting on. This is one of those times when it pays to have done your research. Who would have thought to look on nudibranch eggs to find more nudibranchs!?  One of the benefits of going slow and checking all the nooks and cr...