Capturing the Moment

  I took advantage of the kids syncing up their mid-day nap schedule and bolted down to Turtle Town in Makena. It is a quick 20 minute trip from our house, so I was in the water in no time. The entrance is picture on the left, and it was quite serene with a little ebb and flood of the ocean. However, just beyond the safety of the rocks the conditions got wild. Luckily for me the view underwater was pristine and clear, so I was determined to get some photos, despite the huge waves crashing overhead.    Two long lava 'fingers' stretch out from a cove here at "Five Graves." Sea turtles tend to be numerous here so they were my target for today. The clear water gave me the opportunity to photograph some impressive coral bommies on my way out. It turns out I wouldn't have to go very far before seeing my first turtle.    It is all green sea turtles here. They feed almost exclusively on algae that grows on the underwater rocks. The waves crashing overhead wasn...

Dwarf Moray Eel White Mouth Moray Eel    Moray Heaven!   Back on Maui for a quick visit we had to fit in a dive at one of our favorite shore dive locations, five graves. This is the same location that all the tour operators have dubbed to be "Turtle Town", but we weren't going diving for turtles. Instead we look for nudibranchs, frogfish, and other hard to find creatures that may escape the usual glimpse from the snorkel masses.   Our dive quickly turned into a moray eel bonanza. We had several dwarf morays, cute little 6-8 inch fully grown, and some huge white mouth moray eels about 3 ft long. An undulated moray showed off its razor sharp teeth and a zebra moray contrasted with its toothless grin. As I tried to get a picture right down the mouth of the undulated a large fish swam in between my camera lens and the eel. This happens sometimes as I concentrate on getting the picture, but this time the fish stayed there, which is a little abnormal. So I glanc...

Dive 1: Ukumehame Michael with a Titan's Trumpet Snail  With the hope of finding manta rays and the thought that it may be the only time I get to dive with Michael we geared up and swam out from Ukumehame beach park despite some unruly looking water conditions and murky water. Sunset is supposed to be the time to see the mantas so add low light to the list and you've got yourself a very challenging dive. Zero visibility greeted us and stayed with us all the way out to the drop down spot, about half a mile offshore. The viz became 30' or so out here so we did get a chance to see some fun fish amongst the finger coral and a couple of moray eels as well. The mantas seemed shy this time and we didn't have a spotting until the last second, when a big beautiful manta silently swooped into my view. I furiously banged my tank banger and got Heidi and Hunter's attention so they could see it. Unfortunately Michael was already out of air so forced to stay at the surfa...

The visibility at five graves, aka. five caves in Makena had been incredible the last few days so Heidi and I jumped at our first opportunity to grab scuba tanks and kick this new year off right. This is such a great place for green sea turtle sighting but this dive turned out to be much much more. We also usually spot very small nudibranchs here, but on this dive I brought my big lens, a 10-22mm super wide angle in hopes of some bigger creatures. We were in luck! I found this octopus staring out at me from on top of the reef. It was one of the biggest octos I have seen here. After a few pictures of it under a ledge it took off in a cloud of ink. That is when Heidi realized that this octopus was missing some of its arms. Different wounds can be seen on the head and mantle of the octo as well. Their main natural predators are moray eels but this guy was so big that I think he must have had a run in with a hunter of the human kind. People love to eat octopus out here in Hawaii....

Red Spotted Nudibranch Dwarf Moray Eel What a dive! In a place where people go for big things like sea turtles and white tip reef sharks, we found a treasure trove of the small and overlooked creatures of the reef. Carefully picking our way over the reef provided a rare opportunity to see creatures like nudibranchs, dwarf morays, and cleaner shrimp. Mating Tom Smith Nudibranchs! The tiniest frogfish  One of the most fascinating events we witnessed on this dive was mating nudibranchs. Two Tom Smith nudibranchs were very close to each other, head to tail on their right side, with the reproductive gland extended and touching. It was easy to miss but Heidi's sharp eye and constant research into the behavior of nudibranchs allowed her to know exactly what was going on. I could hear her thru the water yelling, "They're mating, they're mating!" Grumpy little frogfish Wire coral goby  As I slowly set pictures up from different angles and settin...