Capturing the Moment

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...

this devil scorpionfish was walking across the sand green lionfish on the satellite rock  After a successful boat dive to Molokini the Maui Diamond II took us to one of their favorite spots, Wailea Pt. It was a bit windy and choppy at the surface but once we descended the peace and tranquility that comes with scuba diving immersed us. Josh, our divemaster, wanted to show us this satellite rock located far off the reef so we headed off over the sand. There were a few tiny little rocks with baby eels and damselfish on the way and also a lot of halimeda grass beds where the very rare sea horse reportedly hides. I didn't see a sea horse but we did come across a very interesting site. One sea turtle was held fast on the back of another in a mating position as the other flapped its flippers slowly rolling over and over on their way up to the surface. I have seen this behavior just a couple of times here in Maui but the really interesting thing is that pretty much all the actual...