Capturing the Moment

Pete fighting the current The pancake cliffs     The winds were starting to kick up, throwing waves and spray onto our sturdy dive boat. I was out with Island Divers here on Oahu checking out a couple of offshore dive sites. After a successful exploration dive of a wreck called Big Barge (not even the instructor had been there before), we decided to fight the wind and head closer to the coast to dive a site called Sea Cave.     The water was again nice and clear, however the current was very strong. But we were planning a drift dive where we could go with the current and get picked up by the boat down the coast. Luckily the group was all advanced divers so we hit the water and immediately descended with no problems. We could see the opening to the sea cave above water but under water it was totally different. Pancaked rocks form a 60 foot deep cliff. At the very bottom of the cliff there was a wide opening which led into the sea cave. 75 feet into ...

  Today I headed out to the offshore waters of Oahu for my first boat dives since moving to this island. I was invited out to ride along with Island Divers to check out their operation. Our first dive was just under 100' at a site called 'Big Barge'. This huge barge had sunk onto the sandy bottom and became a magnet for marine life. Blue dragon nudibranchs crawled over the top while fish of every color swam through the cracked structure.   At the very back of the barge a huge superstructure, possible a wheelhouse, had toppled over. Inside grew a forest of black coral which lit up bright orange under the strobe light. I looked hard to see if there were any long nose hawkfish hiding in the coral but I didn't see any. The wreck itself looked like great frogfish habitat but I also came up empty on those.   The visibilty was great. When we jumped in we could see the bottom about 90feet below us. Even with the great visibility you can't see the end of the wreck...