Capturing the Moment

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...

Razor sharp teeth line the mouth of this white mouth moray eel. Many divers are threatened by this open mouth behavior of eels but if you do a little research you will know that eels open and close their mouth all the time to pump water over their gills. Often mistaken for sea snakes, eels like this one are actually a kind of fish. Their dorsal fin extends all the way down their back and they use gills to breath oxygen in water. Every once in a while a free diver has their hand sliced open by a lightning fast moray eel bite. After seeing these close ups I am extra glad that it hasn't happened to me!

 Some of the smallest, most overlooked creatures on the reef can be some of the most beautiful. Today's exploratory dive didn't produce a ton of finds but the ones it did turned out to be very photogenic. I am not sure the name of the sight, but somewhere in North Kihei Heidi and I donned our scuba gear and kicked out over coral and silty bottom. Out a bit deeper we descended and quickly found a pretty rare nudibranch (the orange and blue tipped one), and a Hawaiian Green Lionfish. Then heading out a little deeper something swimming through the water caught my eye. It turned out to be this beautiful flatworm that I later learned is called a fine lined flatworm. It undulated as it swam through the water much like a spanish dancer nudibranch. A couple of moray eels and a conger eel, which is rarely spotted during the daytime, rounded out a fun dive. We probably don't have to go back to this spot but now we know the underwater coast a little better.