On Tuesday 26th October, we had an early morning start to go to the meeting point for a snorkel trip via a boat to Molikini Crater, followed by Maluaka Beach on the way home. Unfortunately, the wind was high enough to result in choppy water inside the crater, such that we had to go somewhere else instead of the crater. The Captain then took us to Maluaka Beach, followed by Olowalu.
The staff on the boat were trying to upsell everyone to Snuba diving, which is the best of both scuba and snorkelling. It’s where you have the air tank floating on the water with a hose of air to let you get down to around 10m We’ve both had previous problems being able to equalise our ear pressuure under water before, so we stuck with snorkelling at ….. Bay. We saw plenty of different fish, coral, and a Sea Turtle.
Morven snorkelling
Green Sea Turtle
Then at Olowalu, Morven had built up the desire for something more adventerous, so we did the snuba diving. Thus the nickname Snuba Morv was born. Unfortunately we couldn’t use our underwater camera because the snuba diving goes greater than the rated 3m of our camera, although the instructor more than compensated for this, and took many photos for us.
Green Sea Turtle
Snorkel Tom and Snuba Morv
Can you see the fish?
Contrasting fish types
Typical colourful reef fish
Portugese Man of War Jellyfish
Moray Eel
Long skinny fish
The snuba diving proved to be great fun, and very safe for novices like us. We saw lots of stuff on the sea bed that we wouldn’t have seen if just snorkelling. We then had lunch and drinks on the boat before heading back.
Just 10 minutes before heading back, the Captain of the boat saw a Hawaiian Monk Seal flapping about, 150m from the boat. There are apparently only one thousand or so Hawaiian Monk Seals left in the world. A couple of the boat staff jumped into the water with their snorkel gear, and went out to say hello to it. Despite just eaching two massive sandwhiches, I decided why not, and quickly followed them out there. A sighting of a Hawaiian Monk Seal is considered extremely rare. Being able to get this close to take a photo is unheard of, so we are incredibly lucky.
Hawaiian Monk Seal
After the snorkelling excursion, we went to the Maui aquarium. It was interesting to read lots of information about the reef and fish, although the pictures are no where near as good as above.