We went to 2 different locations, Turtle Town, and Molokini. Molokini, is a half crater off the coast of Maui that shelters the reef and allows for some of the most spectacular snorkeling ever. Remember that relegation thing for our tour? Well, that turned out to be the best thing that happened. Our captain decided to reverse course and instead of going to Molokini first, and then Turtle Town, we went to Turtle Town first and Molokini second.
Essentially we avoided the 10 other 100 passenger tours and their stops so we had the locations to ourselves. Awesome! This quickly paid off, in that the Hawaiian Sea turtles hadn’t grown weary of a bunch of tourists swimming around their house and were just floating around like I wasn’t even there. What resulted was a close encounter of the Turtle Kind. And by close, I mean I could of touched the turtle had they not warned me it was illegal to touch the turtles and arrests had recently been made for such an encounter. Instead I had to settle for some very cool Turtle footage. That waterproof case for Courtney’s new Flip camera paid off instantly!
So you have some idea as to the clarity of the water, those Turtles swam down probably about 30 feet to go under the reef. It was very clear, and compared to Molokini, this place was cloudy!
As we wrapped up this location, we were getting back on the boat, when a huge school of fish swarmed. Apparently one of the crew were feeding them and they were familiar with this routine. What I was able to capture was the last part of this swarm. Lisa, my aunt handed me her camera and was going to sink down a bit so I could take her picture in the school of fish. In the 30 seconds it took us to coordinate that, they were gone. Impressive none the less!
We then set off for Molokini, already satisfied with this trip. I had not expectations of seeing a turtle let alone filming one from and arms reach away! What could possibly top that!
When we got there, the Captain kept saying things like, “wow, I haven’t seen it this clear in a long time”. I have come to recognize that when crew members who do this every day get excited, you are about to see something unique. This happened last year on our Boston Whale watching tour. Our naturalist was giddy and squealing as we watched a mother humpback and her bay jump out of the water continuously for a good 20 minutes. So my ‘cool stuff’ radar was up. The captain said the visibility was at least 150 feet. Think about that. Your standard basketball goal is 10 feet. Stack 15 of those on top of each other and that is how far into the ocean you could see. It was like snorkeling in Ozarka water.
I am not one to wait for tourists even if I am one, so when the crew said go for it. I grabbed my fins and snorkel mask, and jumped in. As I was doing that, the following conversation took place between another snorkeler and a crew member.
Crew: “You might actually see some white tipped reef sharks here.”
Snorkeler: “what.”
C: “yeah, but don’t worry, they are as threatening as a Labrador Retriever.”
Me: “so, we could play fetch with the sharks?”
C: “Ha! Probably!”
A different snorkeler, on her honeymoon I believe, overheard the last two comments and said…
Honeymooner: “Wait. What? Sharks?”
Me: “Yeah! We get to play fetch with some sharks! Should be fun!”
Crew: “wait. Let me start over…”
I didn’t wait around for the crew to explain to the petrified honeymooner because frankly, the look on her face was all I needed…and so I jumped into Molokini’s Ozarka clear water and set off to discover something cool…
I’m not going to lie, at first I was not real impressed although it was very clear. It was basically the same type of fish we saw at turtle town cruising around. I did film a few, but am only going to post a few videos here more to show how clear and how blue the water was.
It then became more fun to film the people. So as I was cruising around with the Flip I was filming Courtney when my sister came up to her, tapped her on the shoulder and pointed straight down…
This 8 seconds of video is pretty useless except I know what she was point at…Shawna proceeded to practically jump out of the water and swam towards the boat screaming “Shark! Shark! There is a Shark in the water!”
So lets just back up a quick second and recall that conversation with the honeymooner and anyone else who was probably paranoid about sharks. The last thing they probably wanted to see or hear is someone in full fledged panic mode yelling about a shark in the water.
SO what did I do? I had a video camera! I swam after the thing of course! Now this was a white tipped reef shark, or apparently the Labradors of the snorkeling world, it was probably 3 feet long but as you can see in the video, not really threatening. I was on the surface, and was swimming as fast as I could trying to follow the thing about 15 to 20 feet below me. As I was doing this, I saw the biggest fish I had seen yet. It doesn’t really show on the video, but you’ll notice me cut away from the shark briefly to show a fish that was probably 2 feet long and 12 inches tall. Most of the rest of the fish you see are probably about the size of your hand and maybe a bit bigger. I tried to follow the shark as long as I could, but me in big ole flippers on the surface was no match for the little white tip.
Once the shark left, we basically were just swimming around. My brother David was the first to do it, and I’m not sure anyone else besides myself and crew actually did it, but we had the bright idea to free dive down to the bottom. These videos are pretty uneventful except I think it gives you a good perspective of how deep the water was despite how clear it looks. If you are really interested there are more on our YouTube channel
So snorkeling was a success. Heck the trip was a success at this point and we were only on the first Island! Our afternoon was spent in the historic whaling town of Lahina before we head back to the boat. Just driving on Hawaii is cool.
Maui was complete…Off to the Big Island, where I led the rebel cause and managed to get Shawna, Courtney, and myself deleted off the Passenger list of the cruise ship. It was SO worth it…
Jon
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