Maui Shore Diving In December? Also - good dive package deals?

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RJP

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Buddy and I planning a shore dive trip for December, and considering Maui. Two questions are:

1.) What's weather/conditions/temps in mid/late December
2.) Which dive ops offer the best boat/shore packages?

I see that Lahaina Divers offer a "Maui 5-Star Package" that includes 5 two-tank charters and unlimited tanks for shore-diving for 14-days. Anyone else good offer anything similar?

We will likely stay in either Lahaina or Kihei area, not decided at this point.

Mahalo!
 
Water temperatures area usually 76-78 degrees in December. A huge benefit of going in the winter are the humpback whales! Every boat charter turns into a whale watching trip. Quite a few operators offer discounts for booking multiple charters, you just need to ask.

If you really have 500-999 dives, I'm going to recommend that you stay in Kihei and dive with Ed Robinsons on their advanced charters Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Fridays. Mike Severns is also an excellent choice, but I don't have first hand experience with them. IMO Lahaina Divers is great for the beginning or occasional diver, but not for the experienced diver.

For shore diving if you've never dived in Hawaii, I'll suggest you either hook up with someone who has experience diving in Hawaii, or hire a dive guide. The topography of Hawaii is so different than anywhere else that it's easy to miss the marine life hiding in the coral and rock. There are also many indigenous creatures only found in Hawaii that you won't know to appreciate unless they're pointed out.

Tanks are cheap and easy to rent. You can buy a 10 tank card from Maui Dreams for $40 that you can share, and weights are cheap as well. Be aware that you'll need a dive glad as the authorities are known to check. The Kihei area also has some great shore dive sites. We like nothing better than a 90 minute dive at Makena Landing or Ulua.
 
+1 ^. In Lahaina you might be happier diving with Extended Horizons except they only go to Lanai. So you'd still want to dive with Lahaina one day to Molokini - or drive down to Kihei (45mins). The Kihei boats leave real early though - Severns tries to be out at 5:45 as they like to get there first.

Lahaina also does two more advanced dives - looking for Hammerheads off Molokini (sort of hit or miss from what I've read) and advanced drift dives off Lanai's west side. Those can be e-ticket rides - we did a dive there once that was mostly a fast drift with some hovering on/near the bottom where it was sandy. 20' away there was 1000 Moorish Idols holding station like there was no current - and reef sharks patrolling the area. Shows you who the real divers are real quick....lol.

There's another operator in Lahaina now with their own nice looking boat. I can never remember the name. And Hawaaiian Rafting Adventures has a big Zodiac.

There's also one that books other boats but their website makes it appear they're not - one boat shown is Extended Horizons, the other is Maui Diamond II in Ma'alea - they purposely photoshopped out the boat names on their website photos. Not for me...

IMO the better shore dives are also near Kihei. And there's more of them. On the north side you drive a lot farther between sites. I second Robinsons although you may learn more diving with Severns - they're all naturalists. B&B Scuba would be a 3rd good option in that area also. They all leave from the Kihei boat ramp early, go to Molokini, dive then often do a 2nd dive along the South Maui coast in order to beat the tradewinds. You may hear the humpbacks singing off Molokini so that would be a reason to go also. The Backwall is a more advanced, pretty vertical dive - hard bottom is about 300+'. Often a live drop if the seas are a little rougher - inside the crater is obviously more protected.

If you do want a guide in the Kihei/Wailea area contact Maui Dreams or Shaka Doug here on SB. Lahaina Divers guides - so does Tiny Bubbles near Lahaina. There's also at least a dozen other options in both areas - I just mention ones I've had some exposure to or dove with.
 
Maui Dreams and Maui Dive Shop are both good for tanks, and I've found them good with info on shore spots (Maui Dive Shop is a big multi-site LDS, so YMMV for helpful service; Maui Dreams has invariably been good to me). The long stretch from south Kihei (Kamaole III beach) up through the Maalaea Harbor area has little to offer but north and south of there are plenty of good spots (for Maui) for shore entry. There's even one or two on the north side east of Hookipa, for something different when conditions permit. I'm not vastly experienced with Maui boat diving, but my recommendation would be go to the outlying islands where possible.

I'm not familiar with the guided shore dive ops, but I believe Maui Dreams does scooter trips.
 
You should also try Maui Scooter Divers
 
I wouldn't suggest Maui Dive Shop. They aren't very knowledgeable. I have done some diving with local instructors and like Kaanapali Dive Co and Dive 35 Maui.
 
I would imagine you have already made your arrangements, but I would have suggested Mike Severns for the boat dives, and B&B to source tanks. I like the MS boat for several reasons: It tends to attract a more experience client base, the owner is a marine biologist and co-author of one of the guides to Hawaiian critters, and the guides dive backplates :)

Shore diving is generally pretty easy. You can check out shorediving.com, or alohashoredivers.com, for information on sites. The biggest issue with diving from shore is that, when the surf is up much, it not only makes the entries and exits more difficult, but really impacts the visibility, because most of the shore diving sites are pretty shallow and subject to sand disturbance from the surge.

One dive I would HIGHLY recommend is to do the evening dive package with Lahaina Divers, where they take you to the Carthaginian as a dusk dive (LOTS of big frogfish!) and then do the Mala Pier at night. It's one of my favorite daytime dives, but at night, it's insane. But the entry is a pain in the daytime, and would be difficult to dangerous to do at night, at least for me.
 
I'll strongly suggest that you plan on a combination of boat and shore diving. We come to Maui 4-5x per year for 1-2 weeks at a time and in the past year I cannot remember a trip where we couldn't shore dive at one point or another during the trip due to swells and dirty in-shore water. We're currently here and planned to shore dive yesterday and today, but with a north swell and very windy conditions, the in-shore waters were cloudy with sand (dirty), and we didn't want to dive with 10' of viz (at best). We were able to shore dive on Sunday and had great viz and are both very happy that we had charters scheduled to guarantee diving.

As an aside, the wind driven waves and north swell that came in on Tuesday prevented anyone from diving Molokini and had all the S. Maui dive boats heading down to La Perouse to dive. Great viz and good diving so I'm not complaining, but compared to the day before when we were diving Molokini and Red Hill, it always amazes me how quickly conditions can change.
 
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