Beginner Maui Questions

[barink]

Hello. We are looking forward to being in Maui mid June. We will be staying in Kaanapali as usual. We did our OWC last year through Maui Dive Shop and did all shore dives at Airport and Canoe beach. It was just us, an instructor and good times. Anyway, we have not been under the water since and super excited to go again.

We want to get 2 days of scuba in this trip and plan on doing one day of shore diving and one day for our first boat dive. After missing our chance to hook up with Shaka Doug last year, he is top of our list for shore diving this time. For the boat dive, we are looking at Hawaiian Rafting Adventures or Lahaina Divers for a trip to Lanai. Our questions:

1. Is Lanai a good trip for beginners and a first boat dive? Would Molikini be better? We don’t mind getting up early and driving to Kihei.
2. For Lanai, We are leaning towards Hawaiian Rafting. We like the smaller operation and more adventurous transportation. Any feeling on which operation is better for newbie’s like us?
3. What is the feeling about night diving for beginners in Maui? We are both very comfortable in the water and would love to do a night dive.

Mahalo!

 

[muddiver]

1. Molokini is better. Find a small boat and get up early to beat the cattle boat rush.

2. Lahaina diver's will treat you like a newbe and will hand you a 72 cubic foot cylinder as well (shorter dives). I have not been out with Hawaiian Rafting, so no comment.

3. Call Tiny Bubbles Scuba at the Kaanapali Beach Club. The night diving right off the beach is really good, and the reef off the KBC starts about 3' off the sand and goes out about 100' feet. Tiny Bubbles has a channel right off thier hut that access the out side of the reef. Tiny Bubbles Scuba - Maui Hawaii, Maui Scuba Diving, Maui Dive Instruction, Maui Dive Locations

For smaller boat trips I reccomend Mike Severns, and B&B Scuba in Lahaina.

 

[TSandM]

Oh, I'd HIGHLY recommend a night dive! You might want to see about a guide, if you have never done a night dive before, just because navigation can be a little challenging. A lot of the reefs run parallel to shore, so it could be easy to get confused about where your exit point is, depending on the site. But there is a lot of life in the water at night that's quite different from the daytime. I love night dives, and keep trying to get my husband back into the nighttime water on Maui to do another one there!

I think Lanai is fine for novice divers, although the pinnacles do offer the opportunity to get somewhat deep -- all you have to do is tell the guide what your depth limits are, and you don't have to go any further down than you want to.

Check the tank size and dive time limits with the operators you contact. As new divers, I don't think you want to be diving 72 cubic foot tanks, if you can avoid it.

 

[muddiver]

As TSandM said there are different critters at night. I saw a cuttle fish for the first time off the beach at Kaanapali.

 

[stevejaz]

We were there last May and are going again this Novemeber. When we dove, we went with Maui Dive Shop (got a great deal), it was fine as it was off season and numbers were really low. That said...I will never dive Molokini again unless it's the backside which you won't be able to do. It was no comparison to Lanai where we did Knob Hill and Cathedrals 1 or 2, I don't remember which one it is but it has the "chandelier". Anyways, we were/are all novice divers with a couple of our divers being very beginner. We did swim throughs, explored the "caves", watched all the spinner dolphins on the way out...definitely the highlight of our trip and I'd HIGHLY recommend it! Everyone on our dive felt very comfortable and had a great time. That said, we were lucky on the trip out and there, it was very calm. The trip back...not so much. Soooo, one of our divers was not feeling so well, she recovered but had we been on a small boat, she'd have been miserable. I mention this because as novice/beginner divers people often feel nautious or not 100% after diving, a rough ride back in a small boat may not be very pleasurable. However, if you're both truely very comfortable in the water and don't have any issues, a smaller boat would be a fun trip back. I too am very comfortable in the water but even so my first few deeper dives (80' or so) made me kind of nautious after. Just food for thought.

A lot of people knock MDS, our experience was 50/50. Molokini, site was mediocre at best and dive master was as well. Lanai, dive site was awesome and our dive masters were really fun.

Now, Tiny Bubbles...we dove with them 3 times when we were there. Tim is an awesome dive master. As a matter of fact I'm going to be having him certify my son and his friend in November. We did 2 day dives and 1 night dive with him last May. For the night dive 3 of our divers were a bit anxious, Tim does a great job of communicating and making everyone feel at ease...I'd highly recommend him. I believe he has a special...3 dives (day, scooter, night) all for $199 and includes everything. Highly recommended especially given you're staying at Kaanapali.

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

As TSandM said there are different critters at night. I saw a cuttle fish for the first time off the beach at Kaanapali.

muddiver, please take a look at the page linked below and tell me if the critter you saw is on the page; I'm of the opinion you probably saw a big fin squid.

http://www.marinelifephotography.com/marine/mollusks/cephalopods/cephalopods.htm

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

Most of the dive boats working Maui County waters take 12-13 divers (8). There are two that only take 6 divers and four that take up to 24 divers (Dominion & Dauntless - LD, Maka Koa - MDS, Maui Diamond II - MDDS). MDS also has the Kai Anela; a 24 passenger snorkel boat.

Many return divers, local divers and local guides will only say that Molokini's Backside is one of the best wall dives in the USA (nice sales pitch). Full disclosure might be to wonder if it is even in the top 50 wall dives in the world, as great wall diving is hard to find in the USA.

I have both recreational dived Molokini and guided Molokini hundreds of times, and I expect less tips, less fun and less interesting marine life when I am forced to dive the backside. I have had OK dives on the Backside, and I saw my only whale shark on the backside, but IMHO the ends of the crescent give great dives regularly, both moored and drifting around the points.

No operator in Maui County takes beginners into "caves." There are many cavern dives in Hawaii. If you can handle caverns you can probably handle Molokini's Backside, but only go if your spouse demands it.

1. Molokini is better. Find a small boat and get up early to beat the cattle boat rush.

...

That said...I will never dive Molokini again unless it's the backside which you won't be able to do.

...

We did swim throughs, explored the "caves",

...

A lot of people knock MDS, our experience was 50/50. Molokini, site was mediocre at best and dive master was as well. Lanai, dive site was awesome and our dive masters were really fun.

...

 

[muddiver]

muddiver, please take a look at the page linked below and tell me if the critter you saw is on the page; I'm of the opinion you probably saw a big fin squid.

Cephalopods--Squid, Octopus, and Cuttlefish

No, they looked more like the Bob Tail Squid. With less color.

I agree that the Molokini backside is "ok". I think Bird Rock at Catalina is a better wall dive, but hey, I live over here right now.

My experiences between Molokini and Lanai are the Molokini has consitantly good visability. Lanai seemd to be a bit merky when I was there, but it does have a little more color because it is more sheltered on the side that the boats go to.

Personnally I rather go to Wailea or Kaanapali and hang out with the turtles.

 

[stevejaz]

Most of the dive boats working Maui County waters take 12-13 divers (8). There are two that only take 6 divers and four that take up to 24 divers (Dominion & Dauntless - LD, Maka Koa - MDS, Maui Diamond II - MDDS). MDS also has the Kai Anela; a 24 passenger snorkel boat.

Many return divers, local divers and local guides will only say that Molokini's Backside is one of the best wall dives in the USA (nice sales pitch). Full disclosure might be to wonder if it is even in the top 50 wall dives in the world, as great wall diving is hard to find in the USA.

I have both recreational dived Molokini and guided Molokini hundreds of times, and I expect less tips, less fun and less interesting marine life when I am forced to dive the backside. I have had OK dives on the Backside, and I saw my only whale shark on the backside, but IMHO the ends of the crescent give great dives regularly, both moored and drifting around the points.

No operator in Maui County takes beginners into "caves." There are many cavern dives in Hawaii. If you can handle caverns you can probably handle Molokini's Backside, but only go if your spouse demands it.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind if we decide we want to do Molokini backside. We've dove "the wall" in the Bahamas and I thought it was cool, but not spectacular. I actually prefer shallow dives with lots of color and marine life. Depth is no badge of honor as far as I'm concerned. We'll have to see if we can dive the "tips of the cresent", we were very much in the middle of the cresent and if I remember right did about an 80' dive that was marginal at best. Not much marine life, got bored and played games.

When we did Lanai, we may have been very lucky. When we arrived at the cathedrals we could look down inside them from the boat, visability was excellent. I'll try to post a couple pics tonight but like my diving...they are very amatuer.

As for my "cave"s comment, that's why I put it in quotes, because they weren't really caves but more like caverns as you said.

Thanks and as you can see and I claim no different, I am clearly a novice, hence why I posted my experiences for the OP from a novice to beginner (their words) viewpoint.

Edit: Here's one pic from the cathedrals

 

[TSandM]

I was not at all enthralled with the back wall of Molokini. It's relatively bare, and we saw no pelagics. The life really began as we got close to the end of the wall, where the edges of the crescent are.

It's sad . . . five years ago, when I first dove Molokini crater, it was like being in the bottom of God's kaleidoscope. Each year we have gone, there seem to be fewer fish and more dead coral, and now we no longer bother to go out there. The shore diving is just as good, and far less expensive. Oh, and BTW, it's not me getting jaded. There are studies of reef fish off Maui that show exactly what I am talking about.