Whale Watching in Maui

WARNING: This post contains a large number of whale photos. If you don't like whales, feel free to move along. There's probably a blog about housecats somewhere nearby.

On our last whole day in Maui, we went out whale watching with the Pacific Whale Foundation on their boat the Ocean Explorer. This is my favorite non-raft or RIB boat. It seats about 40 with most of the seats up front. Whale Foundation members get to board first and choose their seats (and at a discount, too, so be sure to join).


The whales were more active than I have ever seen. We had been seeing lots of them from the hotel balcony and beach, so we had high hopes. We quickly found solo whales and small groups to watch. We would find them by spotting their spouts and calling them out to the crew.


Most of the time, we would just end up with a presentation of the tale, if anything.



Sometimes the whales like to wave and slap their pectoral fins. Kind of a humpback hello.


This whale was cruising along on his side. You can see his tail sticking out of the water behind his pectoral fin.


This whale was fun. It was barrel-rolling through the water. It would roll onto one side and slap that fin, keep rolling onto its back raising the other fin, and then slapping the second fin on the water. This whale made several rolls. This photo was taken when the whale was on its back.


Of course everybody's favorite moment is when the whales "breach", or jump out of the water like in the next sequence of photos. They sometimes launch their entire body (except for their tail) out of the water.






I caught this one as it was crashing into the water onto its back. Although it looks like it is smiling, its really upside down.


And finally, here is a whale waving goodbye.


As we head back to the harbor (and were unable to pursue whales), we saw two or three whales doing a series of ten breaches in less than two minutes. It was an impressive display.

Mala Pier, Day 2

I went back out to Mala Pier again on Saturday and dove 2 tanks. It's a great bargain. I can spend $120 on a two tank boat dive or $20 on two tanks at the pier. It's as good as going out on the boat, but its definitely a lot more than one-sixth as good. I like not having to follow a guide and moving at my own pace. The dives were up to 1:20 long. Its also an easy place to solo dive. A funny thing - when I was out there the first time, so was the Extended Horizons boat that I had gone out on the day before. The weather had prevented the boat from going to Lanai, so it did its second dive on the pier. I would have been a little unhappy if I had paid that kind of money to dive next to the boat ramp.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the turtles were amazing. In the next two photos, you can see three turtles lined up (the ones from the video). I guess turtle #4 had moved on.



I hadn't thought to put my orange magic filter on the Canon camera, so I've corrected the colors using the Photoshop Underwater.atn action, which works amazing well, particularly on pictures from shallow dives. I'm taking the filter out when I dive tomorrow.

There were dozens of Imperial Nudibranchs, as in the past. The little Canon camera has done a pretty good job with the macro photos. All Canon photos have been using only the internal flash or natural light.


And here's one more nudi.

Mala Pier Turtle Video

I haven't finished processing my photos from my last shore dive at the pier (didn't find any frogfish, again, but I did see a big white tip reef shark), but this turtle video was so cool that I wanted to go ahead and share it. I was following the first turtle with my little camera making a video and I didn't even know about his friends until they came into view in the movie. This is the most turtles in one place that I have ever seen. There was even a fifth one in the sand ten feet away.

Linda, this ones for you!

Shore Diving Mala Pier

Today I did my first shore dive at the wreckage of the Mala Pier. This was recommended to me by Bob Grecko and many others. The Mala Pier was built in 1922 for loading sugar cane. It was destroyed by a hurricane in 1996.



It was 300 feet long, but half of that is rubble in water up to 30 feet deep. It has developed a good bit of coral growth and is inhabited by turtles (saw five), white tip sharks (others saw some, but I wasn't looking), and frogfish (looked hard but couldn't find any). There were also quite a few Imperial Nudibranches, always in pairs.


These two turtles were amusing. The one on the left was sitting on top of the silty sand. The second one swam over and sat next to the first who wasn't very happy about having company. You can see in the close-up how he expressed his displeasure. The second turtle then swam away.



I didn't find any frogfish, although I am told that they are out there. I'm going back out tomorrow to dive two tanks and find them. On this trip, I was shooting my D80 in a macro setup (60mm lens and dual DS-125s) and I brought my Canon SD700 for wide angle.

Oh yeah - and the ocean ate my mask. Another sacrifice to the diving gods.

Diving at Lanai

Dive Buddy Bob and I went to Lanai with Extended Horizons. We first dove "No Name Pinnacle" near Paradise Cove and then Cathedrals #2. No Name was a typical Hawaiian dive site were we saw eels, a juvenile peacock wrasse (the photos weren't very good), and some of the other usual suspects.


Cathedrals #2 is a lave tube/cave with lots of holes to let in light. I couldn't get any decent photos. There were too many people in our group and I was the last one into the chamber. It was too silted up by then. I did find a wire coral gobie, which was a good test of the macro capabilities of my Sigma 17-70 lens. I probably could have gotten a little closer.

The full frame:


A closer crop:


Here's a shot of the rugged Lanai coastline as we were leaving.


One the way back, we hit some rough water. The boat captain gave use two options: slow and really wet, or fast and hard and probably drier. We took fast and hard. It was a bit painful, but we didn't have it as hard as poor Gwen the Dive Master at the back of the boat. The paying customers get the dry seats up front. She gets drenched. She smiled the whole way.


I recommend Extended Horizons for any of your dive needs. Our group was led by Dive Master Chris who did a decent job.

Maui Rainbows

The rainbows here have been spectacular. Every day at 4 o'clock this complete rainbow appears to the north. Today, the end of the rainbow was in the condo tennis court. I couldn't find the pot of gold.


This was the other end, a little later, in the craggy volcanoe remnants.

Maui, Day 3 - I finally get to dive!

Bob and I went diving today. The weather was terrible. It pretty much rained all morning. There wasn't much of a swell. Our dive boat with twelve divers ended up inside Molikini Crater, my least favorite dive site. The coolest thing is the garden eels. They sit facing into the current eating plankton that floats by. They are really hard to photograph because the closer you get, the further they retreat into their holes.



We did see one more cool fish that I can't identify yet. I had to leave my fish ID books at home to keep within Airline weight allowances.



After these two encounters, I felt like an airliner circling the airport burning fuel until it has a light enough load to land. Eventually I reached 700psi and we went up.

The second dive was a patch reef called Marty's Reef. There was a bit more life here, even though it wasn't overwhelming. There were several cleaning stations, accepting customers both large and small.



There was a nice looking Whitemouth Moray who had wormed himself out from under a big section of coral. He looked like the entire patch reef had been dropped on top of him pinning him in the sand.



And last, a bit of wide angle with this school of Squirrelfish who were hanging over the reef.



They may be named after squirrels, but they sounded like housecats. There was a continuous purring/grunting noise when I was near them. Here is a link to what one squirrelfish sounds like.

http://www.fishecology.org/soniferous/ophidion_marginatum_cynreg_1.wav

Imagine a hundred of them vocalizing at the same time. Apparently the sounds of the squirrelfish is a popular research topic, since Google turned up lots of hits.

So all in all, it wasn't a great day diving, but as they say - "A bad day diving is the still better than a good day at work". I don't know if I will use this dive operation again. Most of the issues were weather related, but I still wasn't impressed by the divemaster/guide. I guess I'll go back to Ed Robinson next time.

Until next time, Mahalo for dropping by and reading my ramblings.

David

Maui, Day 2

Another day without diving - but at least there's snorkeling! Today's turtle count was at least four, maybe five. All in one hour of snorkeling. I saw a couple of new creatures that I hadn't seen before - a scrawled filefish and a couple of nudibranches. My camera battery ran out so I didn't get any pictures of the nudis. Here's a short movie of one of the turtles.

The big moray from Day 1 was still in the same spot. The smaller moray under the coral head was gone, but there was a different species of moray in his hole. Interesting. I wonder who will be there tomorrow.

Here's a daily turtle shot:

The larger eel was right where I left him yesterday.



David

Maui, Day 1

We got to Maui on Friday afternoon, after a slightly delayed flight. It was delayed enough that I couldn't get into the water until Saturday. The first stop, as always, was snorkeling at Black Rock. We are staying in Kaanapali and Black Rock is a volcanic spit at the end of the beach. It's easy snorkeling and easier diving. You can sea how many people fill the water. Luckily, most of them are weak swimmers and don't go around the point or get close to the rocks where the more interesting life is located.



There are green sea turtles out there almost every time that I visit. In past years, the turtles have been infected with a virus that causes white tumors all over their body. The virus doesn't kill them outright, but it can impair their ability to see, catch food, or eat, which can ultimately kill them. I am happy to say that all four turtles that I spotted appeared completely health.

Some of the turtles sit on the sandy bottom, in about 30 feet of water.





Others wedge themselves under the rocky ledges to sleep. Most snorkelers never even notice these turtles. Everybody's favorites are the ones that are swimming around, usually coming up to get some air. I think the turtles are used to the snorkers because they seem to pretty much ignore them.



Did you know that unicorns really exist? I found an aquatic variety. This is the unicorn fish.



There were even a couple of eels. I'll have to add specific species IDs later.





Last, I saw the cutest little fish of all, Devyn. She is the daughter of a friend of mine. She's quite a good swimmer and likes to show off for the camera.



All of these pictures were shot with a Canon SD700 pocket camera using the Canon underwater housing and the "underwater" scene setting. Not bad for a simple camera.