Page 337 - Hawaii: Diving, Surfing, Pearl Harbor, Volcanoes and More

any walls are so heavily blanketed and Black Coral mix and mingle with the everything appears brown. Strobe lights
M with marine life that you can spend sponges, creating a garden carpet of life. and flashlights, however, bring those colors
an entire dive observing the tiny creatures More color and the addition of motion is back. Lurking inside crevices you may see
that inhabit just a few square yards of the provided from solitary and schooling reef moray eels, shrimp, spiny lobsters and even
wall. However, don’t become so engrossed fish. Every wall is similar, yet different: squid and baby octopuses, waiting for
that you forget to occasionally glance over Profile, shape, size and predominant colors nightfall. Then there are the big pelagics,
your shoulder to see what might be pass- vary from site to site. fish normally found out in the open sea.
ing by in the blue water behind you. Anything could be cruising the wall which
alls offer an opportunity for divers adds to its mystique. Out of the depths,
reat big groupers, turtles, billfish and W to experience much of the ocean’s come eagle and manta rays, marlins, tunas,
G tuna are all usually on patrol, and it’s diversity in one place. At the top you’ll kingfish, mackerel, mahi mahi and sharks of
not uncommon to see sweeping eagle rays, find the kaleidoscope of corals and small all types, including hammerhead, bull, tiger
or even hammerhead and tiger sharks out fish that you would expect to see at any and Caribbean reef, to cruise the wall for
sniffing for their prey. As if all this wasn’t healthy reef - star, brain, elkhorn and stag- their next meal.
enough to make you want to dive, the horn corals, sea urchins, sponges, sea fans,
French Polynesian drop-offs are punc- parrotfish, trumpetfish, angelfish, queen dvanced divers can try “wall flying,”
tured with awesome caverns, tunnels and triggerfish, sergeant majors, and more. A with an underwater vehicle, zipping in
swim-throughs. Walls are found throughout Descend further and the harder corals and out of small caves and crevices 60 feet
French Polynesia and their profiles range give way to forests of gorgonians and soft below the surface. Technically you reach a
from those that end at sand bottoms 60 to corals, which reach out in a silent rhyth- top speed of only 2.4 mph, but it feels a lot
100 feet deep, to seemingly infinite vertical mic dance. Sponges appear in their most faster. The DPV (diver propulsion vehicle)
descents. It is along these escarpments magnificent forms - all shapes and sizes. allows divers to see more sites in less time
of the deep reef that the majesty of coral With less sun penetration, one by one, and experience the fun of underwater
spires and the magnificence of sponges is the colors disappear as you descend - first travel.
fully realized. Seafans, bryozoans, seawhips red, then orange, green, and so on until