Page 1465 - Dive the Seas and More-2
P. 1465

Everyone's favorite dive spot around                  On  additional trips to Maui  we dove  at
            Maui seems to be  Molokini  Island. My                many other places as well. In April 2005
            wife and I did our first Molokini trip on a           we took my sister and her husband from
            Maui Dive Shop boat with a crowd  of                  Arizona on their first trip  to  Maui and

            maybe 25 people. It  was  early  in  the              introduced her to snorkeling. At 63 years
            morning and there were about 6 or 8 other             of age she had never snorkeled or looked
            boatloads  of snorkelers there too. Since             at a fish underwater in her life! Can you
            my wife is a snorkeler I did not scuba dive           imagine  a  better  place  than  Maui  to  do
            on this adventure. However, I still dove to           this? Her best experience by far turned out
            about 40  feet deep to check  out a huge              to be Honolua Bay, which includes a walk
            lobster that  could have been named                   to the rocky beach through an amazing old

            “Fido”. The water clarity at Molokini was             forest  that  looks  positively  fictitious
            unprecedented. I have been diving in the              because it is so beautiful and the trees are
            Mediterranean,       Caribbean,      Atlantic,        so huge. These dive experiences are not
            California, Micronesia and a  few lakes               easy to describe for the purpose of a dive
            and rivers, but I have never  ever seen               map of Maui, because one really needs a

            water as  clear as on our first visit to              few paragraphs for each to do it justice.
            Molokini. We moored the Maui Dive                     Maui's corals and fishes are just
            Shop boat at 102 feet depth and yet the               spectacular and I hope to convey that with
            bottom was clearly visible. I looked across           my descriptions. However, since a picture
            at other snorkelers  on the next closest              tells a thousand words, I came up with the
            boat. I could clearly see them underwater             idea of showing the fishes and reefs on the

            even though they were 150 feet away. We               map in full, artistic color. I started this
            were swimming in a big,  crystal-clear                idea with my Catalina Island, California
            aquarium!                                             map in 1997,  when I showed  the kelp
                                                                  forest  creatures.  On  my dive  maps  of
            After the Molokini dive they took us to
            Turtle Town to snorkel again. My  wife                Maui, Kauai, Oahu and Hawaii, I show
            and I had already been diving at Turtle               around 80 species of reef creatures,

            Town the day before from the shore  at                including a few invertebrates, that are
            Makena  Landing. It was fun to see                    most commonly seen. At the end of this
            everybody's reaction to seeing their first            discussion I'll simply list them for your
            green sea  turtles. It  was  my wife's first          interest. Meanwhile, on the face of side 1
            encounter with green sea turtles as well,             of Franko's Map of Maui, I described

            so it was very exciting to all.                       these first few dive experiences to Ahihi,
                                                                  La Perouse Bay, Molokini Island and so
            In the days ahead we dove  at Fleming                 forth with the following words, exactly as
            Beach, Black Rock and Kapalua as well.
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