I always tell people that snorkeling is your window to a whole new world. Scuba diving however, is your doorway. You can totally immerse yourself in this otherworldly environment, and you can go deep. The recreational limit is 40meters, or 130 feet. Past that depth, the dangers increase dramatically. Things like nitrogen narcosis and the bends do not sound good to me. But I will skirt that line and hang out past 100ft deep as long as I can. Because there is nothing else quite like it on this planet.
Where I live in Maui, Hawaii, there isn't a lot of very deep dives. We have several other islands close by and all the islands meld underwater forming a shallow plateau. The humpback whales love it as their breeding ground, but we lack the steep dropoffs of other famous diving destinations. However, there is one.... the backwall of Molokini Crater.
Imagine a volcanic crater just breaking the surface of the water. It is about 3.5 miles offshore, 162ft tall, and 300ft straight down to the seafloor. They call this dropoff 'Backwall.'
Whenever I dive here I just can't help but marvel at the clear water, usually 100+ft visibility, due to it being so far offshore. There are always weird and unusual critters hiding in the cracks and crevices. On this dive we saw blue dragon nudibranchs and the rarely seen longnose hawkfish. But I always keep an eye out into the blue, because you never know what might swim by.
Most people never stick their face underwater. They are missing almost 3/4 of the planet. These racoon butterflyfish followed me for awhile until I got too deep.
Its too deep to anchor and there are no moorings, so the boat just has to drift. Hopefully the current doesn't whisk you away out into the blue.
I couldn't resist one more shot of these beautiful racoon butterflyfish.
This unusual fish is the longnose hawkfish. It was the real goal of this dive for me. Usually they are only found deeper than 100ft, hiding amongst some black coral. This one was at 95ft deep.
This is a blue dragon nudibranch. It is a kind of sea slug. Luckily I had an underwater flash to bring some light and color to the scene. Once you get down to 100ft you have lost alot of light and most of the colors.
These cleaner shrimp were headed my way. I guess they thought I looked pretty dirty
My dive buddy, Jack, hanging out in the blue abyss.
I like to descend first so I can look up and see all my dive buddies do a slow freefall, like they just jumped out of a plane.
The wall just keeps on going and going and going.
Just past 130ft, at my deepest point, I came across this brilliantly colored pin cushion sea star.
Check out the location on pinmapple.com:
[//]:# (!pinmapple 20.630533 lat -156.496042 long d3scr)
I hope you enjoyed this journey to a place few seldom venture.
-Dai Mar