Going to Maui

[mart0681]

You've been there by now, but thought I would post anyway.  I visit Maui every year and stay at Ka-anapali/Lahaina.  You can shore dive right at Black Rock (Sheraton), it's shallow, about 25 feet, viz is 40-feet or greater, with a great abundance of just about every kind of fish.  A nice dive is to start on the golf course side of the beach and head around black rock exiting on the beach on the other side.  It's much like a wall dive where the vocanic cinder meets the ocean.

You can also dive the Ka-anapali reef from the beach virtually anywhere from the Sheraton down to the Hyatt at the other end.  I've done this from in front of the Marriott several times.  Island Scuba has a shop right on the beach there where you can rent anything you need and get arrange a guided dive if you'd like.  I don't think they fill tanks there, but at any given day they've got about 40 or so tanks for rental and their own PADI classes which are given at the Marriott.  Not difficult to find turtle cleaning stations with 4 to 5 green turtles being serviced by the local cleaning fish.

Finally between Ka-anapali and Lahaina (just before Lahaina) is the Mahala boat ramp, and next to it is a concrete fishing pier that's been mostly knocked down and sits at about 35-feet extending 300 feet or so and is considered a wreck dive.  It's mostly covered with coral with lots of swim-throughs, cracks and crevices.  Just dove there last week and saw a white tipped reef shark, along with more turtles and the largest variety of butterfly fish I've seen anywhere.  You can enter and exit from the boat ramp and stay near the jetty go around to the left where you'll run into the sunken pier.  Sign says no diving, but that means jumping off the pier, not SCUBA.