Getting skunked a second day in a row was upsetting. Worse, the dive we had originally scheduled for today is the dive we wound up doing yesterday — Mala Pier. I wouldn’t be too sad about diving there again, especially since it was our best dive of the trip, but Charmaine went in to the dive shop and changed some things around so we could go to Molokini today. It’s not the world-famous Molokini Crater, but it’s still Molokini. We signed ourselves up to do two drift dives at Molokini. The dive shop requires every diver have a flashlight and safety sausage, so I got to buy a safety sausage. Charmaine already had one (and a dive knife).

Our fist dive was along the back wall of Molokini at a site known as Edge of the World. It’s basically a wall dive with a current, so the boat follows bubbles and dive beacons. The wall drops off steeply, so it looks like you’re looking down off the edge of the world.

On the way out there they prepped us for the fast currents we may face after dropping in along the wall. They had each group standing together at the back of the boat as we got the boat into position and they had us all jump off the boat quickly in what they called “Navy Seal Style” where they count down the time till drop and then yell, “Dive! Dive! Dive!” and we all jump in the water. I had considered dropping my weight to 10 pounds, but with a drift dive (and little chance to add weight once in the water) I stayed at 12, knowing I would be fine. Charmaine and I have been on some dives with fast moving currents in the Sea of Cortez, so we had some idea what to expect, but we had to laugh because there was almost no current at all. I guess they don’t really have a way of knowing what it will be like from day to day, so they just prepare everyone for the strong current. As it was, we had plenty of time to hang out and look at things as we lazily drifted north along the wall.

The visibility was everything they said it would be. I’m not sure we have ever had better visibility on a dive. You could see well beyond a hundred feet in every direction. I think that probably contributed to the relaxing feeling that the current wasn’t very strong.

We jumped right in and saw a nudibranch that I didn’t recognize and then about 30 or 40 feet below us we saw a huge oceanic manta ray flying by. It was so big and cruised past seemingly without moving at all, despite flying south against the current. Charmaine and others were seen doing little celebratory dances under water. It was very cute. I tried to get a shot of it, but I had my flash turned on and had all the settings configured for taking close-up shots of the nudibranch we saw first, so it didn’t go as well as planned… plus, there’s not much light that deep on the back side of the wall (the sun was on the other side of the wall). He must have been about 80 to 100 feet deep. We were all pretty excited to have seen it.

As we drifted along, we saw some white-mouthed moray eels, some trevally jacks, some squirrelfish, Hawaiian sergeant major (damselfish), a bunch of different kinds of butterflyfish, yellow tangs, parrotfish, some more red pencil urchins, and some triggerfish. I think we were all still thinking about how cool it was that we saw that giant manta (much larger than a reef manta).

They picked us up at the end of the wall, basically the north-west corner of the back side of Molokini and took us into the crater where we moored for lunch and our surface interval. It’s also where we jumped in for our final dive. Since we were starting the second dive from a moored location with no current, I dropped my weight to 10 pounds. That was just about perfect. I may try dropping to 8 pounds, but that may be too light.

While eating lunch we spotted some bottlenose dolphins just outside the crater. They kept coming closer and eventually came over the edge of the crater (where it is still underwater) and played for a bit around our boat. That was great. Greater still was the fact that they were still hanging around as we made our descent. They were digging up sea cucumbers in the sand right below us. We couldn’t spend too much time watching them, because we needed to get outside the reef wall to catch the current that would push us gently west to the back (essentially the same place they picked us up at the end of the previous dive.

I kept hearing sounds throughout the dive that I attributed to the dolphins, but I was wrong. They were the songs of the humpback whales in the area. How awesome is that? Not as awesome as having a humpback whale show up on the surface right next to a group of divers waiting for their boat to pick them up. That’s exactly what happened to Mitch’s group. The whale breached just a few feet behind them. We were close by as well, but didn’t see the whale. What we saw was the boat coming to get us while everyone on board was looking off to the side, toward Mitch’s group. We knew something must have happened, but didn’t guess it was a whale breaching. That’s just amazing.

We saw another whitetip reef shark, some more eels, a lot of fish including moorish idols (they seem to be everywhere in Hawaii), yellow longnose butterflyfish, surgeonfish, milletseed butterflyfish, triggerfish, sergeant major damselfish, bluefin trevally jacks, threadfin butterflyfish, saddle wrasse, etc. We saw a ton of fish. I also saw another cowry shell. Those things are pretty cool.

It was a pretty amazing day. Giant oceanic manta ray, bottlenose dolphins,and humpback whales. We were sure to rub it in to the other dive boat when we got back to Lahaina.

Dive 1:
Surface Interval: 20:20
Weight: 12 pounds
Starting Pressure: 3100 psi
Time In: 9:00 am
Surface Temperature: 79 degrees
Bottom Temperature: 77 degrees
Visibility: 100+ feet
Dive Time: 48 minutes
Average Depth: 47 feet
Maximum Depth: 73 feet
Ending Pressure: 600 psi
Time Out: 9:48 am
Computer: Suunto D6i

Dive 2:
Surface Interval: 0:51
Weight: 10 pounds
Starting Pressure: 3000 psi
Time In: 10:37 am
Surface Temperature: 77 degrees
Bottom Temperature: 77 degrees
Visibility: 100+ feet
Dive Time: 51 minutes
Average Depth: 39 feet
Maximum Depth: 65 feet
Ending Pressure: 700 psi
Time Out: 11:28 am
Computer: Suunto D6i

Dive Master: Nick
Boat Captain: Levi
We tipped $40