Hawaii: A diver’s paradise

By Ty Sawyer

updated 1:12 p.m. ET Jan. 29, 2008

Hawaii is a place where waterfalls plunge down green, cloud-veiled cliffs that look as if they came right out of a Japanese painting, where volcanoes are fountains of orange into a starry black sky, and fields of fresh black lava look like nothing so much as a moonscape — if the moon had an ocean view. This is one place where you can use the word “paradise” and nobody rolls their eyes. Yet it’s paradise with a laid-back style and a casual dress code: a culture in which flip-flops and board shorts are daily wear, and dressing up for a business meeting means you’re wearing an aloha shirt. And then there is the ocean: underwater landscapes of lava tubes and volcanic rock, populated by species so exotic that they are found nowhere else in the world, and all presided over by honu — the Hawaiian green sea turtle. Beneath the surface and above it is the stuff of dreams. Only in this case, the dream can come true.

The Island of Hawaii: The Big Island
The ancestral home of Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes, the Big Island teems with life. It also has 11 of the world’s 13 climate zones within its boundaries, so every corner and turn of this island is unique. This diversity has seeped into the waters that surround its shores. A virtual scuba village, Kailua-Kona, on the island’s western shore, is crowded with dive flags and for good reason. Just offshore, incredibly clear waters harbor a wild variety of underwater experiences.

From January through March, pods of humpback whales come to give birth off these shores, their songs providing an enchanting soundtrack to every dive adventure. In the open water within sight of shore, pilot whales frequently swim, often followed by packs of oceanic whitetip sharks. Between dives, huge aggregations of dolphin fill the waters, their leaps and acrobatics making time fly by during surface intervals.

Close to shore, the dive sites that dot the area have become world-famous. At Garden Eel Cove, massive manta rays come in at night to feed on tiny krill and other organisms attracted to lights set on the sea floor. It’s a world-class site, with an experience straight from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Place of Refuge and Turtle Pinnacle attract green sea turtles by the dozens to their cleaning stations, and after a good cleaning these turtles will often pull themselves ashore for a nap.

The lava substrate has riddled the shoreline with underwater caverns and arches in which you’ll find nurse sharks, legions of squirrelfish and every kind of ray of light imaginable. Sequestered in the nooks and crannies of the dive sites, you’ll find brightly colored frogfish, dragon, zebra, whitemouth and yellowmargin morays and fluttering extravagances of endemic milletseed butterflyfish. There’s even an extremely photogenic wreck, the Naked Lady, right in the Kona harbor.

For a thrilling treat, head out at night for a deep-water drift dive. You’ll hook onto a floating downline and encounter some of the most otherworldly inhabitants of the sea. Larval marine creature along with deep-water denizens come up to the surface at night to feed and get eaten. Almost every speck you’ll see is alive and, upon close inspection, more alien-like than anything else you’re ever likely to see in the sea. Jellies of every description, and even pelagic seahorses might be part of the passing parade, all in water so deep that even during the daytime you’d never see the bottom.

Yet another night-time spectacular off the Kona Coast is the manta night dive, in which powerful lamps are placed on the seafloor, attracting flurries of plankton that, in turn, draw in giant manta rays. These silent stealth-fighters of the sea pass into and out of the water column above the lights, making graceful pirouettes and loop-the-loops, all just a few feet (and oftentimes just a few inches) above the heads of an appreciative audience of divers. It’s a spectacle that’s impossible to forget … and a great, easy meal for the mantas. In fact, just about the only creatures that don’t consider it an evening to remember are the plankton.

Slideshow   Polynesian paradise The Hawaiian Islands are the perfect vacation destination for travelers of all types. more photos

Spectacular diving also can be had along the mostly uninhabited Kohala Coast, just northwest of Kona, famous for its pristine hard coral gardens and lava formations, and abundance of whitetip reef sharks, as well as its blissful lack of crowds. And those Big Island trademarks, huge green sea turtles, are a frequent feature of many dives here — their ancient eyes examining you as they swim in tandem at a pace that makes it look as if they have been doing this since the dawn of time.

More than 80 recognized dive sites are visited regularly around the Big Island, making this the sort of destination that requires a number of dive trips — and some would say a lifetime of dive trips — to fully appreciate. From octopus and parrotfish to roving pods of dolphin, there’s always something new to see.

With all this action and diversity underwater it’s easy to think of the Big Island as an aquatic destination, yet the sea is only half the story here. After all, how many places are there where you can watch the sun rise from the rim of a volcanic crater, or stand in awe as ribbons of lava flow sluggishly into a roiling, steaming sea? It’s geology in action on an island that is still growing, as evidenced by places where road signs peek, half-buried, from beneath the hardened lava. And between horseback riding in the high country or along the beach, and mountain biking on trails where the view is the stunning, blue Pacific, there are plenty of ways to pass topside hours in a fashion that is every bit as wild and exciting as the diving.

With its vast and delightfully natural landscapes, stunning marine diversity, and primitive allure, the Big Island of Hawaii still holds all of the charm that it has when Captain James Cook first anchored in Kealakekua Bay (where a monument now memorializes him), nearly 230 years ago. It is a place strongly tied to the forces of nature and the sea, and it is a place to which its visitors become tied as well, returning again and again.

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