I drove up to Lahaina today for a nostalgia dive at Black Rock. When I first moved to Maui and was teaching SCUBA and living on the west side, Black Rock was my favorite close, easy access shore dive. However, it is no longer easy access. There used to be a parking lot right by the short path that leads down to the beach directly on the north side of Black Rock. That has been taken over by the Sheraton and is now Sheraton guest parking. So there is only one small (18 spaces), free, public beach access parking area down the road a bit. The path to the beach from that lot lets out to the south of Black Rock, so you either have to walk (with full SCUBA gear) up the beach about 75 yards, or do a long surface swim, to get to the rock. Fortunately I had my scooter, so I chose the “swim.” 🙂 So it wasn’t too too bad in the end.
The water clarity was excellent today! Black Rock is still a nice dive site; I saw about 4 turtles, way more fish than the south side reefs I have been diving, and a huge school of Akule (Bigeye Scad). There is a nice reef wall and a couple of small caves that the turtles like to hang out in.
For my 2nd dive today, I decided to try some place new: Keawakapu beach. Oddly I have never dived there. It is one beach up from Ulua/Mokapu beaches, which I go to quite often. I had no idea where the reef was, so it was an exploratory dive. I did find some nice reef starting in about 15 feet of water going out to about 35 feet of water. Decent fish populations, and lots of Lined Fireworms for some reason.
For today’s imagery, I used the GoPro Hero 11 with the SeaDragon 5000+ light (handheld) and the Flip Macromate lens for the close-ups.