Turtle Awesomeness

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Swimming with the Fishes

Close Encounter

Today we had a free snorkeling trip to Molokini crater, as part of our rental of the condo. Molokini is a partially sunken volcanic crater off the coast of Maui that has really good visibility for snorkeling and diving. Interesting tidbit found on Wikipedia -- During World War II, the United States Navy used Molokini for target practice because its shape is somewhat similar to a battleship. Now it's designated as a Hawaii State Marine Life and Bird Conservation District.

We were originally supposed to go on this trip the previous day, but they somehow canceled it without telling us. After we finally got ahold of them, they booked us with a different tour company for today. When we arrived, they were having trouble with their boat, so they shuttled us over to another boat. It was strangely similar to the experience in the airport, but the boat we ended up on was not too crowded and they were real nice people.

Most of the people on that boat had signed up for Snuba, which is kind of like scuba, but you are tethered to the tanks which remain on the boat. We stuck with our original plan of snorkeling. There weren't as many fish there as I expected, but we did see quite a few, and some new ones that we hadn't seen at Black Rock.

After about an hour at Molokini, the boat took us to the waters off Makena Beach and dropped us off in "Turtle Town". They pointed out a "turtle cleaning station" where turtles stop off to let algae-eating fish clean their shells for them. Unfortunately, my photos of this are very murky, but you can see some great photos of turtle cleaning here.

After that, Kevin and I headed off in our own direction, away from the others. We were snooping around in a rocky coral reef and had just decided there was nothing interesting to see there when we turned around and almost ran right into three green sea turtles! Green sea turtles (known as Honu, in Hawaiian) are among the largest sea turtles in the world, and can weigh up to 700 lbs. They are an Endangered Species, and you're not supposed to approach them (not to mention the fact that they have been known to bite!) They were very curious about us, however, and they swam with us for a minute or so before making their way down to the bottom of the reef. That was probably the highlight of the whole vacation for us, and I'm not sure that any of the other people on the boat got to see them. We were just in the right place at the right time!



* Remember, you can click on the pictures to get a bigger view *

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Photos

Kevin and his Slate-Pencil Sea Urchin
Supposedly the ancient Hawaiians used the dried spines as writing utensils