Two Days of Diving

Aloha Family! Apologies for not updating last night but after a day of nonstop swimming we went straight to bed after our night dive. Yesterday, we were up early for our dolphin swim. It was just us an another couple of the boat, who was also married on the 8th and from silver spring, md! Such a small world! This snorkel was amazing. Our captain had an idea of where the dolphins would be, he chose to go to his southern location. When we arrived there was another dive boat that hadnt had any luck finding the dolphins yet.

We looked for a few minutes and not one minute later than we decided to try another spot the dolphins came to the surface. We jumped off the boat without hesitation and swam with the wild dolphins. We have some great video and pictures of this. These were Hawaiian Spinner Dolphins. There were even some babies on the pod. After we swam with the dolphins, they took us out to a buoy that was 3.5 miles off the shore and was anchored 2 miles down. The buoy was installed for the fisherman. The shininess of the chain attracts fish, which attracts larger fish, and so on. We decided to jump in and see what kind of fish were hanging out despite the fact that we were litte more than shark bait. We didn't get to see any sharks but it was still really cool to be in 2 miles of water. After that, we went to a little snorkel spot up the coast. There was a ton of sea life here and we saw a ton of interesting fish.

This area was really interesting. A Hawaiian Queen, whos name I can't remember and even if i could would never be able to spell, donated the land to the "children of Hawaii". So to visit this land you must be with someone under 18 years of age and at least 1/3 Hawaiian. Out of respect to the Hawaiians, the dive companies do not bring and divers or snorkelers to this area on the weekends so that they can enjoy their land. Before we docked, we went to one last snorkel spot that they call turtle heaven. They call it this because they found a turtle that had been biten in half by the resident tiger shark. We were not fortunate enough to see any turtles or the shark this time. We had some time to grab a quick lunch and our scuba gear before our night dives. We hoped on the boat to do one quick dive before we picked up the snorkelers and headed to the manta rays. This dive was LOADED with huge eels. These eels were about 6" at their thickest point and they weren't shy. We hopped out of the water, picked up some snorkelers, and hit the manta ray site. Mike's camera had been acting funky all day but luckily he was able to get a few

pictures of this because this was one of the most amazing things either of us has done, despite its terrible start. After the first dive of the night, I put my GoPro in the pocket of my BCD. I must not of pulled the zipper shut all the way because when I got to the bottom for the manta ray dive my pocket, that was supposed to have my GoPro in it was empty. It had a float on it and a floating strap so I went back to the surface to see if I could see it. Of course at this point there was no sunlight left and it was no longer in sight. I was completely bummed but I didnt want to miss the dive looking for it so I headed back down below. The mantas were doing flips and swimming inches overhead. You could easily have touched them but when you touch them you rub off a protective film that they have on them. Without this film they are more susceptible to disease so they ask they you resist the urge to touch them. At one point I had to duck to get out of the way and one actually bumped into Mike. There were 6 mantas this time, the biggest had a 12-14 foot wingspan and the smallest was about 6' wide. What they do is set up a milk crate packed with flashlights up in the middle of the divers, they call this the campfire. The light attracts the plankton which brings in the manta rays. This was an unbelievable experience. We got up early again today to go out diving. Mike's camera wouldn't even turn on this time so we were majorly bummed that we would have to rely on our memories exclusively to share these experiences with you guys. Amazingly, our divemaster had the GoPro with him! He was spraying off the boat last night after the manta dive and overheard some people on another boat talking about this GoPro that they found. Tim, the divemaster, described it to them and asked for it back and they gave it back to him! We definitely got lucky! Our dives today has a few highlights. We saw a 4' white tip reef shark on our first dive. In between dives we saw somthing that we originally thought was a shark but Tim jumped into the water with my camera and found out that it was a bottlenose dolphin. We all jumped in with him and were able to see him but he was speeding along and wasn't too interested in saying hello. On the second dive we got down to 85' and saw a ton of sea life. Tim knows his pacific fish really well and was able to point out a few rare fish and some indigenous species which were all beautiful. After we were done diving we headed into town to get some local flavor for lunch and check out the market. We will be back out on the water tomorrow!