Scuba Diving in Kauai

On Saturday morning I took a dive with Fathom Five Ocean Quest in Kauai. I arrived at the dock with a woman I'd met the night before, Jody, who suggested the dive. Our dive master Charles was incredibly helpful and friendly, along with the captain Trout, and two other helpful crew members, who had come along just for fun because the dive was under-booked.

The first dive was pretty uneventful. On the way we did see a few dolphins swimming in our wake which I always find exciting. At the site, we went down about 60ft and stayed down for about 30 minutes. We saw mostly fish and a few eels and large urchins. I also saw a weird looking purple skirt-like thing, maybe a nudibranch? But I forgot to ask the dive master. We saw this dude, who is supposedly pretty rare, but I didn't think he was that exciting. At the end, I also saw a very large parrot fish poopin' some sand.

Our surface interval was very pleasant. The wind and waves were supposedly unseasonably calm so we got to ride closer to the shore and look at the pretty beaches. as we were approaching the second dive site I saw what looked like the back of a brown dolphin. I asked one of the crew who said it was probably a sea turtle. Lo and behold, it was indeed. I saw another three more as we were approaching the site, one of which was completely submerged 3 or 4ft, almost directly off the side of the boat.

This dive site was called Sheraton Caverns aka, the Turtle Airport, as the crew told us. As we were descending, I caught site of another sea turtle swimming about 50ft away. The topography of the site was pretty neat. It was made up of several partial lava tubes. It was basically like a canyon with 15ft walls and anywhere from 5-10ft wide. The top of the canyon walls were at about 30ft depth. There were lots of overhangs and even some arches. Here's a pic (that I didn't take) of one of the arches. The turtles liked to hang out and sleep under the overhangs and in little pockets along the canyon walls. We passed several as we went through the canyon.

At one point, I saw something that looked interesting, but the dive master showed me that it was just the old shell of a lobster. But as we were all focused on that, another of the crew members turned to me and her eyes got wide and she pointed over my shoulder. Less than two feet away was a sea turtle, right above my right shoulder! It was between 2 and 3ft long. As if this wasn't exciting enough, I looked ahead to the next arch in the canyon, toward which the dive master was already swimming, and there were two large (maybe 5-6ft) sea turtles looking as though they had been planning to go through on the other side. We all came under the arch to what turned out to be a cul de sac, where the turtles were all swimming around. There were another 3 or 4 turtles hanging out under ledges in the cul de sac that came out for a bit too. There were a few magical moments where it felt like the turtles and divers were all swirling together in this small (maybe 15ft wide?) space.

Best of all: the dive mast caught it on his underwater camera! I'm still waiting to hear from him, but hopefully I'll have the video to post soon!