When most think of a dive trip to Hawaii the idea of crystal blue water, sharks, and sea turtles, come to mind. However the excitement of travelling to a blue paradise formed by lava really starts to stir the imagination of the cave diver inside of me. The final cherry on top was learning that previous cave divers mapped many of the small systems the Island of Oahu has.
As days drew closer to departure my dive buddies and I, armed with cave maps and boarding passes, were ready to begin our search. Travelling as a technical diver is always a delicate dance. Balancing weight allowances, and arranging tank requirements at the destination, not forgetting to mention the suspicious looking X-ray image of a canister light through a carry-on bag, the worries of getting all your belongings in one piece is always top of mind.
Regardless of how we looked with our reels clipped off and wet notes ready, we descended down the hill to the picturesque beach entry. In the first five minutes of a dive you can see more fish than you would in a year of diving the Great Lakes. Searching for caves sounds generally sounds more exciting than it actually is, it can be a tedious and long process often finding a lot of dead ends.
As we came up on the first hour of our dive we found a number of magnificent swim through arches, with juvenile sharks and turtles residing in the protection of the rock. This dive left us with a good couple of leads to come back to and explore further. The topography of Shark's Cove is carved with many dramatic overhangs, small caverns had long swim throughs littered with holes too small to fit in.
Our sixth sense was telling us we were in the right place. We decided to concluded the dive, we were very satisfied with what we had found, filled with excitement, and most of all hungry. With the leads we investigated fresh in our head, we called the dive and made for the beach.
