Ala Moana Beach Park, Oahu, HI
First Hawaii Dive
We were going to go to the beach across from the hotel (Waikiki) for our first dive, but had been told it wasn't much for diving, plus there was a lot of surf. We also had quite a time finding a place to rent tanks. There are dozens of scuba shops around Honolulu, but it seemed all the ones we went to just booked boat dives, they didn't really rent gear without enough notice to bring it back from the boat. We asked one of the bellhops at the hotel where to get tanks, and he directed us to "Snorkel Bobs" up the street (half of Honolulu is names "Something Bobs").
Snorkel Bobs didn't have scuba gear, they just did snorkeling trips. But they knew of another place up the street that was a scuba shop. It wasn't called "Scuba Bobs", though. I don't remember the name now. Breeze Scuba, or something like that. Anyway, they had what we needed so we got it from them.
We went to Ala Moana Beach Park. We had to park a ways from the water and walk across the park, but it wasn't THAT bad. We talked to the lifeguards there about diving, and realized we had forgotten to get a dive flag. The swimming area there is pretty small, and the lifeguards told us it'd be ok if we dove without one, as long as we told them how many of us were going in. And that it was only maybe 20 feet deep and there might be jellyfish.
Rebecca wanted to go in without a wetsuit, and it probably would have been fine, but I didn't have a rash guard or anything to wear under the BC, so all I had was my wet suit. Plus there was the jellyfish thing, there was a possibility of them in the water, so we both opted for the suits.
It was only 11 feet deep, but the water was nice. Not as clear as it could have been, due to all the swimmers in the water, but nice and warm. We saw a bunch of fish and lots of coral. There was one puffer fish that we apparently didn't annoy, and dozens of smaller fish. There were some that looked like black clown fish, but were shaped like angel fish. We weren't sure what they were. At one point a large dark shadow crossed over us, and of course the first thing I thought of was "shark!", but it was either a cloud or Rebecca's husband Mike.
There were also some very tiny things Rebecca thought were jellyfish. They were white with tiny bell looking shapes on one end and some had little streamers. But they were very small, I couldn't see them well enough to be sure. The lifeguard couldn't confirm that they were baby jellies, but that's what they looked like. Neither of us got stung at any time, but Mike did two or three times while surfing in other places, and not by babies. So they were around, just not near us.
The picture of Ala Moana Beach Park is from Google Earth
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