Koko Craters, Oahu, HI
Fifth Hawaii Dive - Second Boat Dive
After Turtle Canyon, we headed over to Koko Craters. Ken and Kris drew up a map of our journey (so nobody would get lost :-). We were going to descend on one crater, swim half way around it, and follow a sand trail to the second one. If we had time (air), there was a third one as well. But the first person to hit 1500 lbs of air had to signal and we'd all turn around. Pressure was on me. :-)
We got down to the first crater without incident, I didn't have any breathing problems this time, and Rebecca's ears weren't doing too bad. We swam around the crater, which was 2 or 3 feet deeper than the rest of the bottom, looking for fish hiding in the nooks and craneys. There were quite a few! And the visibility on this dive was a lot better than the first one. Not sure why it was so different, they weren't that far apart.
Anyway, we got to the second crater and found a giant sea turtle under the rim:
I, of course, forgot my camera on the second dive. Kris took these.
We all stared at the turtle enough that it got its fill and took off. It was cool. My son and I had taken a sub ride earlier in the week and seen 6 turtles, but it's different being right there.
A little further was a sunken statue of a Buddha put there for divers to find. I don't think it was Buddha himself, but one of his pals. (this picture came from the Island Divers web page months later. :-) Anyway, we swam around that for a bit and around the second crater, and I was down to 1600 lbs of air. So Kris started us on a slow journey back to the boat.
We went all the way around the second crater and back to the first, and finished the other side of it. It was a fantastic dive. We got back to where the boat was when I had about 800 lbs of air, and we went up for our safety stop. I think Rebecca and I must have gotten to it first, because when we were done (per our computers) we went on up, and Kris was watching us go and looking at her watch. :-) We really did finish the stop! Plus made it to 40 minutes on one 80cf tank. Which may not be much for everyone else, but it was a new high for me.
All in all, this was our best dive, I think. Sharks Cove is second. Tropical Diving is great, and boat diving is a lot better, cuz you don't have to lug your gear around as much and there's no surface swim. Thanks to the people at Island Divers, we had a great time.
The picture of where I think we were is from Google Earth
Kris posted her own
report on the dive,
though it seems to be missing right now.|
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