Scuba Diving Hawaii

Diving Hawaii Overview

Hawaiian guides have developed great skill in finding the unique: On the big island of Hawaii, Spanish dancers, rare juveniles, and lionfish are regulars. Diving is mostly lava flow dives with little coral cover, but the tropical fish are colorful, unique, and generally plentiful. There's access to good shore diving. Kauai reef diving is passable, but the attraction is unique trips available only in the summer. Maui's diving is often to the backside of Molokini or Lanai and boats leave at 7 a.m. or earlier. Turtles are common, and occasional white tip shark adds to the fun, and the reef fish are colorful. Most reefs around Honolulu and Oahu have declined considerably, but there is some decent diving toward the north side. Hawaii has virtually no controls over divers who collect reef fish for aquariums. Nine months a year expect clear water, visibility that's usually better than the Caribbean -- around 100 feet -- and air temperatures in the low 80s. Water temperatures hit the low 70s in January and February when storms can last several days and cut visibility. There are plenty of condos for rent everywhere and you'll need a car since dive boats are not berthed at hotels.

Hawaii Seasonal Dive Planner

Temperatures in Hawaii vary little, remaining in the 80s most of the year. From November through March, occasional cool spells drop temperatures down into the low 70s (rarely into the 60s). Winds become more variable, and storms are more likely. Water temperatures vary from the low 70s to the mid 80s. The weather is warmest and driest from May to October, with persistent winds. There is no set hurricane season as there is in the Caribbean. The tourist off-season is from September to early December and again from mid-April to early June. Humpback season is from November to May.

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Diving Hawaii Feature Articles and Reader Reports

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Diving Hawaii Articles - Land Based Hawaii Shark Feeding Tour Controversy Leads to Dismissed Lawsuit and Arson, 2/11 Oman, Fiji, Hawaii, Bahamas… , need a change of pace? check out these dive sites and operators, 4/10 Hawaii Crushes a Reef with 50 Tons of Concrete, 2/10 Thumbs Down: Dive Ops Demanding a Profit on Every Dive, 9/09 Where Have Hawaii’s Fish Gone?, check home aquariums back on the mainland, 7/09 REEF Field Survey, Kona, Hawaii, tax-deductible “immersion training”, 1/08 Available to the Public Scuba Shack's No Peeing Rule, 4/07 Hawaii Takes a Bite Out of Shark Tours, 4/07 Hawaiian Tips, 2/05 Will Maui Stop Beach Diving?, 4/04 Thumbs Down: Short Fills from Lahaina Divers, 3/04 Dive Makai, Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, pacific critter diving on the Kona coast, 10/03 Oahu’s North Shore, better than you’ve been led to expect, 10/02 Thumbs Down, 7/02 Niihau and Lehua, Offshore Kauai, big fish diving from a day boat, 1/02 TRAVEL TIP HAWAII: WHERE HAVE ALL THE MANTAS GONE?, 9/99 Kauai and Beyond, Aloha, vacationers! Diving? Sure, we got that, 2/97 Kauai Adventure, 7/95 Diving the Kona Coast, 11/94

Diving Hawaii Articles - Liveaboards Available to the Public Diving From the Kona Aggressor II, Live-aboard Diving in Polynesia, USA, 3/00

Editor's Book Picks for Scuba Diving Hawaii
Including Maui, Kauai, Kona and Oahu

The books below are my favorites about diving in this part of the world All books are available at a significant discount from Amazon.com; just follow the links. -- BD

Hawaii's Sea Creatures, a Guide to Hawaii's Marine Invertebrates
by John P. Hoover.

This is the book for identifying Hawaiian marine invertebrates. A sequel to author-photographer John Hoover's best-selling Hawaii's Fishes, it leads the reader deeper into the undersea realm with about 600 gorgeous color photos of lobsters, shrimps, crabs, snails, nudibranchs, octopuses, corals, anemones, worms, sea stars, and a host of other lesser-known creatures encountered by divers in Hawaii are here. As in his fish ID book, Hoover provides scientific, common and Hawaiian names for each animal, and a generous paragraph or more detailing its natural history, ecologyand, cultural importance. $23.95. 6" x 9" Softcover ©1999.

Reef Fish Identification: Tropical Pacific: by Gerald Allen, Rodger Steene, Paul Humann, & Ned DeLoach. At last, here's a comprehensive fish ID guide covering the reefs of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The generous 500-page text, displaying 2,500 underwater photographs of 2,000 species, identifies the myriad fishes that inhabit the warm tropical seas between Thailand and Tahiti. The concise text accompanying each species portrait includes the fish's common, scientific and family names, size, description, visually distinctive features, preferred habitat, typical behavior, depth range, and geographical distribution. This is an essential book for every diver traveling westward. 6x9 inches. Order through us, get Amazon.com's best price and a good hunk of the profit will be donated to preserve coral reefs.

If you're headed south out of San Diego, Fishes of the Tropical Eastern Pacific
by Gerald R. Allen, D. Ross Robertson, is the fish guide you need.

With 324 photo-packed pages covering 680 species of sharks and sailfish, wrasses and razorfish, pipefish and pearlfish, this is the ultimate ID book for the Baja, Costa Rica, the Galapagos, and the Sea of Cortez. Sponsored by the Smithsonian Institute Drs. Gerald Allen and Ross Robertson took years to produce this definitive volume that describes and comments on the remarkable behavior of these critters. Hardbound, $85.

Coral Reef Animals of the Indo-Pacific
by Terrence M. Gosliner, David W. Behrens, Gary C. Williams.

At last -- a just-published, complete guide to help you identify the uncountable variety of weird critters you'll see on any Indo-Pacific dive, complete with full-color photo of 1,100 species. About Coral Reef Animals of the Indo-Pacific, Chris Newbert says, "This invaluable new book makes identification easy and enjoyable." There are scores of flatworms, nudibranchs galore, bumblebee shrimp, painted crayfish, pompom crabs, side-gilled sea slugs, and endless corals. Marine biologists Terry Gosliner, David Behrens, and Gary Williams cover the reefs from the Solomons to Sipadan, from the Maldives to Maui, from Palau to Papua New Guinea. They provide good notes to help you find and identify each critter. Indispensable for any Indo-Pacific trip. Paperback, 8x110, 314 pages, $45.00.

Indo-Pacific Coral Reef Field Guide
by Gerald R. Allen, Roger Steene.

I was trying to pack light for a change. Surely the Solomon Sea would have good identification books aboard. Not so; the only book on the boat belonged to a fellow passenger. It was one that I had not seen before, the Indo-Pacific Coral Reef Field Guide, by two of the best fish guys around, Gerry Allen and Roger Steene. The problem was this fellow passenger kept it in a plastic baggie most of the trip and I had to beg to see it. Great book, good traveling size, and it covers everything from fish, shells, marine plants, mammals, corals, and invertebrates to sea birds and more. Now I've got my own, and it won't do you any good to beg me to borrow it. This is one of two books that I will not travel to the Pacific without. Good for travel to the Red Sea, East Africa, Seychelles, Mauritius, Maldives, Andaman Sea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Australia, Micronesia, Polynesia, and Hawaii, it has 1,800 color illustrations in a 6x8 1/2 paperback format with 378 pages. $39.95.

You might find some other books of interest in our Editor's Book Picks section.