Hawaii Day 3

Halona Blowhole Dive Site

Aloha! Yesterday we finally got some diving in at a place called the Halona Blowhole and it was unreal!  It's a bit of a climb to get down to the beach so by the time we got down I was sweating bullets and ready to get in the water.  A giant stride off the side wall and off we went. 

We swam out a ways before dropping down but then as we settled out on the bottom we went through very quick check-out skills; mask removal, reg retrieval, and shared air.  With the skills part out of the way we started out on our hunt.  This was an absolutely remarkable spot and the fish and inverts we saw totally blew away what we had seen the day before.  I saw every tropical fish I could think of plus a white tip reef shark and some harlequin shrimp! 

About three quarters into our hour long dive one of the other guys spotted an octo!  I had no idea where the animal was and even when he started trying to get it out of its hiding spot I still couldn't see it.  But he was able to get it out and we got it into a bag quickly.  This was octo #2!!! We were on a roll at this point.

Since we were almost done with the dive anyways we just headed back in to shore.  Once out of the water and out of our gear we started heading back to Waikiki Aquarium.  We dropped off animal #2 and then went right back to the same spot for dive two of the day.

We got back in the water a couple hours after we ended our first dive and the dive site was exactly the same except once in the water we went a different direction.  There were only three of us on this dive as our fourth was having some leg cramping issues and had to sit this one out.  We got in the water and dove down a little further out than the previous dive and started heading up and around the wall on the right.  Again, we saw some incredible fishes and inverts, even a sea turtle and were again lucky enough to spot an octopus!!! Animal #3 put up a serious fight from the get-go.  Even before the poking started to get it out it started inking.  We had one mesh bag set up to try and catch it as we tickled it out from the other side.  Unfortunately there was so much ink that we initially could not see it at all.  It worked its way out from underneath the corals and even under out catch bag.  I saw it as it was underneath the yellow mesh and grabbed it with my hand.  It of course put up a great fight as I wrestled with it to get it inside the bag.  We carried it in the larger yellow bag down to the bottom where we carefully transferred it to a smaller bag and even into a container.

With plenty of time left on our dive we decided to go swim around for a bit and continue the hunt.  We crawled through some tight spaces and ended up 50' down next to a huge ledge and a huge school of fish.  We unfortunately did not see any more octos but the dive itself was incredible and this day was amazing!  We got the animal safely back to the truck and to the aquarium for octo #3!