Big Island, HI

My wife and I recently visited Hilo on the Big Island. Hilo is a laid back, tropical coastal town. The highlight of our trip was scuba diving. We had no appointment set up when we arrived, and when we started calling various dive shops, we found that almost all of them were located on the Kona side of the island, about a three hour drive from Hilo. We were starting to worry when we hooked up with the Nautilus Dive Center right in downtown Hilo.

The Nautilus shop wasn’t doing any boat dives that day, but the shop’s owner told us he’d take us on a local shore dive, and we heartily agreed. We left from the shop to our dive spot of the day: Leleiwi Beach Park, about a fifteen minute drive from downtown Hilo. My wife and I were the only divers that day—just us and the shop owner. When we arrived at the park, we unloaded our gear and carried it to a grassy spot near the water. It was a nice park, with some locals playing horseshoes and picnicking nearby.

Once our gear was set up, we made our entry into the water. Leleiwi is a rocky shoreline, and some care needs to be taken when entering the water here. We slipped in to a deep intertidal area. One unusual thing about this dive site—and elsewhere on the big island—is that there is cold, fresh water that seeps up from the ocean bottom, creating a fuzzy looking layer like a heat wave. It’s known as a ‘fresh water lens.’

We swam out through the shallows and then descended. We cruised through some coral formations which soon leveled out at the 35-foot level. Our maximum depth was about forty-five feet. The dive was great! The water was clear and warm, and we saw much sea life: tropical reef fishes such as humu humu’s, tangs, wrasses and butterflyfish, invertebrates like sea cucumbers, crabs and sponges, and a whole gang of sea turtles (we stopped counting after we saw a dozen). Both my wife and I took some cool pictures and video on this dive.

After about an hour we followed our guide back to shore, seeing more interesting things along the way, such as massive formations of lobe corals surrounded by schools of damselfish. We also saw a few giant pufferfish!

We swam underwater toward shore until we reached the wave swept tidepools, and, in about five feet of water, we surfaced. Then we climbed carefully back up onto the rocks and helped one another out of the water.

Another exciting dive! Overall, we couldn’t believe how much more life there was just off the beach when compared to our home base in Waikiki. Back in our hotel room in Hilo, we set our dive gear out on the lanai to dry and went down to the hotel bar to have some drinks and log our dives.

Tips & info:

-My wife wore a short wetsuit and I just wore board shorts and a lycra top—some might prefer full wetsuits for abrasion protection
-Caution for Big Island divers: do not plan to visit the volcanoes within 24 hours of diving—they are high altitude, so you should treat it just as if flying after diving
-This shore dive requires a little more work than jumping off a boat—you should be in reasonably good physical condition
-If you dive from your own private vehicle or rental car: do not leave any valuables in the car