For those of you who like to snorkel or scuba dive, can you imagine jumping off a dive boat into water that is so clear you can see the bottom 400 feet below?
That would be a dream dive. Then once you enter the water you are greeted by a monk seal face to face and taken on a magical underwater tour where you meet a half dozen large sharks, four eagle rays, a mom and baby humpback whale, two giant moray eels and a thousand butterfly fish. Sounds too good to be true but this happens every winter at Ni‘ihau off the coast of Kaua‘i.
Ni‘ihau is usually visited by divers from Kaua‘i in the summer when the seas are somewhat calm. It is a 90 minute boat ride to get there and often the entire dive crew gets seasick.
In the winter time very few divers visit Ni‘ihau because of the large surf, but when the waves are small it is one of the best dive sites I have ever been to and I have done over 10,000 dives worldwide. During the winter the humpback whales are in Hawai‘i but not in the summer so seeing them while diving in the winter is quite common.
There is a vertical 400 foot cliff and the top is just below the sea surface at about 30 feet deep. This underwater cliff is between Ni‘ihau and Lehua Rock, and the water visibility is usually very good because little to no rainwater flows off the islands into the sea.
This cliff was formed by volcanic activity millions of years ago, but 10,000 years ago when the sea levels were much lower a river helped shape the vertical wall we dive on today. Often when diving there you can see all the way to the bottom 400 feet below, but it is not safe to scuba dive much deeper than 100 feet deep. On a one hour dive you can see more diverse marine life than anywhere in Hawai‘i and almost more than anywhere else on earth.
When you start the dive you are often met by the keeper of the wall, which is a large monk seal. This seal will come right up to the divers as if asking them if they want a tour of its home. It is really magical to do a dive and be led by a monk seal for an hour.
One of the very first things the seal will show you is the clouds of colorful pyramid and pennant butterfly fish that school right off the cliff feeding on algae that comes up from the seafloor on an upwelling current. These black and yellow fish are just stunning to see with the deep blue background.
Continuing on the tour you will most likely be met by two to 10 large sandbar, gray reef and white tipped reef sharks. These sharks breed and have their pups in the area. After visiting the sharks you can find several large moray eels in the cracks in the wall along with four different lobster species. Growing on the wall are forests of black coral, wire coral and bright orange cup corals.
The humpback whale females often hang out along the wall with their babies in the winter so they can protect them from hungry tiger sharks, and if you look out into the deep blue you will usually see eagle rays or manta rays slowly flying by. When I shoot underwater video I normally get one or two good marine life clips per dive, but on this Ni‘ihau dive I often get 50 to 75 good marine life clips.
If you want to go diving at Ni‘ihau it is always good to go with a local dive company that has lots of experience with the many currents and rough water that surround the two islands. The diving is easy if you know exactly where to dive and when. Divers that don’t know the area have been washed away on the currents in the past and had to be rescued by the Coast Guard. Local knowledge is always best.
Diving at Ni‘ihau and Lehua Rock is like going to a whole different world. There is no other dive site on earth where you can see the amazing diversity of life and be led by a friendly monk seal on your dive. You can visit this amazing dive site by visiting www.underwater2web.
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Terry Lilley is a marine biologist living in Hanalei Kaua‘i and co-founder of Reef Guardians Hawai‘i, a nonprofit on a mission to provide education and resources to protect the coral reef. To donate to Reef Guardians Hawaii go to www.reefguardianshawaii.org.
