Magic Island   a.k.a.  Rainbow Reef    a.k.a.   Ala Moana Beach Park

Recommendation:
Pretty good fun dive, or Open Water training dive.  Visibility can be moderate (30'/10m) to crappy (near-zero).
Looong walk to get from the parking lot to the beach.  Excellent facilities include phones, wading pool, park benches, shade trees, and immaculate bathrooms.

Notes:
Depths top off at 45'/15m.  Visibility tops off at 40'/13m and frequently gets quite low.  Low visibility and sharp corals underfoot near the entry/exit can make the entry a little challenging.  Beware of quiet sailboats in the boat channel.

After rain, Ala Wai canal will shoot out a lot of brown, dense fresh water.  This layer will FLOAT on top of the seawater, making a deceptive foot-thick layer of muck that creates an artificial (and kind of fun) ceiling during the dive.  It's like... diving in a very large ballroom.  So, when you're looking at the water judging whether this might be a good day to dive Rainbow Reef / Magic Island, keep in mind that if the canal is shooting out brown water, you still may have a spectacularly clear dive under that layer.

Divers here should definitely have dive booties and fins with heel bands, NOT simple slip-on no-separate-shoe fins.  If you have to walk barefoot over the very sharp corals in the water near this beach, you will be extremely uncomfortable.  Faking it with rubber slippers won't help, because those suckers are extremely buoyant in water, and easily lost in the shallow rocky waters near shore.  Buoyant beach sandals are also a pain in the butt to carry during a dive, because their positive buoyancy really really bugs you.  So go with proper shore diving boots, preferably the kind with thick felt soles.

Fun bits: 
This area is host to a family of good-sized turtles (4, typically, with the largest being about 4' long).  Also, sharp eyes will find CHECKERED COWRY shells here.  These are amongst the rarest cowry shells of all, yet I've found three in this divesite.  They're not terribly large or pretty, though the area does have some fingertip sized cowries that aer delightful to look at.  Avoid taking any home, since even cowries that "look" empty are usually occupied by timid hermit crabs who will go for a walk in your suitcase, expire, and leave the whole of your luggage smelling like Neptune's farts.

You'll also see plenty of mushroom corals, and textile cone shells. The latter should be appreciated FROM A DISTANCE:  Textile cones are found throughout Hawaii, and while alive carry a flexible needle that can give you one HELL of a whallop.  The sting may not come until you're taking the thing out of a pocket on dry land, or it may come the moment you reach for the shell.  This poisonous dart is what the animal uses to kill prey.  It can surely wreck your holiday, leaving you in the emergency room begging for unconsciousness while your divebuddies go share a pizza and a pitcher of golden ale.  Take pictures, leave footprints, and leave the shells ALONE.  Welcome to Hawaii.


Dangerous bit:
You're  right on the edge of a boat channel which lets powerboats through and sailboats as well.  It's bad enough that our sense of sound-direction is screwed up under water, so when a powerboat's engine seems near you really have no idea where it's coming from.  Sailboats just make the whole game reach a higher level, with no sound at all-- and frequently the hulls are white, letting them blend in perfectly with the sky and their wakes, overhead.  So if you have to surface in mid-dive, be darned careful and look all around you as you rise.  Ideally, try to rise next to one of the pylons so you''re sure to be a little protected from traffic and a little less of an invisible target when you hit the surface.


How to dive it:

1) Go to the far West side of Waikiki and then over the bridge to Ala Moana Beach Park.  Look for parking at the south-east end of Ala Moana Beach Park, in the section known as "Magic Island", which is actually not an island, but a peninsula with an enclosed wading pool at its southernmost extremity.  This peninsula parallels the Ala Wai Boat Basin's channel, and is the left side of the mouth of the Ala Wai Canal.  You may recognize it from the opening scenes of Gilligan's Island, when the SS Minnow is sailing out of a harbor.

Try to park as close as possible to the south-east side of Magic Island.

2) This is a fairly safe parking lot, so every member of your party can dive.  There's no need to leave a guard in the car.
Walk out to the point to check out conditions BEFORE you gear up, so you're not all geared up and under pressure to dive, when you finally get out there to look at the water.  You want to make a decision to dive (or not) based purely on the water and your comfort level, not on the fact that you've already invested a lot of time in suiting up and walking out there.

After you're satisfied that you're diving here today, walk back to your car and gear up almost completely at the car.  Put your mask in a fin's foot-pocket, and put the fins' heel-straps through the top clip on your BCD, so your hands are free.  Definitely wear dive booties, not barefoot-with-full-shoe-fins.  Leave the top of your suit open, or whatever else you can do to keep cool, because you've got a long walk over sidewalk ahead of you.   You can stop next to the water's edge, later, to zip up your suit.  Seriously consider bringing a bottle of water per diver, to drink when you get to the beach and to finish off after the dive.
(Ever notice how sleepy and headache-y people get after a dive ?  That's due in large part to dehydration and heat.  Bring water, be happy.  I down a liter after every dive, and I feel great.)

There are clean bathrooms in this park, off to the west side of this peninsula.  There are also payphones.  Try to memorize the phones' location before entering the water, to save time if there's an emergency later.  Bring quarters for the phone, eh ?  Stuff them in a BCD pocket or something.

3)
Walk along the Ala Wai (East) side of the peninsula, to the beginning of the pond at the end.  You'll see a tiny 15'-wide beach about 4' below you, on the Ala Wai side of the peninsula (leading to the ocean, not leading to the pond).  This is your entry and exit point.  Some guidebooks will suggest that you can go into the wading pool, and swim out through the gaps on its ocean (south) side, but I've tried and never found a gap that was deep enough to let a man through.  I suspect those guidebooks were written long ago, before sand got deep there.  The pool is OK for the pool-session of an open water SCUBA training course, but be aware that its bottom is SO easily stirred up, making the water almost too murky to see your teammates.

Gear up fully except for fins and mask, partly inflate your vest, do your buddy check, and walk down to the little beach.  Ideally, there's no big surf rolling onto the beach, and little traffic in the boat channel on your left (east).  Walk out CAREFULLY into the water, moving south-east (forward and left).  The footing under you is sharp-ish corals, with urchins in its holes.  You'll get about even with the left end of the little beach when you find that the bottom drops away to about 15' deep.  This is the edge of the boat channel and unfortunately, also where you get wet.  Don your mask, and decide if you and your buddy will do a free descent without reference line, or if you'd prefer to surface-swim to the nearby channel marker post, and make a controlled descent from there.  Be aware that the post is pretty grungy, and tetanus lives on wet rusty iron just like this post.  Touch With Caution.

4)
Once you get to the bottom, you'll see that the bottom is quite silty, and easily stirred up.  So, try to use good buoyancy control and avoid kicking within a yard of the bottom.    Keep your eyes peeled for "flying gurney" fish, possibly one of the freakiest fishes in creation.  It's shaped somewhat like a flying fish, with huge side fins.  It swims rapidly along the silty bottom, trailing its fin-fingers in the mud, literally tasting the sidewalk with its fingertips.  Rough way to make a living... I suppose it lives on the fish equivalent of sidewalk gum.  Bleeeah.

You'll be alongside a low wall.  Move outward (southward) along this wall, and get your jollies for the next 15 minutes by checking the wall for interesting shells and fish.  Rememebr that this area is one of the few places you can find the incredibly rare checkered cowry, a thumbnail-sized half-round butterscotch-and-white shell.  You'll also see lots of money cowries (with a golden ring on it, used in an incredible number of ancient cultures as coins) and delightful little purple-and-white speckled cowries.  There'll be oodles of moorish idols, saddleback bird-wrasses (unique to Hawaii), trumpet fish, and cornet fish.

As you move out along this wall, be VERY aware of the surface.  Stay away from it if you can.  If you need to surface, then go up over the wall and head a little bit West before surfacing, to ensure you're well out of the boat channel before you prairie-dog at the surface.  You don't want the kind of haircut a boat can give you.

Remember also that under water, sounds are much LOUDER than in air and we can't determine the direction from which a sound is coming.  So, any and all boat engines will sound like they're in your shorts with you, mowing the lawn.  If you hear a boat engine, try to stay at least 10 feet below the surface until the sound passes. 

Remember also that sailboats don't make any sound at all, and sometimes their hulls are white.  It's like a cruel joke perpetrated against divers.

There are also sea kayaks and even divers who use them, so there's plenty of reason to be very cautious whenever you're near the surface here.   If you've got one, a surface float with SCUBA markings  is a good idea.

5)
About 15 minutes out along the wall, if you've been moving pretty rapidly, you'll see a pretty sturdy, elaborate cahnnel marker made from massive pipes.  In this area you can frequently spot 4 green sea turtles.  (Actually, they're brown.  It's the FAT inside their bodies that's livid green.  It's a disgusting sight, making one wonder why the scientists didn't simply name the turtles "brown icky-insides turtles".  Two of the turtles are roughly 25 years old, and only as large as a toiletbowl seat (roughly a slim yard wide).  The other two are massive, somewhere in the 4' to 5' wide range.  These are more likely 50 to 80 years old.  They;re old enough to be sexually mature.  You can tell the genders by looking at the tails and thumbs on the front fins.  Males have big tails and big thumbs, so they can hang onto and get around the top shell of the female while hanging on during the funky turtle reproductive breakdance. *ahem*.  Ifyouknowwhatimeanandithinkyoudo.

Please remember that sea turtles are AIR BREATHERS.  They can hold their breaths for over an hour while sleeping, but less than five minutes when stressed out.  Therefore, if you ride a turtle or block its access to the surface, it's almost as stressful to the turtle as if he were a human snorkeler being kept from the surface.

Hence, in Hawaii, the authorities are absolutely dead set against anyone even influencing the direction a turtle swims.  No fooling, there are fines of up to $2,000 or 2 years in jail, and these fines get enforced.  I hate to sound like a SCUBA nazi, but DO NOT mess with the turtles.

You may notice some grey tumors on the face and fins of the turtles.  The origin of these tumors is a mystery, but they've been found all over Hawaii and as far away as Florida, where a special turtle-tumor hospital exists.  Here in Hawaii, a turtle with tumors isn't "rescued" unless it beaches itself and clearly can no longer fend for itself.  If you see a turtle who's that troubled, contact the lifeguard at that beach or call Sea Life Park, Waimea, O'ahu.  They'll know what to do.

You may see some barnacles on the turtles' shells, top and bottom.  These nasty things are actually vampires !  They drill into the unfortunate turtle and suck blood, in addition to all the regular barnacle games.  Nasty, but there's nothing we can do about it.

You may see that the turtles' heads or fins or both are wrapped in tight fishing line.  As the turtle grows older, this monofilament plastic fishing line doesn't stretch, but the turtle gets bigger.  It's a slow guillotine.  As you can tell, I have really strong mixed emotions about this problem.  It's super-uncomfortable for the turtle and lethal in the long run.  On the other hand, to swim alongside a turtle and use scissors to cut off fishing line does cause the turtle a lot of stress.  I admit, in the past I've broken the don't-touch-turtles rule repeatedly, always keeping myself to less than 2.5 minutes of stress per turtle, no matter how unsuccessful the 2.5 minutes might be in freeing the fishing line.  I'm not sure I did the right thing...certainly not legally, and maybe not morally.  It's a tough call.

For you, I'd suggest simply reporting to Sea Life Park or maybe the University or NOAA, if a turtle looks severely distressed by fishing line.

6)
Move West, and you'll find a series of north-south valleys with brown coral walls and white pebble flooring.  Follow these channels back toward your starting point.  You may see turtles in these channels as well.  You'll be in about 30 feet 10m of water, gradually growing shallower.  When you're in about 15' / 5 meters of water, do your safety stop and then start prairie-dogging to the surface, to find your way back to the exit point.  At some point, you'll have to stay at the surface and kick toward the beach (at high tide), or drop back over the wall into the boat channel (at low tide).

Avoid trying to exit on the outside of the wading pool, where there are high artificial levees. It's a spot where waves can hit the wall hard, and it's just no fun to get out there.

7)
Sad to say, I think there are showers off to the East, but little else in the way of places to rinse your gear.  Be extra careful not to get the regulators sandy as you walk up the beach.

If the divesite seems good enough for a seond dive, you're right at the edge of a really nice beach and wading pool, so set your gear down carefully, enjoy the wading pool, drink a bunch of water between dives, avoid sunburn, and eventually go trade airbottles at the car while someone watches the gear.