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Turtle
Heaven
a.k.a. Police Beach & possibly a.k.a. Hale Iwa Beach Park & Hale'Iwa Trench in Hale'Iwa Town
on
O'ahu Island, Hawaii
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at ShoreDiving.com
at ShoreDiving.com |
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Turtle
Heaven
in Hale'Iwa Town on O'ahu Island, Hawaii
a.k.a. Police
Beach and possibly Hale
Iwa
Beach Park (?) and Hale'Iwa Trench (?)
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| Recommendation: Excellent multi-level, wall, or shallow dive. This site is often divable when the rest of the North Shore has waves that're too big (particularly in Winter, when the North Shore is home to big-wave surfers). Looong walk or surface swim from the beach across shallow water to the dive. Excellent facilities include massive parking, pay phones, pretty sand beach, shady coconut trees, and immaculate bathrooms with showers. |
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| Notes: Depths top off at 95'/31m. Visibility tops off at 40'/13m and frequently gets quite low, although this dive (amazingly) can be entertaining even when visibility is so low that the divers must join hands to stay together. A long surface swim or walk from the shore to the dive point can make the dive tiresome. Three times out of ninety dives at this site, I've had a lifeguard on a jetski come over to tell me that there are tigersharks in the area, but I've seen none. I've seen a dead baby hammerhead shark here, which was a bit distressing, but I've seen exactly zero live sharks of any variety here. Frequent jet-skiers can make this site a bit of a hazard. |
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| Fun
bits: This area is home to dozens of green sea turtles. As I said earlier, even when visibility is worse than in a puddle in a WWI trench, you can find at least 15 turtles (provided you know which little shelves to look in). On a usual day with visibility near 40' / 13m, you can easily spot 15 to 25 turtles. Roughly 1/3 will be monstrous, easily longer than you, with shells roughly 6' / 2m long. The remainder will be immature with shells slightly more than 2 feet long. There are at least 2 cleaning stations along the cliff-end, here, so bring your cameras. You can also frequently find small-claw lobsters, Spanish Dancer eggs, and (rarely) the monstrous two-fist-size Hawaiian Tiger Cowries. There's also the usual assortment of reef fishes: moorish idols, butterfly fish, bird wrasses, moray eels and so on. I've even spotted living paper cowries and living Triton's Trumpets (foot-long, moderately pretty shells) here. Note: Do not move tiger cowries. They're VERY territorial. Also, do not mess with Triton's Trumpets. Although they're harmless to us, they are the only known predator for that horrible, horrible scourge of the reef, crown-of-thorns starfish. To hurt a Triton's Trumpet, therefore, would be a great sin, like killing the cop who patrols your favorite neighborhood. |
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| Dangerous
bit: Did I mention the jet-ski franchise that often sets up nearby ? Or the 3 times out of 90 that a lifeguard on a jetski came by to tell my group that a tiger shark had been spotted in the area ? Haircut, anyone ? Sudden, rapid weightloss, anyone ? What, no takers ? No volunteers ? :^D Also, this dive has spots considerably deeper than most shore dives (slightly exceeding 90' / 33m), so you should keep close track of your dive tables, depth, and bottom time. Dive with a computer or wheel if possible, because this dive works so very well as a multilevel dive. |
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| 1) | How
to dive it: Have a nice lunch in Hale Iwa town, North Shore of O'ahu, at the Coffee Corner (next to a glass blower's, a crystal shop, and a Hawaiian Coffee-and-macadamia-nut-grower's direct outlet, or visit the Wyland sea-theme painting and sculpture gallery. Or grab a snowcone at the world-famous Matsumoto Shave Ice place. Then head a little east, past the 76 gas station and over a shady bridge made of building-tall half-circles of white concrete. (This bridge featured prominently in an old Elvis movie, by the way. "Blue Hawaii", I think.) On your left, you'll see a huge parking lot and a really really nice set of bathrooms and outside showers. Drive past the main parking lot, and you'll see a dead-end road that goes straight down to the beach behind the bathrooms. Drive down there and park at the end. |
| 2) | Leave
your gear in the car, and walk to the front of your car.
From here, you're looking out over a huge shallow bay with a sandy
peninsula on your right ("Police Beach", named after the policeman's
benevolent association that often camps here) and a boat channel off to
your left. This is clearly not the famous Hale Iwa beach where surf competitions turn promising young athletes into minced sharkbait. If you look waaay off into the middle distance on your left, you can see that beach. If you're unlucky, a tourist-industry jetski operation has set up shop right on top of your divesite. It'd be a good idea to march over and let them know you'll be diving there (if you've got the courage to dive under jetskis). If there are any jetskis at all, it'd be a smart idea to use a dive float with a clearly marked SCUBA flag, and to let the jetskiers know what it means. Trust me, you don't want half a dozen tousits thinking that your divemarker is a pylon for them to make hairpin turns around, while they race in circles. Clearly, using jet skis in this area is also incredibly annoying to the turtles, and a poor use of this great site. If you find any way to voice this feeling, suggest that this area become a turtle preserve or that it be used by rowboat-sized, quiet glassbottom boats like the ones used around Hawaii Kai and Port Lock. This site is SINGING with exciting life, compared to Hawaii Kai / Port Lock's comparable shallows where tiny glassbottom boats operate. Unfortunately, this site has always been a tremendous secret, but the secrecy hasn't protected it from jetskiers. In fact, I don't know anyone else who dives here. I was introduced to the site by a jet-skier friend who knew I was searching for a place to do the Advanced Course deep dive, from the shore. He'd been snorkelling after a ski, and had noticed that these shallow flats go abrubtly from a 3~15' deep shelf, over a cliff down to "the abyss", as he put it. I investigated, put a tank on him, and discovered that the site only goes to 95'/33m at most-- not quite enough for my need... but we discovered that the site is absolutely loaded with sea turtles, more than any other site I've ever visited outside of the Palau islands. The site's a treasure. Compare this site to the well-known "turtle" sites on O'ahu, which boast of having a consistent 3 to 6 turtles: Turtle Alley, Makaha Caverns, and so on. |
| 3) | Anyway,
you're evaluating the site for dive potential, at this
point. Assuming that jet skis aren't going to be a problem,
or
you've already spoken to the jet skiers to let them know you're here,
let's review what to look for in this divesite. In
summertime, the site's as flat as a table. In the worst
Winter
wave-season, you may find that large slow gentle swells (not quite
waves) make this site a little too
unpleasant. Other
reasons to cancel a dive here would include poor visibility (I've dived
here when visibility was about 1 yard / 1m, but I can't swear that
those conditions are for everyone. It was creeeeepy.) or
evidence
of hammerheads or tigersharks. On the one occasion that I
found a
dead baby hammerhead here, we chose not to dive. Where dead
babies are, surely a pissed-off Mom is nearby. Nearly always, though, this site is divable. Except during extraordinary swells, there's never a bad current, and as I've said, it's a rare day when visibility or wave action make this spot tough. |
| 4) | Gear up
almost entirely, with the exception that you should carry some
water for drinking after the dive...and put your mask in your fin's
footpocket, and put your fins' heelstraps through the chestband clip on
your BCD. Leave your wetsuit open or
stripped to the
waist, if you're hot. Lock you car with all your stuff inside
and
out of sight. Leave a "no money on board" sign in the window. Walk to the northeast, through the coconut tree forest to the nearest portion of Police Beach (the first beach you see, to the east). Walk straight into the water, and head north-west toward the very furthest point of land you can see to the northwest. Walking in this direction will take youto the boat channel, and you should feel that you're heading toward a small green-with-white-stripe coffeecan-shaped buoy. You've got a loooong (50 yard ?) walk or swim ahead of you, ending near that green buoy. |
| 5) | At the
buoy, the shallows become a wall. If you want a looong shallow dive, then just pop your regulator in, start your watch, and sink to the TOP EDGE of the wall here. Head right (east), and go slowly, glancing shoreward and also downward into the depths. Under you will be BIG turtles, and shoreward you'll see small turtles and cleaning stations and all manner of reef fishes. If you're carrying a camera with a macro lens, then stick to the shallow dive. You'll find plenty to look at, lots of places to steady yourself as you focus, lots of good lighting, and lots to photograph. If you prefer to do a multi-level dive, plan on a pattern of 90'/30m for 10 minutes, 60'/18m for 20 minutes, and the remainder of your air at 30'/10m or less, gradually tapering off into shallow corals at safety-stop depths. Agree on a set of hand-signals for the times when you have to ascend to 60'/18m max depth and then for 33'/10m max depth. Don't let buddies break the maximum depths or exceed the times for each level... it's too easy to get extra nitrogen during the deep part. Go down as a group, either making a free descent or using the wall as your depth-control. The bottom is silty, so try to stay at least a meter/yard above it, and refrain from kicking up clouds. The bottom here is only 45'/15m, but as you follow the bottom edge of the wall as you swim west, you'll notice the depths quickly reach 90'/30m. |
| 6) | At one
point along the wall, you'll see a dark tower near the
wall. The base of this dark tower is 91' or 92', the maximum
depth for this dive. While diving the deeper portions, keep your eyes looking up (to see silhouettes of the really big turtles swimming above you) and also check out the small overhangs in the base of the cliff. Lots of turtles nap in those overhangs. Later when you ascend to mid-cliff (18m/60'), use the same pattern, and also expect to see some small-claw spiny lobsters in those mid-cliff overhangs. |
| 7) | The
marker for the extreme East end of this dive is when you encounter
a very very large crack or valley in the cliff wall, and the crack
extends far inshore. Follow this crack at any depth, and work
your way back toward shore. You'll find gradually smaller and
smaller and shallower cracks, ultimately finishing in tall sea grasses
at the extreme Eastern edge of Police Beach, quite close to where you
started. In these shallow cracks you'll find cleaning stations and a very large number of smallish (2'~3' shell) sea turtles. You'll see spanish dancer eggs and moray eels, and a wonderful array of reef fish. At cleaning stations, stay low and quiet and at least 7'/2m away from the cleaner-wrasses. Watch as turtles, fish, and whatnot come into the area, display open mouths and fanned fins, and get the cleaner wrasse to waltz around their bodies, picking off dead skin and parasites. It's a fish-style carwash. Take your time when you reach about 15' / 5m depth, since this is your safety stop. It's a really pleasant way to end a dive... really, the dive just tapers off until you can stand up and say "Wow !" |
