Exploring the Depths of Kona, Hawaii With PADI Club

Our turboprop plane banks sharply towards the runway, and Kona’s aquamarine waters and black lava coastline come into view. This is Hawaii , the BIG Island, PADI Club™ trip destination for the next 8 days.

PADI Club members ages 15 to 69 have traveled the distance to experience an amazing week of diving and topside fun, with worldwide representation from Kenya, Columbia, Canada, Switzerland, Dominican Republic and the continental United States.

Nearly half the Kona crew is here to reconnect with friends from previous PADI Club adventures in the Florida Keys, Belize, and Bonaire. But what is PADI Club ? PADI Club is the world’s largest community of scuba divers, ocean enthusiasts, and ambassadors of the sea. Our love of diving and unique member benefits help us stay connected with the underwater world year-round, even when we can’t get in the water.

The Kona WhatsApp group chat has been abuzz for weeks with chatter about upcoming PADI Open Water Diver certifications, wetsuit recommendations, the advantages of diving with enriched air (nitrox), and more. It now pings with travel updates from Club members en-route to Hawaii.

After the dive bag schlepp, hotel check-in, and collecting our complimentary mai tai tickets, we’re on island time. Tomorrow is a day for island exploration, scuba gear drop-off, and optional checkout dives. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Ocean Rider Seahorse Farm, Kona Coffee Tours and poolside relaxation top the list, followed by a manta ray presentation and the traditional PADI Club welcome dinner and raffle.

Hawaii is a world-class diving destination, with healthy corals, lava formations, abundant wildlife, and 80 to 100-foot (24 to 30-meter) visibility on average. Our dive itinerary with Jack’s Diving Locker includes a two-tank dive each morning and an alternating manta dive or blackwater dive each night.

Turtle Heaven, Garden Eel Cove, and Suck’em Up Lava Tube are among dozens of dive sites stretching along the western Hawaii coastline, offering unlimited potential for adventure. On our second day of diving, we get an unexpected whitetip reef shark photo op while waiting outside Suck’em Up Cavern, aptly named for the timing required to exit the cavern with the outgoing surge. Colorful sponges line the walls and the ceiling of the cavern. And, upon exiting Skull Cave, we spend around 20 minutes in the company of three curious whitetip reef sharks.

Jack’s boat captains and dive crew are first-class. Mongo’s pre-dive briefings alert us to his favorite resident critters at each dive site, and dive guides Toby, Chris and Justin’s site familiarity and experience make each dive memorable. We’re rewarded on every dive with bucket list marine wildlife sightings: rockmover wrasses, scrawled filefish, frogfish, Potter’s angelfish, flame angelfish, wire coral gobies, juvenile psychedelic wrasses, green sea turtles (honu), whitetip reef sharks, and a tiger shark named Laverne.

Image courtesy of Keller Laros, Manta Pacific Research Foundation

Kona, Hawaii is famous for coffee, and manta rays. Most common in nearshore waters is Mobula alfredi, or reef manta, with giant manta rays (Mobula birostris) making an occasional appearance. Our weeklong PADI Club event began with a manta presentation by Keller Laros, Founder and Director of Manta Pacific Research Foundation . Keller and his team have a long-standing relationship with these animals spanning 10 to 33 years; each manta is identifiable by spots on its ventral side (underside). If you upload your Kona manta photos to Manta Pacific’s website, they’ll help you identify it, and if it’s a manta that has never before been documented, you can name it! Many divers opted in to get their Manta Ray Diver Distinctive Specialty certification this trip.

A typical, two-tank manta dive begins with a pre-sunset dive in and around the manta viewing area or “campfire” and down a slope to 70 feet (21 meters). The reef mantas we’ll see on our dives with Jack’s Diving Locker range from three to 12 feet (one to four meters) in “wing span”. Four manta sightings on the first dive portend the magic that’s to come. After the sun goes down, it’s lights, camera, action! After a brief descent to 30 feet (9 meters), divers form a circle around “the campfire”, and dive lights click on to attract the plankton for mantas to feed. We settle in for the show. The mantas are graceful, majestic, sentient beings. PADI Pro Brandon Zwirner said it best, “It’s their world, and we’re just blowing bubbles in it.”

Back at Honokohau Harbor, I hear Club members say if they don’t see anything else the rest of the week, they’ll be happy. This is why they came here. The best part? You don’t have to be a certified diver to experience the mantas at night, snorkelers are welcome, too!

Does motoring three miles (five kilometers) offshore and hovering over a 5,000-foot (1500-meter) drop at night sound like your kind of fun? This is blackwater diving. The dive location or “abyss” chosen by Jack’s Diving Locker is a migratory path for myriad animals, some recognizable, others unworldly. Out in open ocean, we clip into a line attached to the boat with a weight at 40 feet (12 meters) to prevent further descent and the freedom to swim in a 360° circle. Our lights illuminate the inky blackness around us, and a bizarre but mesmerizing rotation of aquatic life begins. A tiny, translucent crab floats near my face, a Venus Girdle shimmies nearby, and schools of squid jet through the water column. The sheer magnitude of life passing by is unfathomable; it’s all around us. The Pelagic Magic dive is a rewarding, dreamlike experience, an exercise for becoming more comfortable in the open ocean at night, and a bonus blackwater certification opportunity for many Club members. Sample the dive here .

Are you interested in meeting divers from around the world, and expanding your dive skills and knowledge? Guest speakers, expert dive specialty instruction, and nature and wildlife education are an integral part of every PADI Club adventure. Kona divers achieved certifications in Open Water Diver , Advanced Open Water Diver , Enriched Air (Nitrox) Diver , and completed Manta Ray Diver Distinctive Specialty and blackwater diving courses. PADI AWARE Foundation, Manta Pacific Research Foundation, Keck Observatory, SeaLife Cameras, Andy Casagrande, and GoPro gave dynamic presentations all week long with time to ask all our burning questions.

The launch of the new GoPro PADI Distinctive Specialty course was an event highlight. Its aim is to produce competent and skilled GoPro content creators above and below the water, and to empower storytellers to create, edit, and share their passion with better content through the powerful tools in the GoPro Hero ecosystem. Four GoPro team members and Emmy award-winning cinematographer Andy Casagrande conducted the courses, Q&amp;A sessions, and provided one-on-one support aboard the dive boats with pro tips for shooting and filming. Nine divers completed this certification, and the content the Kona divers produced was impressive!

Have you always wanted to dive Mexico? Are you Interested in sea lions, sunken ships and meeting celebrity guests? From the sea lion colonies of Los Islotes to the Fang Ming and Salvatierra wrecks, there will be no shortage of amazing experiences in the Sea of Cortez. The next PADI Club trip will take place in La Paz, Mexico in 12-19 October 2024

Join us in La Paz with special guest and humanitarian Captain Jason Chambers from the hit reality show Below Deck.

Remember, you must be a PADI Club member to join the trip. So, click the button below and start your membership today!

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