The photo below was taken in March, toward the end of the "whale season" in the Hawaiian Islands. The location was the channel between Maui and Molokai. We were finishing up an uneventful 'blue water' dive to 130ft in the channel (just to see what we could see out there), and we had begun our ascent when we heard them...Before long we encountered a mother humpback who was accompanied by a calf about 20ft in length (aligned to her rear and on the opposite side from me when I took this photo). Because the Marine Mammal Protection Act does not permit contact with these animals (even though they sought us out), we soon left the water...But not before I was able to fire off a few shots of the pair in about 25 feet of water. Unfortunately, the photo doesn't do the subjects complete justice, but this dive will always be a mindblower for me...

This was the best shot I was able to get of the mother and calf before we left the water.

The photo below was taken in about 80ft of water, off the submerged crater at the tip of Molokai. After only a few minutes into the dive, one of our divers suddenly signed "Shark." Two of us had cameras and nobody had to tell us to quickly head in a direction they pointed. And it was just as well, 'cuz nothing was stopping these guys: 7 hammerhead sharks came into view, moving fast in an orderly group, led by a large (10ft +) individual. What were they up to? Evidently, they were just cruising by to see what all the noise was in the neighborhood...I fired off a number of shots (and even followed the two small hammerheads at the tail end of the group to 140 ft), but (alas!) this was the best I could get since they weren't too keen on letting any of us get very close to them. They'd seen us, realized we weren't anything interesting to them, and they were 'outa there.'

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