Fire Station, 3 Tables And Sharks Cove Some Of The Best Scuba Diving On Oahu Hawaii
There is a very short section of road up near Haleiwa that has some very unique shore scuba diving 3 unique scuba diving spots Sharks cove, Fire station and 3 tables are one right after the on the North shore of Oahu Hawaii by the sunset beach Food Land grocery store. This area is better known as a surfing Mecca with “pipe line”& “Sunset” two very famous surf breaks are very close by; but in the summer when the surf is not up, its time to go scuba diving.
“Sharks Cove” received its name not for the residents but because of a rock formation that looks like a shark. The neat thing about “Sharks Cove” is the lava tunnels that you can get into there, where you can spend the better part of the dive in a maze that has as its residents, pop corn shrimp, conger eels, Spanish dancers and lobsters that some estimate are over 100 yrs old,that are so large that they cannot get out of the holes any more.
“3 Tables” has 3 very large coral heads that break the surface this is a excellent snorkeling or free diving site as well as you can see a lot of reef fish like pipe fish from the sea-horse family and scorpion fish which look like rocks in relatively shallow water. The one thing that can be a problem here is the surge which can take you onto the rocks which is not a very fun thing to happen, so you need to pay attention when you are at this site.
“Fire Station” is cool as no body ever dives here so the fish are not spooked very easy. For all 3 of these sites they are no fish no take zones so the fish are calmer because of that, they seem to know that they are safe here. This site has channels running between huge rocks and you can swim between them and look at the walls on either side for shells and crabs and other small stuff, and you will see many reef fish including big ones looking for dinner and some very interesting ones like cuttlefish, which like octopus have the ability to change their colors; and a even cooler adaptation, is they can change their apparent texture as well, very beautiful to see when they are changing colors rapidly. Onetime at this site I blinked a flash light at a cuttlefish and it went from back to front dark to white dark to white almost thought I was going to hear the song from close encounters!