Snorkeling at Honolua Bay on Maui

Last year I wrote about snorkeling at Kauai's Poipu Beach Park. The spot had something for everyone: sugary sand, a protected kiddie lagoon, surfing, rest rooms, picnic areas, restaurants, lifeguards, hotels, coral reefs and, yes, terrific snorkeling.

Much more recently, in fact just two weeks ago, I snorkeled at Honolua Bay on the island of Maui. Its wildness draws quite a contrast with Poipu in almost every way except one: some of the best snorkeling in the Aloha State.

Honolua is in the extreme northwest of Maui, one of the last stops in a string of tourist attractions that starts with Lahaina eleven miles away. Lahaina is a colorful, lively town that retains many of the buildings and architectural styles from its booming whaling days in the nineteenth century. To the north is the sprawling beachside resort development of Kaanapali, followed by the snorkeling hotspots of Black Rock and Kahekili Beach. Up the coast is the affordable hotel district of Kahana and then the stunningly picturesque bays of Napili and Kapalua.

In a way, Honolua is at the end of the road, at a point where it looks like real estate development is finally on pause. The forested volcanic slopes reach uninterrupted to the rugged coastline with spectacular views of Molokai eight miles across the channel. There are no picnic areas, restaurants, lifeguards, parking lots or resorts at Honolua: just room along the road's shoulder for your car, two port-a-potties, and a long, tree-canopied path to the bay. (Before the pandemic, a food truck or two was known to set up shop nearby.)

Instead of a sugary sand beach greeting you at the end of a five-minute trek, there's a wide, rocky shoreline you must carefully navigate to enter the placid water. But it's well worth the tricky balancing act needed to safely don your snorkel gear and wade in.

I encountered busy schools of bluestripe snappers and convict tangs just moments after I put my masked face in the crystal clear water. As I swam along the southern edge of the bay, I not only observed a few green sea turtles in the shallows but also many varieties of butterflyfish, triggerfish and surgeonfish. Most notable was a large and especially easy-to-photograph redlip parrotfish that seemed to actually smile for my camera.

After a short break back on the rocks, I snorkeled along the northern shoreline where I observed some of the most beautiful coral formations in Hawaii. But first I quickly spotted what might have been my first blue boxfish. Nearby, several cornetfish floated still amidst an equally quiet school of yellowfin goatfish, deep at the seafloor. At least one palenose parrotfish busily scraped at coral, an interesting part of its diet. And a trio of large bluefin trevallies made their synchronized rounds, scintillating in the dappled light breaking the water's surface.

However it was the shapes, colors and varieties of corals that mesmerized me most as I swam further and further out to the point that defines the northern edge of Honolua Bay. Dreamily I found myself within the largest school of fish I've ever encountered.

Each individual was nondescript, less than six inches long, probably a mackerel or a scad, gray and quite plain. But there had to be thousands, tens of thousands, or maybe hundreds of thousands of them. As I swam deeper into their school, they swarmed and undulated in a single mass, cloudlike, eventually separating like a curtain, drawing open on a view of even more enchanting corals.

I didn't want my swim to end but an hour in the water, even in tropical Maui, can test the limits of the healthiest body. But even on a very short visit, Honolua Bay reminds you that there is no limit to the abounding beauty of its pristine coral reef and its thriving sea life.