Diving the North Shore, Hawaii
Do you like shore diving? Then Shark's Cove on Oahu's North Shore is a fun, pretty chill dive spot. Big wave season starts in September and ends in the April/May timeframe. When I was there in September the conditions were starting to change towards the "winter" months in Hawaii -- which makes the surf on the North Shore famous. However, good large surf/swell does not equal good diving so would recommend diving this spot in the summer months.
Dive operators hire boats to take divers to different sides of the island. I only did a few days of diving though and wanted to stay close to the North Shore (with my friends) who weren't diving.
Contrary to the name, Shark's cove doesn't usually have sharks in present day. Two hypotheses that I heard from the locals for the name: one, during the 40's there was a butcher shop across the street and they would dump their by-product into the cove which would attract the sharks; or two, supposedly the rock formation from an aerial perspective looks like the head of a hammerhead shark. Regardless if any of it is true, it is beautiful.
Shark's cove can be challenging to dive if there is a swell. Lucky for me, on the first day of diving there was only a minor swell. We suit up in the parking lot with tanks and all and we head into the water. I don't typically wear a wetsuit if I can help it, but it was cold. So of course that meant 14lbs of weight for me. The entry point has a lot of rocks that jut out so after you put on your mask and fins, you have have to look and see where you are going so that you don't run into a big rock. If there is swell the DM's will want you to get out to center to descend quickly so that you do not get caught in the impact zone.
We headed to the left side of Shark's Cove. It is pretty shallow, max depth of 40ft. At shallower depths you see a bunch of sea life. There were turtles and day octopus, which were fun to see.
The second dive was on the right side at Shark's Cavern. There are some really great swim through caverns which are fun. Having a torch is nice, but not entirely necessary. Again it was shallow dive with a max depth of 40ft.
Second day of diving was again at Shark's cove but with another DM who has been diving at that same spot for 12 years. And the visibility was even better because the swell had died down even more. Visibility was around 75ft-80ft and I had a great time chasing a turtle for little bit.
There was a day octopus that came out as well.
Day Octopus!
The reef was beautiful and had so much life living in it. Tons of fish!
Would highly recommend diving on the North Shore, if you want to see some fun things. Great couple days of diving, really chill and relaxed and a perfect way to round out my trip to Oahu.
