Kailua Bay

This picture was shot to the left of the previous picture. You'll need to park a relatively far distance from the entry point in free public parking. You can, however, drop your gear off on the pier before hand if you're nice to the gate guard (he'll give you a 5 minute vehicle pass). Leave your diving buddy with the gear, and park the car. You can see the diving is quite impressive close to the shoreline.

Dove on the south side of this bay. Not very deep, but the vis was great. Shallow reef but overall a nice dive.

I enjoyed a night dive at this location. I entered at the boat pier off the steps so entry was incredibly easy. I saw lots of different varieties of eels, tons of puffer fish. Enjoyable check-out dive for me.

My husband and I snorkeled here as part of a cruise ship stop. We got off the tender, walked a few steps to the left to the beach in front of the hotel. It was great! You could see schools of fish close to shore. Once snorkeling we saw an amazing number of yellow tang and angel fish. Saw puffer fish, needle fish, I think sergeant majors and others. Be careful though, there are rocks on the bottom; hubby and I both banged our knees.

I went here in 2001and it was great. We sat on the beach in front of the hotel and my whole family snorkeled including my dad who never does anything like that. The area was loaded with fish. All kinds too. I swam with a turtle for about an hour and half. My wife said she was about to call the Coast Guard because I was gone for so long. Lots of fun.

Kailua Bay is right at the main pier in town. You can drive right up to it, there will be a guard at the pier gate who you'll need to ask if you can drop off gear. Two-Dollar honor-box parking is right across the street or you can park at the hotel pay lot or at the free lot a 5 minute walk away. To the left of the pier (looking outward) is a nice shallow reef with a super easy entry. Follow the swim buoys out 'til you hit deep enough water to drop down and then dive. This winter there was a huge school of fish hanging out in 15' of water for several months...one could have their own "National Geographic Moment" sitting in the middle of tens of thousands of 10' schooling silver fish. This dive maxes out at about 20-25 feet. Don't bother if a cruise ship is in, the tenders kick up lots of sand. On the right side of the pier is the small boat ramp. Walk out the beach on this side and dive along the bottom - to avoid boat traffic. Once you reach the end of the pier head a bit to the right and there is a nice reef where you can hit about 60 feet if you'd like. In either case, take a dive flag and avoid boat traffic. The right side of the pier can be a great night dive, watch out for dive boats coming back from the manta dive about 1.5-2 hours after dark.

We started from north of the Kailua Kona near the Hono Kohau and started our dive from "Crescent Beach". With our gear, we walked about 200' over lava rocks and that took 5 to 10 minutes. From Crescent beach on the S. side of the harbor swim toward the green channel Buoy. We saw wonderful scenery right from the start of the dive. This is a protected bay. We saw a boat 80' above us, it was clear as a bell. Big Rocks in shallow water and big coral to 75' or so. Sand started at 80'. Garden eels at 90'; hundreds of them.