Our decision to visit Okinawa was two fold. One, we wanted to see a bit of Japan from the north to the south, and second was we had heard the diving was excellent here. Happy to report we had great success on both counts.
We went for walk down to the waterfront promenade one evening and were confronted with a block long celebration. Groups of drummers and dancers were preforming right in front of our hotel. Neat to be able to sit on the balcony with a beverage and enjoy the show.
For our diving we went with the Okinawa 39er’s. Different name, but they were excellent. The gear was great and the variety of dive sites was excellent. And the Dive Masters were an entertaining lot.
With around a thousand dive operators doing business on Okinawa it is a competitive business. Most operators do not own their own boats, instead they take their groups out on independent boats with several different operators on the same boat.
Right now it looks quite nice, but once you get 20+ divers suiting up at the same time it does become a bit of a circus.Once you are in the water though, it is all good.The variety of creatures and coral was awe inspiring. From a great variety of clownfish…To dozens of these shy guys hiding in and amongst the reefs.
We did 12 dives over four days visiting Kerama Islands, Tonaki Island, and Manza. We were able to experience classic coral reefs, wall dives, drift dives, fantastic swim throughs and cavern like environments. And to top it off some wonderful muck diving with little creatures everywhere you turned your head.
This little sea turtle was the smallest one we saw. But it was sure motoring along.Karen was in her happy place when we were at Manza. These large green sea turtles were all over the place.And they all had huge remora well over a foot long attached to their shells.Of course there were clownfish to entertain.The moray eels were about as well. Looking much more frightening than they really are.We had the pleasure of seeing sea snakes on every dive we did. The dive sites were only a 5 minute boat ride out when we were at Manza, so the surface intervals between dives was a bit more civilized than the other sites.The threat of thunder showers didn’t deter the boat captains. Fortunately the bad weather held off until after we were off the water.But you couldn’t complain about the views at Tonaki and Kerama Islands.The 60 – 75 minute boat ride to the outer islands gave us a chance to rest a bit after a day of diving.Due to the combination of volcanic rock and limestone making up the island and surrounding seabed there is some fascinating swim throughs and canyons to be exploredFortunately neither of us are particularly bothered by slightly confined spaces. Also a huge thank you to Okinawa 39er’s for allowing me to use the photos they took of us on some of our dives. Much appreciated.Happened upon this baby frogfish. Truly a bizarre creature.It was easy to start to take some of the more standard fish for granted. The number and variety of butterfly fish was fantastic.Of course any dive where you get to see a sea horse is a successful dive.After a days diving we were spoiled for choices of places to go for a meal and soak in the area and relax.
We would call our stop on Okinawa an unmitigated success. Okinawa 39er’s treated us like royalty and our hotel The Moana was fantastic, with great rooms and professional staff. Oh, and the food, the food was fantastic. Truly this little corner of the world is worth exploring.
If you still want more, check out the video I put together from our last two days of diving Okinawa.
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