Snorkeling Kahekili Beach Park
Maui Snorkel Guide
We love snorkeling Kahekili. The full name of this location is Ali'i Kahekili Nui 'Ahumanu Beach Park. The beach is one long strip extending from Kahekili north to Airport Beach and it offers some excellent snorkeling. The best snorkeling, parking and facilities are at Kahekili, so park here. Kahekili Beach is directly in front of the Westin Ka’anapali Ocean Resort Villas. The beach is quite narrow and the reef is parallel to and very close to shore, so it is very accessible. Kahekili has it all: fish, turtles, a nice range of depth, and lots of interesting corals to explore. It is not to be missed, and is one of the top picks in our Maui Snorkeling Guide eBook.
Site Details - Snorkeling Kahekili
Water Entrance
Head for the beach from the parking lot and enter the water in front of the pavillion. The beach is sandy and easy in bare feet, but once you enter the water the rocks and reef start quickly, so get your fins on and float over the reef as soon as you can.
Where To Snorkel
Straight out from the pavillion we found ourselves in a wonderland of great corals, tons of sea life, and a variety of interesting depths. The reef runs close to shore, and keeps on heading north for a long ways. You can choose your own depth, because it gets gradually deeper the further out you go. The reef comes within a few feet of the surface and drops off to 30 feet plus the further off shore you go. Don’t go away from the beach too far as there could be currents. We swam in deeper waters northbound, turned around before we were tired and then swam back closer to shore over shallower corals southbound. There were tons of fish, small turtles, eels and a very nice variety of healthy corals.
What We Saw Snorkeling Kahekili
In the healthy corals we saw here, there was quite a bit of the less common Finger Coral. We saw turtles here and many fish, including: Saddle Wrasse, Bird Wrasse, Paletail Unicornfish, large schools of Blackfin Chromis, Crocodile Needlefish, large schools of Indo-Pacific Sergeant Major, Bluespine Unicornfish, Brown Surgeonfish, Goldring Surgeonfish, Black Durgon, Arc-Eye Hawkfish, Scarface Blenny, Stareye Parrotfish, Ornate Butterflyfish, Humuhumunukunukuapua’a, Cornetfish, Orangespine Unicornfish, school of initial phase Palenose Parrotfish, Whitemouth Eel, and Manybar Goatfish.
More Snorkeling Kahekili Details
For full details about snorkeling Kahekili Beach Park, including detailed driving directions (and to find all the best snorkeling spots on Maui), check out our Maui Snorkeling Guide eBook.
Return to the Maui snorkeling page
|
