If you are looking for the easiest, most accessible, and well set-up spot for shore diving in Maui, look no further than Ulua Beach. Located just before the shops of Wailea, it is a short drive from the scuba shops in Kihei. I would suggest Maui Dreams as they have the cheapest tank rentals on the island.
It has been a long time since I dove Ulua Beach. For some reason it didn't impress me much early in my Maui diving career and I just always went to other places over it after that. But with time for one dive left before heading back to Vermont, Heidi and I decided to give it a try. And I'm so glad we did.
The set-up for shore diving here is some of the best in Maui. There are multiple showers, a bathroom, and even a couple of benches with tank holding spots near the car drop-off spot. You can drop everything off there and then head back a few hundred feet for parking. The walk down to the beach is very easy, and just like that you are wading out into the calm waters over a very sandy bottom.
This is a pretty shallow dive, following the rocky outcropping to the right of Ulua Beach. The coral is thriving here and forms a very dense reef. We were hoping to find frogfish and harlequin shrimp, but despite our best search, we came up empty. Yet the dive still felt like a huge success. We saw tons of fish, a few turtles, and tons of nudibranchs. Red spotted and gold lace nudibranchs really stole the show. We stayed underwater for about an hour and fifteen minutes, but I could have stayed for another hour easily.
Now that we know how easy Ulua is to dive, it won't take us another decade to come back like this time.
Trembling Nudibranch
Gold lace nudibranch
Red spotted nudibranch
Close up of a purple pin cushion sea star
Red spotted nudibranch
-Dai Mar