Dive Review of Kona Diving Company/n/a in
Hawaii

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Kona Diving Company/n/a: "Kona Diving Company is top notch!", Sep, 2015, by Angela Richards Dona, HI, US ( Sr. Reviewer 10 reports with 8 Helpful votes). Report 8360.
No photos available at this time
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations	N/A	Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity
Dive Operation		Shore Diving
Snorkeling
Overall Rating
Value for $$
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	It seems as though there is a culture of kind that starts with the owner Kerry and continues with all of the diving staff. When we arrived at the dock for the two evening dives, we were greeted by each of the staff personally. By this I mean, each one of them came up to each of us (and all other guests) and shook our hands and asked several questions like "where are you coming from", or similar. This is a lot more personal than standing in front of the diving group and asking each to go through their names. We've been diving with a lot of different companies and we have experienced the entire spectrum of service from great to awful. Kona Diving Company (KDC) is great. Interestingly, the worst experience we've ever had was with a diving company in Kaua'i. Most of what you see on a dive is not up to the divemasters/guides so I will leave that out for now and stick with what they ARE in control of. Before you even step on the boat, they have set up your gear. Our BCs and regs were attached to our tanks and our fins and booties and whatever accessories we had in our bags were put next to our tanks or stowed under the bench. The boat can get a little cramped but because the DMs were so helpful by setting things up for us, things ran very smoothly and space was rarely an issue. They also changed tanks after the dive, provided lights for the manta dive, and were just greatly organized. Because we were diving with them the following morning, they also took our BCs, regs, and wetsuits to rinse and dry before bringing them back to us and setting it all up for us again on the boat the next morning. When we booked the manta dive and the two tank dives for the next day, I thought the price was a bit high. I still think the price for tanks and weights is high. But once we saw the level of attention to detail and service they all put in for our boat dives, we decided the price was worth it. The store support staff was also top notch. The dive briefings were really well done, the vibe under water was chilled out and professional, our DMs provided stress-free diving and allowed us to stay under water as long as we liked. That is a HUGE plus! We stayed on a dive for 82 minutes. That's pretty unheard of with other companies. They bring lots of snacks for the divers. Water, hot chocolate (especially appreciated between dives), and even wraps. When booking they asked us if we had any food restrictions and since we are vegetarian they provided veggie wraps for us while meat-eaters had turkey wraps. We felt this was such a nice gesture. The wraps are not that good (pretty much just a tortilla and sprouts), but whatever! Too many times we have been on boats with DMs that had lost their patience for the diving service industry. Their jobs are very challenging and a lot harder than just being nice and taking people on dives. All of the DMs at KDC were pleasant, helpful, personable, enthusiastic, knowledgable, and seemed to enjoy their jobs. This is so refreshing and we hope more divers get to experience it. As for the diving and what we saw: well, the manta night dive was awesome. The owner made the risky call to send us to a different spot because of a swell that was coming in and we got the show of our lives! We had nine mantas to our ten divers! We heard that the rest of the 100 divers with different companies got knocked around at the usual spot. No idea if they saw mantas. On the first dive we actually saw a few mantas swimming around checking us out so we felt confident they would be back around later and we were right! After several boat dives we wanted to check out some shore dives. Honaunau is a marvel of gorgeous coral and beautiful colors. You will not see a lot of fish life here, possibly because of the squadrons of snorkelers, but some you will see. Giant morays, turtles, etc. We absolutely loved our dives here for the beauty of the seascape and the serenity of the diving. Diving the Big Island is so pleasant and while the coral diversity is not like the Indo-Pacific, there are some truly beautiful places to see. We could hear dolphins on several of the dives but they never made an appearance. A few in our group saw a large tiger shark but I am thankful I did not.
Websites	Kona Diving Company
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	501-1000 dives
Where else diving	Raja Ampat, Southern Visayas, Philippines, Micronesia, Fiji, Egyptian Red Sea, Bonaire, Turks & Caicos, Bahamas, Cozumel, etc.
Closest Airport	Kona	Getting There	Easy to get to Big Island from Honolulu or mainland USA
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny	Seas	calm
Water Temp	26-28°C / 79-82°F	Wetsuit Thickness	3
Water Visibility	15-25 M / 49-82 Ft
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	yes
Enforced diving restrictions	For our group there really were not any restrictions. We got to dive for as long as we wanted. Guilt is what brought us to the surface.
Liveaboard?	no	Nitrox Available?	yes
What I Saw
Sharks	None	Mantas	Squadrons
Dolphins	None	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	> 2	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish
Large Pelagics	N/A
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter		Boat Facilities
Overall rating for UWP's		Shore Facilities	N/A
UW Photo Comments	On the boat there is a small bucket for UW cameras and this was just sufficient. Nothing fancy because there really isn't enough room for much more, but it got the job done.

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Dive Review of Kona Diving Company/n/a in Hawaii

Kona Diving Company/n/a: "Kona Diving Company is top notch!", Sep, 2015,

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Dive Review of Kona Diving Company/n/a in
Hawaii