The Glass Bottom Boat

Several years of living in Hawaii had not found us taking advantage of the open water tour of Kaneohe Bay on the glass bottomed boat. Saturday seemed like a good time to try it. Actually, we were going to go on Friday since it was Prince Kuhio Day and therefore a state holiday, but after enjoying a sleep-in and then calling the place at 10:30 A.M., we had already missed the last tour of the day. We decided to schedule for Saturday. The tour requires a minimum of four people, but there were several already reserved for 11:15 so we joined that group.

We arrived a few miniutes early and were able to board shortly after paying our $17 a person fee. The crew was friendly and so were the other passengers, who happened to be several children and their parents and both sets of grandparents. That, of course, made us wish our grandkids had been here to tag along.

A few minutes into the bay we stopped and watched the fish and corals through the glass panels in the bottom of the boat. One of the staff came snorkeling up under the glass and startled me a bit since I was not expecting to see people on the bottom. His goal was to feed the fish so that they would gather under the boat and we could see more. The coral was pretty and we did see serveral species of fish swim by. We probably spent about ten minutes doing this.

Next we were ushered topside of the boat so that we could watch the waves and stop again to feed the fish and see the green sea turtles. We each were given a slice of bread and it was fun to watch the little fish swarm to the crumbs we scattered on the surface. We actually saw four turtles swimming in the area. The picture included in this article is one of them. The turtle is the dark area in the front of the picture.

The crew had us stay topside and told us about the 52 reefs in Kaneohe Bay. My big disappointment in this trip was that we never went to another spot or got to watch anymore fish on the bottom through the glass before we were docking and it was over. The whole thing lasted an hour but I really felt like it should have included a few more minutes of bottom watching. All in all, it was a fun trip, but a bit on the expensive side for what we actually got to see.