Our standard for facts
Every factual claim about safety, law, protected areas or wildlife distances should be traceable to an official or well-established source. Our order of preference is:
- Government agencies: NOAA Fisheries, the National Weather Service, the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, the Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources (including its Divisions of Aquatic Resources, State Parks and Boating and Ocean Recreation), the Hawaiʻi Department of Health, the Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, and county ocean safety and lifeguard services.
- Laws and official records: state acts, county ordinances and the Federal Register.
- Training and medical bodies: published standards from dive training agencies and guidance from Divers Alert Network and diving medicine organizations.
- Established news outlets and dive publications, used for reporting on recent changes and for site descriptions, and named as such.
Main sources are listed at the bottom of each guide. Where sources disagree, or where we could not confirm a detail, we say so on the page or leave the detail out.
What we will not publish
- Invented prices, opening hours, phone numbers, reviews, ratings or awards. When a price or schedule changes often, we point you to the official page instead.
- Claims that we visited, dove or tested something unless that is true.
- Safety advice that contradicts official guidance.
- Encouragement to approach, touch or feed protected wildlife.
Advertising and sponsored placements
The site is funded by advertising. Automatically placed ads, such as those from Google AdSense, are chosen by the ad network, not by us. Placements for specific businesses are labeled as advertisements or featured placements. Advertisers have no say over the content of our conditions, safety, law, etiquette or sunscreen pages. Directory listings of dive shops are descriptive and are not endorsements of safety records, which we are not in a position to audit. Always confirm an operator's current permits, insurance and reviews yourself.
Some pages link to related travel guides published by the same company. Those links are there to help with trip planning.
Updates and dates
Rules in Hawaiʻi change: reservation systems are introduced, fees go up, protected areas close for recovery and county ordinances are amended. We review safety and law pages regularly and update them when we learn of a change. If a page could not be re-checked recently, the official sources linked on it are the best place to confirm current details.
Corrections
If you find an error, please tell us through the contact page and include the page address and, if possible, a link to the official source. We correct factual errors promptly and do not quietly change safety guidance without checking the source.
Use of images
Photos on this site illustrate diving in Hawaiʻi in general. Unless a caption says otherwise, a photo is not a picture of the exact site or animal named in the nearby text.