This is really late, but my husband and I went to the Big Island of Hawai'i in December last year. We were did boat dives out of Kona, 7 day dives and the Manta night dive which was just amazing. It really was worthy of all the hype.
Here are my writeups, in chronological order. We have about 20 dives under our belt and are still getting used to our equipment.
Big Island trip reports - Dec, 2015
Re: Big Island trip reports - Dec, 2015
Glad to hear that manta dive is still great. I did it the first time and it blew my mind. The second time there were zero mantas (and a dive guide sheepishly admitted afterward that they hadn't seen one in weeks.
What were your favorite dive sites and did you do any shore diving?
What were your favorite dive sites and did you do any shore diving?
Re: Big Island trip reports - Dec, 2015
Didn't do any shore diving, but my favorite boat site was Carousel. The small wall, coral beds and sheer variety of fish was amazing. A close second was the cave at Pyramid. Going through the temperature change and seeing all of the nudibranchs was really interesting.