My favorite places are Ke'e, Tunnels and Hideaways.

We like Lawai, Ke`e and Tunnels. Po`ipu can be OK but crowded.

Just got back from Kauai and we had great Snorkeling at Ke'e, Tunnels and Queens Bath, all very spectacular, even saw a sea turtle our last day at Ke'e beach! Have fun and congrats!

Our favorites are Tunnels and Poipu depending on the time of year and where we are staying. Been very fortunate to swim with turtles at Poipu everytime. Both places can be crowded but there is safety in numbers too! At tunnels make sure to stay inside the outer reef. DH had a close encounter with a shark there.

You may find this book useful

amazon.com/Snorkel-Kauai-beaches-snorkeling-…

They go in great detail on each snorkeling locale (best put in points, what you might expect to see etc al).

Have a great trip.

The book listed above is great. The Malinowski's have made several great snorkeling books for the islands. We have snorkeled both Tunnels and Ke'e and we much prefer Tunnels. And as funny as it may sound we really enjoyed Lydgate Park. It has pretty much no underwater scenery but it does have quite a few varieties of fish. Many we have not seen in other places on Kauai or any island for that matter. We have seen Stripey's, Hawaiian Flounder, Milkfish, Ladyfish and mullets. We even saw a small turtle there which is the only turtle we've seen on Kauai. I guess it was pretty rare to see it. A local lady we talked to there said she hadn't seen one there in about 10 years.

I agree - Lydgate can be fun to snorkel too! :) and it is a great place to take kids as well.

Ke'e Beach offers great beginner and intermediate snorkeling. It will help if you have a tide chart. Their are numerous turtles there but you usually must go over the reef to the drop off to see them. The reef is very shallow at low tide and not very passable. You should not walk or crawl on the reef. I am about 220 lbs. so I have to wait until high water, but my wife who is considerably smaller gets out easier than I do. There is some current at the drop off but in all of the times we have been there it is not really threatening. We have never failed to see turtles there.

Tunnels Beach has a little more variety of fish and you can get to deeper water easy. It also has more coral formations than Ke'e.

We have taken the Napali Coast snorkel boat a few times and the scenery is amazing if you have not done that. We encountered numerous spinner dolphins along the way also. The snorkeling at Nuololo is average but we did have our first shark sighting there. Very exciting as he came around a couple of times and just passed below us and was off. It was a white tip reef shark which are normally very docile but we did attempt to keep our distance.

TUNNELS is the BEST!!! The most amazing view, see my pix! Easy snorkeling, my kids just went in a few feet & saw fish through the maze of coral.