We are going to maui in april and want to spend time snorkeling...do the rental shops have good gear or is it better to buy our own on the mainland and bring it with us? any recommendations of rental shops?

Rent it there. It is cheap $8 per day and better quality, then if you were to buy your own!

I would also suggest renting the gear in Maui. We rented from Maui Dive Shop for $23/week (each set) in October. They have a few different places throughout the island. No problems with the equipment.

You can buy decent snorkel gear at Costco. The Costco store is within a mile of the airport. I bought a mask, snorkel, and fins for less than $40. We go to Hawaii every year, so I have got my money's worth out of them.

we've always rented from Snorkel Bob's - convenient, not too expensive and good gear. plenty of locations so you can rent from one but drop off at another.

Snorkel bob's has a website and you can reserve on-line; they also allow you to take the gear between islands and drop off wherever your trip ends. we used his laminate card with all the fish's pictures on it a lot to help identify what we were seeing. take plenty of fish food and/or frozen peas.

I bring my own gear with me. I snorkel enough to justify the added one time expense of buying of good equipement. My mask is far superior to anything I have rented. plus I wear glasses and had a prescription glass piece fitted to it.

Please,please don't feed the fish when snorkeling the reefs of Maui.