French Polynesia, October 2010

Snorkeling with humpback whales, face time with feeding blacktip reef sharks, eye-contact with play-fighting adolescent bottle-nose dolphins, diving with more than hundred gray reef sharks, swimming with napoleon, ... plenty of fascinating encounters indeed!


travel blog

Rangiroa - Fakarava

Short 1h30 flight from Rangiroa to Fakarava*, via Manihi, followed by a 25' pickup ride and 1h30 speed-boat transfer to Tetamanu Village, a basic but friendly resort located on Fakarava's south end, right beside the Tumakohua passage, French Polynesia's #1 dive spot.

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We're warmly welcomed by Annabelle, Tetamanu's charming hostess. The two french guides though seem a lot less enthusiastic. Both are here temporarily. Not surprising I guess given the rather isolated nature of the resort and the fact that there's only one great dive site.

Polynesian black pearls

Today we visited Gauguin’s Pearl Farm, where we got shown around the sweat shop and informed about the pearl cultivation process.

Silver banquet

Got my mask knocked or kicked off upon back-roll entry. Luckily another diver saw it sink and caught it before it disappeared into perdition. Not quite the close contact with wild-life I had in mind coming here.

After several no show dives, our guide once again took two frozen tunas down with him to attract some action, desperate to offer us some entertainment. This time on Avatoru's reef edge, under slightly better controlled circumstances.


Guest list: one large & one medium silvertip, besides a couple of smaller ones for good measure and some gray reef sharks.

Forbidden attraction

Forbidden shark feeding dive off the coast so as not to upset the local fishermen? The sharks weren't hungry though, with just one silvertip and less than a dozen gray reef sharks joining our party after hanging around in the blue for almost half an hour.

I'm no expert, but hanging down some boxed bait from a bobbing boat while having a dozen uncontrolled divers hovering all over the place waiting for some feeding action, just doesn't feel safe right to me.

Eye-contact!

This morning we've been split up in two teams. A deep six team and a shallow four team. I'm in the latter by choice. No way I'm diving to 50m on a single tank of air with unplanned decompression and possibly strong currents, just to get a bit closer to the gray sharks congregating down there. Not to mention with a bunch of unknown, probably unqualified, and thus for me unreliable divers.

Soon after submerging, we're passed by a tight pod of seven bottle-nose dolphins and get approached by the resident school of large barracudas. Still wowed by these wonderful sightings, Yann suddenly points upwards. At the surface, two dolphins are taking a deep breath before plunging 25m straight down towards us. WOW! They appear to be two adolescent males undecided about play-figthing together or taking a look at us mesmerized tourists. So they show off both to each other and us, swimming real close to me several times. Once even close & slow enough for a brief eye-contact!

Afternoon slack-tide dive without anything worth mentioning. That's just the way it is with action diving. Either it happens or it doesn't.

Easy diving

Two nice & easy dives today, one at Avatoru and one on Tiputa's outer corner reef.

Avatoru sightings: handful of relatively small silver tips plus a larger one, schooling juvenile barracudas and big eyed jacks and a dozen or so of very serious looking african pompanoes.

Tiputa sightings: seven gray reef sharks coming up from the blue hoping to get fed, two chasing tunas trying to catch a meal, a lone napoleon and some heard but unseen dolphins.

Shock treatment

We're ten divers plus two french guides and a polynesian boatsman on a big zodiac from The Six Passengers. It's overcast and the sea's kind of rough for our first dive at Rangiroa's famous Tiputa passage. Not what I'd call ideal conditions nor site for a check dive...

We're all supposed to jointly roll-back into the ocean at 1-2-3-GO! Standard procedure, but with empty BCDs to be able to submerge immediately upon entry. As I roll-back on GO! I can see the diver on my left still sitting on the boat. Splash! I'm about to pop back to the surface, surrounded & buoyed by bubbles, when I suddenly get knocked on the head by a tank. Shocked, I need a moment to recover my dislodged mask and my bearings as waves keep rolling over my face. Except for Petra, everybody has immediately submerged, including my hit-and-run man, and is already carelessly playing with a couple of dolphins down below. Luckily only the side of the tank made contact and chafed my hooded head, and I'm able to dive and enjoy some nice sightings too, e.g. a school of big barracudas, five mantas in a row flying by beneath us and a carpet of gray reef sharks down below around 50m. The dive's end though is again rather stressy, as we get sucked through the passage by the incoming tide.

The late afternoon sunset dive is a much more relaxing and uneventful happening, on top of a very nice reef with plenty of life, several schools of juvenile barracudas, two eagle rays flying by and various relatively close encounters with bottle-nose dolphins :o)

Moorea - Rangiroa

Early pick-up at 4:50am in front of Linareva for the 40' bus ride to Moorea's airfield and short 10' hop to Tahiti's airport, in time for our connecting 1h flight to Rangiroa and short ride to the Maitai, a modern impersonal 39 bungalows resort. Room to room a 5h transfer.

The Maitai's restaurant serves good but expensive food (1500-3000 CFP/meal). Across the street are a small store, selling baguettes, cheese, tomatoes, chips & water (110 CFP/1.5l bottle) a.o. and a small restaurant, serving pizzas (1250 CFP), meat & fish dishes.

Dive briefing by Yann at 14:30 for Tauchertraum's group of ten divers.