Diving with sharks

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  Moorea, French Polynesia
Monday, January 15, 2007

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Syleste and I took the ferry to Moorea, still under the rain. It was a 30 minutes crossing on the fast boat. Once on Moorea, we took a truck to go around the south of the island, going half way around it to end up on the west coast. It was a 45 minutes ride, with beautiful beaches, the blue waters of the lagoon, palm trees and vegetation everywhere, and houses along the road in this little paradise. It was still raining though.

We met in the bus Johnny, an american sailor, and we all went to get a cheap bed in a camping where they offered dorms. (cheap is still over 10 euros). Cold showers of course, but there was a kitchen, a small supermarket not too far, and the beach was just there.

I stayed there for a few nights, hopelessly waiting for a bit of sun to go hiking inland. That did not happen, and the lush green flancs of the caldera remained covered with clouds. A real shame, especially when faced with the postcards showing me what I was missing.
What I got though, was the blue lagoon, even if the sky was grey. It was actually better to be in the water under the rain than out of it.

I also did a couple of dives. Because of the relatively rough weather, the only diving site was just out of Opuhonu Bay. The lagoon is made of a shallow reef barrier which surrounds the island. The swell from the ocean breaks into waves on the reef. In a few places, a deeper passage allows boats to exit the lagoon without wrecking on the reef. Just outside one of these was the dive site. While the water in the lagoon was ok, the swell outside reached easily 2 meters, maybe more. Before diving I was starting to feel seasick. Underwater was ok, even though the swell would drag you even at depths over 10 meters. But on the way up, during the 5 minutes safety stop between 3 and 5 meters, is when I got seriously seasick. Not very nice. I did not throw up though. If it had happened, I would have had to puke through my regulator. I heard that what happens then is that all the fish come around to eat that predigested yummy food...
I felt bad for the whole day, and therefore did only one dive on that first day.
On the second day I took anti-seasickness pills, and that proved to be quite efficient.
That were my two dives, as I was starting to feel the come back of the cold from weeks before that I had not got rid of.

The dives were really cool. Loads of coral and fish. On a sunny day it would have been really breathtaking, but even with the lackof light (making everything look more greenish ), it was great.
Titan trigger fish were in their egglaying season, so they were attacking anything that was coming near their territory.
Small morays, big tunas, and many small and colorful exotic tropical fish, plus the corals and anemones etc....
As soon as I jumped into the water, I looked down and saw 2 or 3 sharks lurking a few meter under the boat. Blacktip reef sharks (up to 1m20) were everywhere, cruising around, seemingly waiting for an opportunity to get involved into something, their eyes moving restlessly to keep you in sight as they were passing by.
Some other divers had thrown tuna heads in the water, to film myriads of fish feeding around them. After just a few minutes, that attracted a couple of lemonsharks. The biggest one,which we had encountered shortly before, was a good 3m in length, an got hold of the big tuna head, while a relatively smaller one was nervously swimming around him trying tograb the food from its mouth. That was cool, and we encountered them several times, as they were cruising around. Real majestuous in their swimming, but also quite ugly with their teeth falling off from the front of their jaws.
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Pictures

01 Moorea	02 Moorea	03 at the camping under the rain	04 at the camping under the rain
05 A "truck"	06 Imagine a blue sky...	07 Imagine a blue sky...

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