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Cruising and Diving in French Polynesia (LONG)



 
 
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Old October 31st, 2003, 09:25 PM
Reef Fish
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Default Cruising and Diving in French Polynesia (LONG)

Marquesas Itinerary: October 20-30, 2003.

INTRODUCTION AND GENERALITIES.

This is my third Cruise-and-Dive trip (on the islands of the ports of
call in the French Polynesia of the South Pacific. This report is
mainly about the DIVING on the islands of the 10-day Marquesas itinerary,
of the Archipel des Marquises, written during the early morning hours
when the local time is 4-6 am but my biological clock says it's 10-noon
(Eastern USA; GMT -0400).

Later, I'll file a report pooling together the SCUBA DIVING locations
I've done in the French Polynesian islands based on my four recent trips
there (3 cruises of 7, 10, and 10 days respectively on the Tahitian
Princess cruiseship, and 7 days on the Tahiti Aggressor liveaboard).


FRENCH POLYNESIA.

It consists of five groups of islands, the best known of which is
Archipel de la Societe, containing Tahiti, Moorea, Huahine, Raiatea,
Bora Bora, and many other smaller islands.

Then there is Archipel des Tuamotu, the best known island of which is
Rangiroa, and is the group of islands dived by the Tahiti Aggressor.

Archipel des Marquises consists of a group of islands about 800 miles
from Tahiti. This trip featured two of the most important islands in
that group, Nuku Hiva and Hiva Oa, but only one of the has a dive shop.

The other two archipelagos in French Polynesia are Archipel des
Australes (accessible by ferry to Ryoa) and Archipel da Gambier
(accessible by ferry to Mongareva) both from Papeete in Tahiti).

No cruiseships visit any of the islands in Australes or Gambier, but
the Tahitian Pricess cruiseship has two itineraries that embark from
Papeete, and goes to Samoa (1,300 miles from Tahiti), and to the Cook
Islands (600+ miles from Tahiti). Since both these itineraries cover
some of the islands in the Society Islands group, I had previous been
mistaken to think that Samoa and the Cook Islands were part of the
French Polynesia, but they are not and are far away WEST of the French
Polynesia!

So much for the geographical factoids and orientation.


DIVING FROM A CRUISESHIP VS ON A LIVEABOARD.

The main difference between diving on a liveaboard and from a cruiseship
is that I did 22 dives in 5 1/2 days on the Aggressor, whereas on a
Tahitian cruise I typically do 1 dive (occasionally two) on each "divable"
port/day, totaling perhaps no more than 4-6 dives on almost as many
different islands on a 7-10 day crusie.

Surprisingly, the cost of a 10-day Tahitian cruise, in a spacious state-
room with private balcony is only about HALF the price of a cabin of
half its size, on a typical 7-day Aggressor or Peter Hughes liveaboard,
because of the deep discounts cruiseships have been offering. That's
why I was on the Tatitian Princess in June 2003, now, and April 2004,
all 10-day itineraries (Samoa, Marquesas, and Cook Islands respectively).
On cruises, the cost of diving is extra -- about $70 per tank, all
equipment included, on most islands. But the FOOD, dining, dancing,
evening shows and other entertainment, as well as living comfort are
heads and shoulders better on a typical cruise than the best of the
liveaboards. Thus, we found it, especially for islands in the French
Polynesia, a better bang for the buck on a cruise (booking our own
dives) than on the Tahiti Aggressor say, with the cost of unlimited
number of dives included in a 5 1/2 day diving charter.

ROUGH ESTIMATES OF COSTS OF CRUISING VS LIVEABORD.

I estimate the cost pp (EXCLUDING roundtrip airfare to Papeete, Tahiti
but including the connecting package from Pepeete to Rangiroa, and tip)
for a week (7 nights and 5 1/2 days diving) on the Tahiti Aggressor to
be about $2,600 USD, whereas the 10-night cruise on the Tahitian
Princess (EXCLUDING roundtrip airfare to Papeete, Tahiti, and extras
for dining and alcholic breverages, but INCLUDING tip and the cost of
5 1-tank dives on five islands) to be LESS than $2,000 USD, pp., in a
7-th deck stateroom with private balcony (listed at over $2,600 USD).


In short, the liveaboard scene is for die-hard, gung-ho (younger) divers
whereas the cruise-and-dive scene is more for the laid-back divers, who
enjoy partying and topside-attractions and/or less concentrated and
strenuous diving, and are generally older folks who want to SAMPLE the
diving and the topside attractions in several islands on a single cruise
that might otherwise take months or years to cover.


MY RATING OF THE FRENCH POLYNESIAN Scuba Diving LOCATIONS.

At the risk of some inevitable apple-vs-orange effect, I shall put a
rating number (0-10) on each of the dives, with reference to some of the
best sites/locations in which I've have done many dives:

Site/Locations Approx. # Times dived Rating

Coco's Island sites 40 9.5
Palau (Blue Corner) 10 9.2
Punta Tunich, Cozumel 30 9.0
Palau (other sites) 50 8.8
Bloody Bay Wall, Little Cayman 100 8.6
Punta Sur, Punta Sur II, Cozumel 85 8.5
Palancar Reef, Cozumel 500 8.2
North Walls, Grand Cayman 50 8.1
Santa Rosa Wall, Cozumel 90 8.0
Turks & Caicos 120 7.5
The Great Barrier Reef, Australia 14 7.3
The Bahamas 200 7.2
Belize, Lighthouse and Outer reefs
Other Caribbean locations (BVI,
BWI, Aruba, Barbacos, Sint Maartin, 75 7.0
St. John, St. Thomas, Saba, etc) 150 6.5
Kona, Oahu, Hawaii 30 6.3
Roatan and Bay Islands 80 6.2
Tobago (for Forest Aten who called me a
"negative old codger" because of my
assessment of Tobago diving :-)) 13 3.0


10-Day MARQUESAS ITINERARY ON THE TAHITIAN PRINCESS.

This report is to give you an idea of what such a 10-day cruise on the
Tahitian Princess cruise is like, divingwise. The cruise itinerary was:

DAY PORT Arrival/Departure Dive Shop

October 20
2003 Papeete
21 Moorea 8:00/17:00 Bathy's Dive Shop
22 Fakarava (at sea)
23 AT SEA
24 Nuku Hiva 8:00/17:00 Centre de Plongee
des Marquises
25 Hiva Oa 8:00/17:00
26 AT SEA
27 Rangiroa 8:00/16:00 Raie Manta Club
28 Raiatea noon/24:00 Hemisphere-Sub Plongee
29 Bora Bora 8:00/17:00 Bora Diving Center
30 Papeete 6:00/


GETTING THERE.

The gateway to all five archipelagos of the French Polynesia is the
Faaa (Fa-ah-ah-ah) airport of Pepeete (Pep-pee-et-te) of Tahiti, which
is only one of the islands of the Society Islands group, though the
entire groups of hundreds of ialands are sometimes referred to,
inaccurately and collectively as, Tahiti.

At various times, Hawaiian Airline, Air Tahiti Nui, Air France, and
Air New Zealand connect from LAX or HNL to Papeete (PPE). Recently
the Princess cruise used mainly the chartered airline OMNI (operating
under Delta) for the LAX-PPE connection which takes approx. 8 hours
flight time (1:45 pm departure from LAX, arrival at Papeete 6:45 pm
local time) so that even if one starts from the East Coast, one can
easily start in the morning, and arrive Papeeta the evening of the
same day.


MOOREA. (Pronounced "mo-oh-re-ah")
Sister island of Tahiti in the Society Islands archipelago.

There are several dive shops that can be pre-booked via email:
Bathy's Club (689) 56.21.44
Moorea Fun Dive www.divemoorea.com
Top Dive - M.U.S.T. www.topdive.com
Scubapiti www.scubapiti.com

We chose to walk-on and play-it-by-ear, having dived with Fun Dive and
Bathy's Club before.

As we disembarked the first tender from the cruiseship, about 8:15 am,
the Top Dive rep was already there waiting for the 5 divers who had
booked with them, and they were waiting to be picked up by a dive boat
right there. We asked if we could join the group, but since they had
no tank for us on the boat, the question was moot. So, we repeated
our prior experience in June by taking a free shuttle to the Beachcomer
Hotel to dive with Bathy's Club.

The driver offering the free shuttle was Emmanual, whose relatives own
the Black Pearl business across from the hotel, and also other tourist
businesses all over the island. Thus, he was willing and eager to take
anyone to, or near, those businesses, without any obligation for the
free-riders to buy anything.

As it turned out, by the time we got to the dive shop about 8:45 am,
the diveboat was already fully loaded with 12 divers from the hotel and
ready to leave. Since Sue and I had all our own gears and the owner JP
(Juan Pedro DURAN LOPEZ) remembered us from June, we filled in the
remaining "standing room" on the boat, and we were off to a "shark
feeding dive" at the Canyon.

JP was most cordial and accommodating. After we had finished the dive
(when we had no bargaining leverage on the cost of the dive) he not only
gave us discount for our good looks g, he recommended, at our request,
and phoned the dive shops with which we had dived before in Raiatea and
Bora Bora, as well as one we hadn't dived with before in Rangiroa, to
dive with them on our dates of arrivals. Thus, with the exception of
the Marquesas islands (one of which Hiva Oa has no dive shop at all),
our dives were booked for the remainder of the trip, without a single
email or phone call by us. Two of the operators JP phoned remembered
us from previous dives with them, so we must've done something right,
or terribly wrong. I hope it was the former. :-)

In the French Polynesian islands, blacktip and reef sharks are seen on
almost every dive, often by the dozens without any chum. Thus the
"feeding" was apparently staged for those clients with video and cameras
to take some closeup shots at the "feeding frenzy" when the DM waves BIG
fish heads with dangling meat, as well as poking the sharks away with
the same heads, while all the divers gather around and watch at a spot
around the feeding-DM at the "canyon" at 70 fsw.

The feeding-DM wore a chain-mail protective glove on the feeding arm,
while several other DMs hover behind the "seated" divers, and keeping
an eye on the feeder, with easily 40-50 lbs of fish-heads in the mesh
bag.

The main guests were the blacktip sharks. They were small ones, ranging
from about two to five feet in length, but large in number, perhaps a
couple of dozens. One lemon shark (one can easily tell from its bull-
shark shape because there are no bull sharks here) came early but
wasn't interested enough to stay. The other uninvited guests joining
the party are several 1-2 ft ramoras, dozens of large (2+ ft) rainbow
jacks, dozens of moorish idols, damselfish, one Titan Triggerfish who
managed to snatch a large fishhead from the DM while the sharks couldn't,
and assorted reef fish which seemed unconcerned that they might be
mistaken by the sharks to be part of the chum.

When the fish heads were consumed or dragged away by shark or fish
after about 30 minutes, we looked at some resident lionfish under coral
heads while the non-air-misers were escorted back to the mooring line
to the boat.

The dive logged 55 minutes; 72 fsw max, with water temp 79-82F. The
visibility ranged from 60-100 feet on a somewhat choppy sea. Good dive.
For the special circumstances encountered, I would rate this dive 8.5.



After two days at sea, we arrived at Nuku Hiva, the largest of the
12 islands (6 inhabited and 6 unpopulated) of the Marquesas Islands,
800 miles northeast of Tahiti. Four of the islands in Marquesas are
accessible by air: Nuku Hiva, Ua Nuka, Ua Poa, and Atuona.


NUKU HIVA. Population 2,375. Marquesas Islands group. Population 7,000.

There is only one dive shop listed in Nuku Hiva:

Centre de Plongee des Marquises.
www.marquises.com (689) 920.088

Since that was the only dive shop on the island, I was pretty sure I
would have no trouble finding it after we took the earliest tender to
shore. And when I saw a boat with scuba tanks in it at the pier, I KNEW
we were in luck. As it turned out, the scuba shop was right at the pier!

We were the only two divers from the cruiseship making the dive though.
Four other divers I met who wanted to dive today were too late by the
time they got to shore because the shop would not make another dive
until it's too late in the afternoon for them to do so.

It turned out that we were DOUBLY lucky today, besides making the dive.
We learned from the dinner waiter later that this was the FIRST time
the Tahitian Princess visited this island ... and ... it was the most
fantastic dive I've done for quite awhile because of the hammerheads
and manta rays we saw in our dive at Sentinelle aux Marteaux (Hammer-
head watch). The DM Jonathan said they don't normally see mantas at
this site -- only the hammerheads. But today we saw mantas throughout
the one-hour dive -- large ones, at least a dozen of them (from the
different markings I could tell).

On descent to 80 fsw, we immediately saw three hammerheads (about 6-7
feet in length) and two large mantas. Except for a brief reappearance,
we didn't see any more hammerheads the rest of the dive. Instead, the
manta rays kept coming back, in groups of 2, 3, and 4, sometimes below
us, sometimes above, but never afraid of us -- one swam toward me and
glided right over my head where I could have touched it. I suspected it
was curious about my hood which had a shark's fin on top of it. That
manta was probably wondering if it was a new species of shark or a large
unicorn fish it encountered.

This unexpected manta dive was better than any of the FIVE I did at
Yap where we waited at the same spot at their cleaning station on every
one of those dives. On this "hammerhead dive", we were swimming the
entire time, looking at other sights and fishes. The topography of the
site reminded me of Cocos Island. The island is all rocks, extending
from the surface to a sand-bottom flat at about 110 fsw max.

Besides the main attractions, we also saw several lionfish, moorish
idols, long snout butterflyfish and other species of butterflyfish and
damselfish. The dive was in slight to moderate current. My Reefnet
gizmo logged 100 fsw max for 1 hour and 3 minutes, on a 72 cu.ft.
steel tank, at water temp raging from 80-82F. For the expected
hammerheads and the unexpected manta encounters, I rate this dive a 9.2!


After a day at sea from Oa Hiva, we returned to Rangiroa, the largest
atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago. It's the second-largest atoll in the
world, outranked only by Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands.

At 5:30 am, the ship entered the narrow Tiputa Pass (where we did two
fast-drift dives from the Tahiti Aggressor, less than a year ago). By
6:15 am, the ship was anchored in the same cove as the Tahiti Aggressor,
less than 100 yards apart. The tenders started taking passengers from
the ship to shore at 7 am, an hour earlier than usual, because the
departure time is also an hour earlier, at 4 pm.

RANGIROA. The best-known island of the French Polynesia for shark diving.
Population 700. Rangiroa has more than 240 motu (inlets).

Blue Dolphins Diving Center
www.bluedolphinsdiving.com
Dream Dive Center www.dreamdive.pf
Top Dive Rangiroa www.topdive.com
Rangiroa Paradive www.chez.com/paradive
Raie Manta Club Rangiroa
www.ranemantaclub.free.fr
The Siz Passengers www.the6passengers.com


Juan Pedro of Bathy's in Moorea had booked us with the Manta Club. At
8 am we were promptly picked up at the pier the cruiseship tender dropped
us. The dive shop was only around the corner, a couple of minutes away.

We donned all our gears at the shop and were off on a rubber dinghy with
5 other French divers to the Outer Reef of the entrance of Tiputa Pass.

We dived this exact location when we were on the Tahiti Aggressor! The
reef was a wall dropping off from about 50 fsw. It was NOT a shark dive
as we expected in Rangiroa. We saw exactly ONE medium sized reef shark.
It was a hard coral reef with schools of barracudas, jacks, and snappers,
and tons of various colorful smaller reef fish.

Of the bigger fellas, we met a leisurely swimming manta ray of about
6-foot wing span. A videographer and I were able to stay right on top
of it without swimming hard, for about half a minute. A 3-foot turtle
was busy chomping on a piece of coral without paying attention to all
the photogs and divers hovering around it. It never swam from its
meal. There were several Titan triggerfish and medium size balloonfish.

It was a completely leisurely dive on a mild drift, with 100-ft
visibility, 80F water temp and my dive logged 1 hr. 4 minutes, with
max depth 126 fsw, on a 72 cu.ft. steel tank. Against my prior
expectation, this dive was as disappointing as the Nuku Hiva dive was
an unexpected pleasant surprise. The location was an excellent one,
however, and I would rate it 8.5.


The cruiseship left port at 4 pm to navigate through the Tikihau Atolls.
Early next morning, the cruiseship took a scenic cruise inside the
Tiahaa lagoons before docking at Raiatea at noon.

RAIATEA (Pronounced "rai-ah-te-ah") Population 10,037.
Society Archipelago.

Hemisphere-Sub Plongee www.diveraiatea.com
Te Mara Nui Plongee (689) 66.11.88)

We dived with the Hemisphere-Sub dive shop in June, and booked it again
at the recommendation of Juan Pedro. The shop turned out to be the same
one the cruiseship booked its 11 divers, except they were charged more.
Since everyone (who signed up) show, we were in an "overbooked" situation.

The DM with whom we dived before said she would go with us and two other
divers to a different site. I assumed, optimistically, that the other
two were more experienced than most of those who signed up with the
cruiseship and that the DM was going to take us to a better, perhaps
more challenging site. Instead, no other diver showed up, and she took
us to a SHORE dive from the Hawiki Hotel to an old wooden ship wreck!

Whether that was a "good" wreck and she was doing us a favor was beside
the point. I DON'T like diving wrecks. When we learned that it was
going to be a SHORE dive to the wreck, I put my foot down and said a
firm "No!". After some negotiation, we decided we would rather NOT
dive than diving some mucky wreck, she finally admitted they had only
ONE boat, and that we could re-start at 2:30 when the boat returned.

We were the only two divers on that dive! Though we had dived the same
site twice, the Miri Miri, or formerly Napolean Miri because of the
resident friendly and HUGE Napolean Wrasse there (which had since been
hooked by fishermen), it was still a good dive, with good vis, lots of
colorful reef fish, on a sloping hard-coral wall that goes all the way
to the surface from about 120 fsw. We saw only two sharks, but two
clownfish, five lionfish, an unusual looking "spotted green" moray, and
a small Napolean wrasse, in addition to the myriads of reef fish. When
he DM started to brief us on when to terminate the dive based on the
amount of air left, I volunteered that we would do only 1 hour (and
said we probably would have half a tank of air left, :-) remembering
that was a dive averaging only about 50 fsw). As it turned out, I
wasn't far off the mark -- I had 1200 psi (72 steel) and Sue had a couple
hundred more, when we finished the dive which logged 1 hour 3 minutes,
83 fsw max and 79F. I would rate this site an 8.0.


It was hard to believe that we were into Day 10 of the cruise when we
entered the lagoon of what James Michener called "the most beautiful
place in the world", Bora Bora, shortly before 8 am.

BORA BORA One of the best known in the Society Islands Archipelago.

Bora Diving Center www.boradive.com
Bora Bora Blue Nui www.bluenui.com
Mara Dive Center www.sofitel.com
Nemo World Bora Bora www.nemodivebora.com

Again, our independently booked dive turned out to be with the same
shop the cruiseship booked, Bora Diving Center. We were picked up by
the dive boat directly at the pier where we disembarked from the cruise
ship tender because the boat already had all the gears of the other
divers. We didn't even have to fill any form because the owner Michel
dived with me in June and he remembered me from dives we did in 2000.

We dived a site I've never dived before, the Manta Ray wall inside the
lagoon. For any site INSIDE the lagoon, with no current, the vis is
is always poor -- which accounted for the appearance of mantas who
thrive on the plankton that made the low vis! The site had a max depth
of about 80 feet to a sand bottom, and the vis was perhaps 30 near the
surface, dropping to 10-20 feet at various depths near the bottom.

But we found manta rays from the start of our descent on this dive
throughout the rest of this 1 hour dive. There wasn't much else to see.
The mantas range in size from about a 6-foot wing span for the males to
10-ft for one large female.

BT 1 hr. 1 minute; Max depth 73 fsw; water temp 79-82F. I rate this
site a 7.0. Add 1.0 if you're a manta ray fan. Other sites in Bora
Bora are not up to par with other islands of French Polynesia.


Note to snorkelers: Both the cruiseship scheduled tours and snorkelers
outnumber (certified) scuba divers by at least 4 to 1, on every port.
While IMO Bora Bora had the LEAST to offer in scuba diving sites, the
opposite seems to be the consensus for snorkelers who pay $50+ for a
snorkeling trip while the scuba divers pay $72+ for a one-tank dive
on all of the islands.

Concluding remarks for SCUBA divers: I didn't fully appreciate the
remark I reported (in my 1992 Cocos Island dive report) until now, what
a famous Japanese photog and scuba magazine publisher, Akira Tateishi,
said through his interpreters, that prior to his trip to Cocos, he thought
the BEST diving in the world was in the French Polynesia!

Of course the French Polynesia covers an area greater than the entire USA
or the Caribbean, with as many dive locations/islands. MY subjective
ratings of 9.5 (for Cocos) and 8.5 (Moorea), 9.2 (Nuku Hiva), 8.5
(Rangiroa), 8.0 (Raiatea), and 7.0 (Bora Bora) for the five islands
dived on this trip seem to echo Mr. Tateishi's sentiments. Some of
these islands and sites are not in the usual lists of wannabee locations
such as PNG, Maldives, etc., because they are so inaccessible and so
rarely dived!

Thus, I think, in today's market of cruises with deeply discounted
fares, it's a tremendous opportunity for scuba divers to try the
cruise-and-dive scene, especially at exotic locations like the islands
in the French Polynesia. I am already booked on the 10-night, Cook
Islands itinerary, on the same Tahitian Princess next April.

Aloha and Happy Halloween,

-- Bob. (at LAX Hilton on Halloween before the brooms start flying).
  #2  
Old October 31st, 2003, 11:29 PM
Hill6
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Posts: n/a
Default Cruising and Diving in French Polynesia (LONG)

Wow what an interesting review.
  #3  
Old November 1st, 2003, 05:27 AM
Dan Bracuk
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Cruising and Diving in French Polynesia (LONG)

(Reef Fish) pounded away at his
keyboard resulting in:
:Later, I'll file a report pooling together the SCUBA DIVING locations

Man, I tells ya. You might have to replace your typewriter ribbon
after this report. Sounds like you had a good time, Glad to hear it.

Dan Bracuk
If at first you don't succeed, you run the risk of failure.
The Best of rec.scuba
http://www.pathcom.com/~bracuk/RecScuba/


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  #4  
Old November 1st, 2003, 10:37 PM
Amber
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Posts: n/a
Default Cruising and Diving in French Polynesia (LONG)

Reef Fish wrote:

Snip nicely complete report

Thank you for such a thorough report! It was a pleasure to read.

Amber
 




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