South channel Fakarava
With promises of more spectacular diving I head to the south pass of Fakarava followed by S/V Mary Powell who gladly lets me take the lead guided by Nobeltec Charts. The interior of the atoll is fraught with hazards of coral heads yet the thin channel is well marked and well charted. The other option is to go down the middle of the thirty mile lagoon and post a lookout for hazards, many boats use this method. We are preceded by Naveren, Ludmilla, and Enchantress aka “the usual suspects” who made the trek the day before.
Even as I am dropping the hook in forty feet of clear water and see the anchor hit the bottom the VHF becomes alive with chatter of diving. As it is late afternoon and the sun is setting we decide to do a night dive around the boats and the reef the borders the anchorage. I meander around the coral heads dive light in hand as the sunlight disappears. In minutes I have spotted a large Moray Eel and several sharks in the dim light. I discovered a labyrinth or lines just under one of the boats that had been used for aqua culture. Care will have to be given when they way anchor to keep from fouling.
It is movie night on Furthur and some of the cruisers come over for popcorn and a flick while we make plans for the next day’s diving. No guides needed here but coordination of a fleet of dinghies and drivers is required along with timing to match the slack tide.
With well made plans we all gather the next day and make the short trip to the channel. We spot the white sandy area that marks the drop off spot. One of the divers puts on a mask to peer below the surface and reports the bottom is 7 meters (21 feet) it is soon discovered he is fooled by the clear water as we drop 20 meters to the bottom. (note my European friends continually tease me about our antiquated measuring system so I am thinking metric more now) We descend into the emerald water and follow the canyon to 25 meters when we are greeted by the fringe of the shark school. As we drop further we are completely surrounded by hundreds of sharks. There is mixture of black and white tipped reef sharks ranging from one to two and half meters. They seem to pay us no mind and we slowly drift through them. This is a remarkable sight to see, sharks in every direction as far as you can see and some coming very close indeed. It is hard to see facial expressions on divers through the masks and regulators but it was easy to see the beaming smiles on this group. As we are lurking at about the 33 meter level our air is short lived and we start up the canyon wall where we can look down at the masses of sharks. The coral is home to hundreds of species of smaller fish which we see all the way to the surface.
We all hit the surface giant Yahoo’s and have the next dive planned before we are all in the dink. Back to Furthur for more tanks and zip back to the dive sight. The second dive again produces an amazing array of life and many sharks but the increasing current seems to have spread them out. Shawn from Enchantress agreed to drive the dink the first dive and do the second. Although he is totally blown away by the dive we all agree the first one was even better.
Melva on s/v Mary Powell takes pity on the ever increasing bachelor population and invites the boys from Enchantress and myself over for a great goulash dinner. Back on Furthur I decide it is time to break out theunderwatervideo camera and get it ready for the next day of diving.
We repeat the first dive sequence of the preceding day and again are thrilled to see the shark school awaiting us. Video in hand I slowly drift through the sharks who seem to ham it up a bit for the camera –maybe they saw Jaws and want a part in the next flick. I get some great shots of Mike and Rikke with sharks circling them at close range, Mike thinks this will be good to send to his Mom hahaha.
Rikke and I go ashore to the small village to look around before we pull anchor for our evening departure. The ruins indicate again a once larger population. We remark that life on an Atoll, where the palm trees are the tallest things and only a few feet of land separate you from the Pacific Ocean must be interesting.