Sharks, sharks, and more sharks

John and I did a couple of scuba dives yesterday and hope to do one more tomorrow. Both dives were in the Guare Pass on Fakarava, also known as the north pass. The first dive was along a spectacular reef with about 80 feet of visibility. The reef just went on and on and on. I have never seem so much healthy coral in one place. And of course the numbers and variety of fish was incredible. This is where we hope to do our dive tomorrow. If we're lucky, we'll be the only ones and can request that we cover a smaller area so we can hang out and look around more. Dive companies tend to keep you moving so you don't have much time to just float and look at the incredible scenes around you. Both John and I like to snorkel and dive at a slow pace.

The second dive was the noted shark drift dive through the pass. The current almost never stops through the pass - just changes from incoming to outgoing. So alot of the fish and sharks just hang out in the pass and let dinner come to them. Luckily there are so many fish the sharks are very well fed and don't pay any attention to us. John tried a rough count and figured we saw over 50, but it could have been more. We saw grey sharks, black tip reef sharks, white tip reef sharks, and maybe some others we didn't recognize. We saw a school of barracuda and a giant Napolean Wrasse which must have been about 3 ft long. We thought wrasses were small, maybe 3-4 inches, so this was a big surprise for us.

The drift part of the dive was pretty interesting and exciting. Basically you just drift along in the current and watch the world go by instead of swimming. This was my first drift dive so I was a bit cautious to say the least. Our dive leader cautioned us to stay close to him since the current can be different if we get too far and he might not be able to help us. So I wasn't completely relaxed and just let myself go with it. We had a mild current so I could handle it. Serge said I probably wouldn't want to do others this week because the current would be getting stonger. I agreed completely with him since I haven't been diving for 3 years. I'm more than happy to go back to the reef and look at the pretty fish.

Speaking of fish - we've noticed that some remora have been hanging around Music. Remora are the sucker fish that attach themselves to larger fish. They have a suction cup on top of their head so they can hang on and do whatever they do. Well it seems that a couple of them like the keel of our boat. If we get in the water quietly we can swim around and see them hanging on our keel. We've noticed some other larger fish swimming around as well, but don't know what they are.

We've been at the anchorage off Rotoava for about a week and it's time to move on. Fakarava is about 40 miles long, so there is alot of new territory to explore and the snorkeling and diving at the south pass is supposed to be incredible too. Then we'll figure out where to go next. Another island in the Tuamotos or off to Tahiti and the Society Islands? We'll keep you posted.