Society Island Dive Sites

Moorea Dive Sites
Bora Bora Dive Sites
Raiatea & Taha'a Dive Sites
Huahine Dive Sites

MOOREA DIVE SITES
Under construction.

BORA BORA DIVE SITES
Bora Bora diving is easy, but highly rewarding. There are no monster currents like in the Tuamotus, and the visibility is usually superb, especially on the outside of the reef. This is a great place for beginners or novice divers wanting to gain some more experience. For those who have "been there, done that" there are some awesome shark encounters to be had in Bora Bora.

• WHITE VALLEY
  White Valley is located on the back of the Pearl Beach Resort's motu, beyond the barrier reef. A gently sloping reef starts in perhaps 30ft of water and drops to a coral plateau at 70-80ft. This ledge runs for perhaps 100 yards to another gentle slop that falls away into the deep Pacific. The section known as White Valley is dominated by a huge sand chute perhaps 50 yards wide, that cuts through the coral, perpendicular to the reef. It starts at the bottom of the shallow slope and drops off the edge of the second slope in about 110ft of water. The sand is home to millions of garden eels. As soon as you enter the water you immediately notice that the visibility is superb here - 150ft is about average! You can look down along the reef and see White Valley as a bright streak in the reef. Numerous grey reef sharks can bee seen below as soon as you enter the water, and they follow you along the reef to White Valley. Schools of jacks and barracuda are always seen at this site. In fact, on the way back to the boat I saw a school of perhaps 1000 pickhandle barracudas 3-4ft in length moving along the reef top. Regrettably I had run out of film! On reaching the sand chute you will see lots of grey reef sharks streaking in from the deep. I counted at least 25 on one dive, and some were hefty creatures perhaps 7ft in length. These sharks circle you and follow you where ever you go. For those not used to sharks this may be disconcerting - for photographers it is a dream, because as you move up the mooring line back to the boat they follow you up the water column, circling constantly! This makes for incredible photo opportunities! I don't think I have ever done a dive where I have had so many grey reef sharks come in so close to me. And when you are in 40ft of water and have 150ft of visibility, this makes White Valley, in my opinion, one of the best shark dives in the world! Don't miss it!

• FAFA PITI
  Fafa Piti is Bora Bora's manta dive. Set within the lagoon itself, visibility is often a problem - you may be unfortunate to have maybe 30ft, like we did! The dive is set within a sandy section at about 60ft, flanked by coral on both sides. The mantas come down the corridor created by the coral, to the cleaning stations along the reef. As many as 10 mantas can come in on any one dive. The dive is easy and with no discernible current, and for those who have never seen mantas before it is an ideal way to experience them at close quarters. However, if you want really fabulous manta experience, you need to go and dive The Circus in Manihi! See the Tuamotu Atolls section for more details! TAPU Tapu is located on the outside of the reef, just south of the only channel into Bora Bora's lagoon, Teavanui Pass. A gently sloping reef interspersed with small channels and gullies, this is a popular dive site at which the French divemasters do shark feeds. Numerous black-tip reef sharks are attracted in by the food on offer. Excellent visibility allows you to enjoy a grand vista of about 209 back tips bombing around excitedly, grabbing bits of fish that have been strategically hidden under a coral boulder. Other fish enjoy the feast too! A couple of hefty morays, a large and very handsome Napoleon wrasse, the odd turtle, and dozens buuterflyfish, surgeonfish and other reef dwellers enjoy the melée! From October until May or June Tapu is also a great place to see lemon sharks. These sharks have a body similar to that of a nurse shark, but with a more pointed head and a much more fierce look! They can grow to 12ft in length, most the average tend to be around 7-8ft in length. Bottom dwellers, they are quite shy and take their time in coming in to the feeding area. If you approach them they often swim away back down the reef! If they come in close they can make for great photo opportunities! Tapu is a great place to interact with turtles. While they may not be very big - perhaps 2ft long - they are not wary of divers and seem to enjoy posing for photos! The large Napoleon fish is also happy to pose for photos - he is exceedingly inquisitive and comes right up to you, his beady eyes swivelling around as he looks for the person with some food on offer! Tapu is an excellent dive for fish life, especially the sharks, Napoleon wrasse and turtles.

• TUPITIPITI
  While Bora Bora is surrounded by deep ocean there are actually very few places where the coral reef drops vertically into the blue. Tupitipiti is one of them. Located in the SE corner of Bora Bora, this is a wall or drift dive along the reef edge. Surprisingly, you will also see fan corals here, rare in almost all French Polynesia! The upper section of the reef has a number of caves and gullies to explore. The wall itself is covered in a profusion of hard corals, and is home to a busy array of fish life; butterflyfish, surgeonfish, snapper, sweetlips can all be seen scurrying about. However, it is the deeper water off the reef edge that holds the most interest - large schools of jacks and snapper, groupers, eagle rays, mantas, black-tips, white-tips even nurse sharks are also seen along this section of reef. You may even see a dolphin or whale iof you are very lucky! TOOPUA Named after the nearby motu, Toopua is a lagoon dive ranging from 10-100ft in depth. The pretty reef is home to a huge array of fish species including butterflyfish, Picasso and Titan triggerfish, parrotfish, morays, surgeongfish, anthias, and clownfish in their anemones. On a good day you may also see sharks and barracuda. But it is the spotted eagle rays that frequent this site that are the main attraction. These delightful and graceful creatures swoop in from the open sea to feed on an incoming tide, and make for a wonderful site as they fly in formation through the water.

• TOOPUA ITI
  "Little Toopua" is located just to the SW of Toopua. A series of coral gullies in 50ft of water, you drift along in the presence of those same eagle rays you saw at Toopua. The safety stop at the end of the dive is done in shallow coral gardens at the top of the reef.

• TEAVANUI PASS
  The only true pass into Bora Bora Lagoon, this is the only means of passage from the lagoon to the outside of the reef. Approximately 130ft at its deepest point, this is a drift dive, preferably on an incoming tide, where you hang out with the sharks and rays and schooling fish that enter the lagoon on the same tide. An easy multi-level drift dive for those who have not done one, as the current is not as fierce as it is in the passes of the Tuamotus!

RAIATEA & TAHA'A DIVE SITES
Taha'a is relatively unexplored diving-wise, as it is only just becoming a popular tourist destination. More dive sites are being discovered all the time, and Stephane, who runs the dive centre at the Pearl Beach Resort, is searching for a manta cleaning station he is convinced lies within the lagoon, as he has seen numerous mantas entering through the passes. As Raiatea & taha'a share the same lagoon it is possible to dive the sites of one island while staying at the other!

• NAPOLEON
  Located on the outside of the reef, south of Paipai Pass, opposite the village of Poutoru, this site is named after the Napoleon wrasse that frequent this section of reef. Err… I didn't see any! But what I did see was an awful lot of black tip reef sharks - perhaps 25 of them. The dive operators come here to put on a shark feeding display, so as soon as you are in the water these inquisitive little sharks are right up to you and ready to eat! They come almost to the surface to say hello and follow you like little puppies until it is time to be fed. The reef has some small coral heads under which can be found little groups of sweetlips, bass and snapper. The reef slopes gently into the deep and visibility is usually superb. Even with the large swell that we had on doing this dive, visibility was at least 100ft. Towards the end of the dive the guides wedge themselves in a coral head and sneak little bits of fish out of their bags for the sharks. This makes for a much more controlled, and longer shark feed, allowing you to interact with the sharks for a greater period of time. An excellent and easy dive for the first time shark feeder!

• PAI PAI PASS
  Pai Pai Pass is the main pass on the western side of Taha'a. It is markedly different from most of the passes you will see in French Polynesia as it is much deeper (200ft) and it's sides are scoured clean on the deeper parts. The upper parts have a dead coral substrate covered in small plate and staghorn corals and are bedecked in billions of yellow stylaster corals. This was the only place I saw them in all of French Polynesia! We dived this pass on a slack tide, and visibility was poor, but there was a very impressive variety of fish life along the lip of the pass. Every hole seemed to be home to a moray eel, and there was a large assortment of butterflyfish species - pyramid, long-nosed, saddleback, masked, rip and bannerfish (a species of butterflyfish!) While there were not huge numbers of fish, the variety was exceptional. If you wanted to take medium angle photos of typical reef species, this would be an excellent place to do it!

• CERAN'S PASS Under construction

• THE PEAKS Under construction

• THE OCTOPUS GROTTO Under construction

• THE NORDBY WRECK Under construction

• TEAVAPITI PASS Under construction

HUAHINE DIVE SITES
Under construction