Page 267 - French Polynesia
P. 267
M any walls are so heavily blanketed fully realized. Seafans, bryozoans, seawhips red, then orange, green, and so on until
with marine life that you can spend and Black Coral mix and mingle with the everything appears brown. Strobe lights
an entire dive observing the tiny creatures sponges, creating a garden carpet of life. and flashlights, however, bring those colors
that inhabit just a few square yards of the More color and the addition of motion is back. Lurking inside crevices you may see
wall. However, don’t become so engrossed provided from solitary and schooling reef moray eels, shrimp, spiny lobsters and even
that you forget to occasionally glance over fish. Every wall is similar, yet different: squid and baby octopuses, waiting for
your shoulder to see what might be pass- Profile, shape, size and predominant colors nightfall. Then there are the big pelagics,
ing by in the blue water behind you. vary from site to site. fish normally found out in the open sea.
Anything could be cruising the wall which
G reat big groupers, turtles, billfish and W alls offer an opportunity for divers adds to its mystique. Out of the depths,
tuna are all usually on patrol, and it’s to experience much of the ocean’s come eagle and manta rays, marlins, tunas,
not uncommon to see sweeping eagle rays, diversity in one place. At the top you’ll kingfish, mackerel, mahi mahi and sharks of
or even hammerhead and tiger sharks out find the kaleidoscope of corals and small all types, including hammerhead, bull, tiger
sniffing for their prey. As if all this wasn’t fish that you would expect to see at any and Caribbean reef, to cruise the wall for
enough to make you want to dive, the healthy reef - star, brain, elkhorn and stag- their next meal.
French Polynesian drop-offs are punc- horn corals, sea urchins, sponges, sea fans,
tured with awesome caverns, tunnels and parrotfish, trumpetfish, angelfish, queen A dvanced divers can try “wall flying,”
swim-throughs. Walls are found throughout triggerfish, sergeant majors, and more. with an underwater vehicle, zipping in
French Polynesia and their profiles range Descend further and the harder corals and out of small caves and crevices 60 feet
from those that end at sand bottoms 60 to give way to forests of gorgonians and soft below the surface. Technically you reach a
100 feet deep, to seemingly infinite vertical corals, which reach out in a silent rhyth- top speed of only 2.4 mph, but it feels a lot
descents. It is along these escarpments mic dance. Sponges appear in their most faster. The DPV (diver propulsion vehicle)
of the deep reef that the majesty of coral magnificent forms - all shapes and sizes. allows divers to see more sites in less time
spires and the magnificence of sponges is With less sun penetration, one by one, and experience the fun of underwater
the colors disappear as you descend - first travel.
