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