Page 237 - California Diving and Surfing
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any walls are so heavily blanketed and Black Coral mix and mingle with the everything appears brown. Strobe lights
sponges, creating a garden carpet of life. and flashlights, however, bring those colors
M with marine life that you can spend More color and the addition of motion is back. Lurking inside crevices you may see
provided from solitary and schooling reef moray eels, shrimp, spiny lobsters and even
an entire dive observing the tiny creatures fish. Every wall is similar, yet different: squid and baby octopuses, waiting for
that inhabit just a few square yards of the Profile, shape, size and predominant colors nightfall. Then there are the big pelagics,
wall. However, don’t become so engrossed vary from site 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 Caribbean reef, to cruise the wall for
not uncommon to see sweeping eagle rays, healthy reef - star, brain, elkhorn and stag- their 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 triggerfish, sergeant majors, and more. with an underwater vehicle, zipping in
French Polynesian drop-offs are punc- Descend further and the harder corals and out of small caves and crevices 60 feet
tured with awesome caverns, tunnels and give way to forests of gorgonians and soft below the surface. Technically you reach a
swim-throughs. Walls are found throughout corals, which reach out in a silent rhyth- top speed of only 2.4 mph, but it feels a lot
French Polynesia and their profiles range mic dance. Sponges appear in their most faster. The DPV (diver propulsion vehicle)
from those that end at sand bottoms 60 to magnificent forms - all shapes and sizes. allows divers to see more sites in less time
100 feet deep, to seemingly infinite vertical With less sun penetration, one by one, and experience the fun of underwater
descents. It is along these escarpments the colors disappear as you descend - first travel.
of the deep reef that the majesty of coral red, then orange, green, and so on until
spires and the magnificence of sponges is
fully realized. Seafans, bryozoans, seawhips
