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Free & BrEasy - Flying with Sharks



Fakaruva is home to pearl farms which produce very high quality pearls with unusual colours. Hopeful that we might get lucky with some natural pearls we all went on an organised scuba dive to a reef just off the North Pass where we had come in with Free and Br"Easy". Before reaching the dive spot we stopped at a large cruise ship, which had anchored in the lagoon the previous night, to pick up more divers, and were surprised to find ourselves being filmed as part of a Discovery Channel (Canada) production. They even asked Roger for a few comments, on film, so watch out for a new television star! We did not find pearls on the dive but the different corals and fish shoals more than compensated, with an occasional blacktip reef shark and giant Napoleon Grouper thrown in. That night we met up with the crew from Adela who pointed to the moon and asked us if we had notice the eclipse! The moon was a shadowy orange although lit by a candle which was the "earth light" reflection. Being good celestial navigators we had not lifted our eyes above beer level and ignored this sign from the heavens!

The next day we hired bicycles and pedaled an exhausting 26k partly on dirt track back to the North Pass. We sat and watched the calm waters that were so turbulent on the day we arrived at the North Pass as we were a little early and the tide was still coming out. That evening we were royally entertained on board Adela by Heather's excellent cooking .


On our next days diving we found out what the sign from the heavens meant. We were going to learn to fly underwater. Back to the North Pass but this time we dived just outside the entrance on the incoming tide. After ogling a few shoals of barracuda and the odd shark, the current grew stronger and were having to hang on to the coral to stop be swept away! Alejandro took a video which shows his hair streaming backwards as though he was on a motorbike! At a signal from the dive leader we let go and like sky divers dropping from a plane, we peeled away and flew meters above the coral, carried forward by the current. Some were flapping their arms like birds, others copying superman with an outstretched clenched fist but the sensation was "we were flying!"

We then headed for the South Pass where the diving was reported to be even better! When the tide comes in the sharks gather in large numbers to feed off fish pulled in from the ocean. We dived three times and each dive got better. Hanging onto the coral we watched in fascination a "wall of sharks" swimming slowly and (importantly) unthreateningly, passed us. Every dive there were more sharks until literally many hundreds were swimming all around us, some nearly in touching distance and certainly eye ball to eye ball. It was a soup of sharks and when we were getting bored of sharks we peeled off and flew back over the coral watching all the little fish and coral villages just below us. Flying with sharks!


Even back aboard Free and Br"Easy" we idly watch the aquarium of fish and sharks just below the boat. The blacktip reef sharks are very safe (we were told) and our local boat captain Manu was happy to let his 5 year old daughter play in the waters where they feed the sharks and Napoleon Groupers. This was to come in useful as our anchor chain became wedged in some coral heads but fearless Alejandro dived in and worked the chain loose so we could set off on the next atoll, Rangiroa

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