We departed Katiu during the afternoon slack tide and took 4-hour, 2-person shifts throughout the day and into the night, arriving at Tahanea around midnight. Normally, it is best to enter an atoll during the day but since Tahanea was well charted, Eitan felt comfortable arriving at night. Upon arrival, we dropped anchor and fell fast asleep. The next morning we woke up amongst a dozen or so other boats inside another beautiful atoll. The wind had died overnight, leading to completely placid conditions and the water was glass. The water clarity was so good you could easily see the bottom and entire anchor chain. This place was stunning.
We had heard the pass at Tahanea was good for diving, so we dusted off the SCUBA gear and tanks. I honestly couldn’t remember the last time we had dove but I knew we had the tanks filled before leaving Mexico and knew they should be good to go. As Eitan assembled his gear he found his BDC wouldn’t hold air and that the dump valve on the back had completely delaminated from the vest, leaving a gaping hole. We had finally got to a world-class dive site and this happened?!
We put a call out on the radio to see if anyone had an extra BCD we could borrow for the dive and, luckily, a catamaran called SV Kolohe said they had an extra as long as I was about the same size as their teenage son. I dinghied over and tried it on, a perfect fit! We quickly loaded the gear into the dinghy and motored over, trying not to miss out on the incoming tide. Once we got there, Eitan and I geared up, did our safety checks, and began our descent as Martin and Simone snorkeled above us. We underestimated the current and by the time we had descended, the current had pulled us almost all the way through the pass. Our first dive only lasted a total of 8 minutes.
To avoid getting back in the dinghy with all our gear on, Martin towed us upstream through the pass and we quickly descended to repeat the dive, hoping for a little more time under the water. Once we descended, I checked my air pressure and was surprised to find I only had 500 PSI left, meaning my tank was almost empty. While we were getting towed, my regulators started free flowing and had dumped almost all my air supply. Between Eitan’s broken BCD and my lack of air, our first diving experience in the Tuamotus was almost comical. We loaded our stuff up into the dinghy and decided to just snorkel the pass a few times, which was still a lot of fun.
Tahanea reminded me a lot of Raroia with beautiful motus, clear water, and an abundance of sharks and fish. The only downside to this place was that we happened to be there at the same time as a lot of families on catamarans. Between the 6 to 8 boats, there were over 30 kids including a couple of large Mormon families. The anchorage was busy with kids driving by in dinghies and on paddle boards and there was a lot of radio traffic. It was funny to hear calls on the VHF asking if anyone had colored pencils or if so-and-so was done with schoolwork and available to play. One night, all the kids had a giant sleepover on the beach while the parents all gathered on the largest boat for dinner. We did our best to separate ourselves from the giant flotilla of “kid cats”, as we called them, to have a little less commotion in the anchorages and privacy on the beach.
We spent a lot of time in the water at each of the anchorages in Tahanea . With no wind, the visibility was fantastic and there were always sharks around to entertain. I spent hours and hours trying to improve my underwater photography and take a couple decent shark pictures. Some of the sharks looked a bit fatter than others and I remembered some sharks give live birth and these were probably pregnant females. About a quarter of the sharks that we saw had old fishing hooks in their mouths that appeared quite uncomfortable. I wished there was something we could do to help them but had no idea how to go about it.
I just enjoyed floating stationary in one area and watching the different fish and their behaviors. Some fish were quite bossy and dominant and others created dust clouds as they dug in the sand. My favorites were the endless kinds of triggerfish. If you get too close, they rush to their burrow for protection, but when you look inside they are just laying on their side in the hole. I also liked watching the reef fish that seek shelter in the coral heads, only to venture out about 3-5 feet then swim back in unison.
The last anchorage we visited in Tahanea was called “Number 7”. This seemed a bit bizarre because none of the anchorages had names, let alone, numbered names. I flew the drone over this anchorage and saw that the shape of the reef formed a perfect number 7 and it all started to make sense. We did a little more snorkeling at this location, then started to plan our next passage, deciding to depart the atoll at sunrise and head north to Faaite.
