We anchored in Uturoa and immediately found the site
for the heiva – a festive village specially constructed for the occasion
with restaurants and snack bars made from woven coconut palms.But in seeking information we discovered that THE place to be for
heiva is Bora Bora and we reorganized our schedule to double this up with
a coral reef study.
Tahaa, French
Polynesia 27th June – 4th July
We moved to Tahaa, just north of Raiatea and inside
the same barrier reef system.We
spent a week anchored in the incredibly peaceful Hurepita Bay where we
were treated to a glorious display from a pod of spinner dolphins who
spent an entire day inside Hurepita Bay, slapping the surface of the water
with their tails, and thrilling us with their trademark spins.
Kevin Driscoll and his 14 year old son Conor joined
us from Los Angeles.They had
met us while we were on the homecoming tour and were keen to see the ship
in action in the South Pacific.Eibes
completed a dive course with them so that they could experience for
themselves the coral reefs of Tahaa.For us it is a great privilege to share our experiences with
visitors like Kevin and Conor.They
have watched us dive, gather data on the reefs and explore Tahaa.They have taken full part in our life on board and reaped their own
experiences here in French Polynesia.And it is especially heartening to watch Conor absorb underwater
scenes and learn about the ocean by actually being in the ocean.
the underwater scenes at Tahaa
We were only able to dive inside the lagoon – the
breakers outside the pass were huge, crashing onto a very shallow reef
shelf.We spent three days
gathering Vitareef data on the coral bommies inside, on the edge of a
beautiful sand strip running behind the reef.
This beautiful pass was filled with life. The most thrilling
were the baby grey reef sharks, about 20 of them. There were
also schools of barracuda, eagle rays in formation, skipjack
tuna, big eye trevallys, white tip reef sharks sleeping on the
bottom, plus all types of reef fish. The reef itself was
healthy. A very strong current was running in through the pass
each time.
There were enormous breakers on the outside of this pass - up
to 5m at times. This was a cautious dive in pretty rough
conditions to check the feasibility of doing any scientific
studies in the pass and the answer was a resounding 'no'. We
could feel the surge effects of the waves crashing even at
depths of 20 metres and coupled with the current running either
in or out of the pass depending on the tide, there was no
possibility of sending multiple dives to this site.
In the channel itself, the coral cover was sparse but as we
moved towards the mouth of the pass the density increased along
with increasing amounts of the non-scleractinian coral
Stylasteridae (a very pretty coral commonly known as 'lace
coral'). The fish populations seemed low relative to the
condition of the corals themselves and we saw no fish larger
than the emperor angelfishes. The reef sloped down quite steeply
from a shelf at just a few metres to about 40 metres depth at
the mouth and there were many overhangs and crevices along the
slope. The bottom of the channel on this side had practically no
coral cover. We took the precaution of ascending well away from
the slope in the blue to avoid getting caught up in the
breakers.
We collected Vitareef data to assess the health of the corals
inside the lagoon at Tahaa. There was a very striking strip of
sand inside the barrier reef with widely spaced bommies of
Porites heads, some very large (up to 10 metres diameter).
The depth varied from 5-10m. Although there was quite a lot of
sedimentation - the water was very turbid, visibility less than
10m - the corals were in good shape. We could see traces of
stormy weather in the recent past, ends of branching corals
littering the sand. The fish life was diverse with healthy
populations. For details, see our
Reef
Report.
We took the small boat to the reef close to a resort on one
of the motus (a Polynesian word for the small islands emerging
from the barrier reef of an atoll). The resort was built over a
very shallow sand bottom. Close to the motu were some coral
heads but the bottom cover was very scattered.
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