Diving in the Tuamotus

We’ve been back in the States visiting family for the holidays, and I have been busy editing videos of the scuba and free diving we did in the Tuamotus this year.  The best things about the remote Tuamotus are the clear water and abundant sea life.  That made it the perfect place to get in the water daily to check out what was below the surface.

If you’re wondering what our process is/was for finding places to dive that were fun and safe, we actually had a lot of help.  Thanks to sailors who have gone before us and published their favorite dive sites, there is a lot of information you can find online.  We also asked other sailors we met along the way for their favorite spots.  In places where there were actual dive shops, we found the people to be very generous with their local knowledge even when we weren’t paying to dive with them.  But, sometimes we just had to do some exploring on our own to scope out some new spots.

When we didn’t have any information about an area, often we would do a reconnaissance snorkel to see if it looked like a good dive spot before breaking out the dive gear.  That let us assess the depth, current, visibility, etc.  We have our own dive gear, including a compressor to fill our dive tanks, which lets us dive wherever we like.  We’ve also met lots of other divers on boats doing the same thing who have become fast friends.  That means it is rarely ever just the two of us diving.  There is always safety in numbers!

Pretty much all of the time, we are diving from our dinghy.  We get all our gear ready and pile it into the dinghy to head off to the dive site.  If the site doesn’t have any current, we anchor the dinghy or tie it to a mooring ball if there is one.  The dive shops have been really nice about letting us use their moorings. But, if we are scuba diving or free diving anywhere that has current, especially in the passes, we tow our dinghy.  Mike has a 100′ floating line that he attaches to the dinghy and his BCD.  That way, when we are ready to ascend, we just come up the line and are right at our dinghy no matter where we are.  We’ve also been lucky enough to have other sailors that just wanted to snorkel the passes while we dove and were willing to tow the dinghy at the surface for us and keep an eye on where we are.  So, overall, we have had lots of fun and easy dives without incident. 

Below are a few of the videos that I put together about our time in the Tuamotus this year.  I hope you enjoy them.  You can also read more about the Tuamotus if you go back and check out my blog posts from earlier this year. 

Diving Fakarava – June 2018

Exploring Tahanea – June 2018

Diving Makemo – May 2018

Free Diving Raroia – May 2018

Happy Holidays!

~katie