Sharks!

We timed our arrival with our friends on Kini Popo at the pass at Raroia just perfectly and only had about 2 knots of current against us as we transited the pass. We followed the channel about 1.5 miles south to the anchorage in front of the village where one other boat was anchored. This was our first atoll, and we were immediately surprised by the fact that people live in this remote place. The village was very small, and it is hard to imagine there are more than about 100 people that live here. But, they have a small store with supplies and had just gotten internet access (although it is dial up speed).

Everyone ashore was extremely friendly, but especially the kids. When school let out and on the weekend, the kids liked to play at the quai and swim in the water. They all wanted to know our names and begged us to come play with them. One day they got their hands on a couple of paddle boards and piled on to go visit the boats. While Mike was on shore, a couple of girls about 10 years old approached on a paddle board and wanted to come aboard. I was in the middle of cooking something down below and told them maybe later. The next thing I knew, they were on the boat next to us running around and having a great time.

Because we were so close to the pass, we wanted to dinghy back to the pass to do a drift dive. The pass isn’t too deep here, and since we hadn’t really figured out how to dive the pass, we decided to snorkel and free dive it rather than pull out the scuba tanks. We invited a couple of other boats to go with us, piled in a few dinghies and headed out with our gear.

As I mentioned in the previous post, the large amount of water that flows in and out of the lagoon in an atoll through the pass with the tides creates a very strong current. So, if you snorkel or dive in the pass at any time other than slack tide, you are going to drift quickly with the current. We were hoping to time our dive with the incoming tide or flood, but when we arrived it was still ebbing flowing out of the lagoon. We decided to jump in anyway.

As I was putting my mask on and about to jump into the water, I heard our friend Dan say, “Nobody panic, there are a lot of large sharks.” That isn’t really something you want to hear right before you leave the safety of the dinghy and jump in. But, I jumped in anyway. Immediately I saw several 6-7 foot sharks hovering around. We would later identify them as grey reef sharks. We all stayed in a group and were floating with the dinghies. Each dinghy had one person holding onto a line attached to the dinghy. We quickly realized that the sharks were just a little curious but not otherwise aggressive. We all kept an eye on them, but none of them got close enough to make us fearful.

We had jumped in the water inside the lagoon and started drifting toward the pass. As we got closer to the pass itself, the current started picking up speed. Soon we were ripping through the pass. Mike and Dan made numerous dives down about 30-40 feet, and the view from the surface looked like they were flying in outer space as they quickly passed over the reef below. We saw tons of reef fish and sharks, but the highlight for Mike was when a school of wahoo passed right by him just outside the pass.

The drift through the pass was so quick that when we reached the outside of the pass, we all jumped back in the dinghies to head back to the starting point inside the pass and do it again. In all, we made about four trips through the pass. But, the craziest part happened on our second pass through.

As we got through the pass to the other side, we drifted a bit into the open ocean where it was much deeper and we couldn’t see the bottom. At first we just saw a couple of grey reef sharks, but very quickly as we got deeper, more and more sharks appeared. Suddenly there were 20-30 sharks circling below us. And, a few wanted to get a closer look at us and headed up quickly toward us from the deep. I think we were all thinking the same thing when Dan said to the group, “Everybody out of the water!” We all got back in the dinghies with our hearts pounding and a rush of adrenaline. Our books tell us that the grey reef sharks are sometimes aggressive and dangerous. I don’t think anyone really wanted to test out whether or not that is true.

After our fun time at the pass and the village, we decided to head across the lagoon to check out some of the other motus. The reefs in the lagoon were very visible and easy to avoid. We reached the other side of the lagoon just in time to watch a beautiful sunset and take in the palm fringed motus in front of the anchorage.

We did some exploring the next couple of days, including seeing the Kon Tiki monument. If you’ve read the Kon Tiki book or seen the movie, Raroia is where Thor Heyerdahl crashed Kon Tiki into the reef after crossing the Pacific. We also visited a pearl farm a short distance from our anchorage. There were only a few guys working on stringing some small oysters together. Apparently, later in the year Chinese workers come to do the grafting where they insert the grains of sand into the oyster to make a pearl.

We were also joined in the anchorage by Manatee (a different Manatee from the boat we helped take through the Panama Canal last year) and our friends on Ivadel who pleasantly surprised us when they showed up. With four boats, there was definitely enough people for a party, and we made a big bonfire on the beach with drinks, snacks and even some s’mores.

Mike and Phillipe made friends with one of the pearl farm workers named Ludo who offered to help them try and catch some coconut crabs ashore. The coconut crabs are huge land crabs that primarily eat coconuts. We’ve heard they are delicious, but are yet to try them. Ludo explained that you need to set up a trap to catch the crabs by breaking open some coconuts and tie them to the base of a tree. Then, you return at night to hopefully grab them as they are feeding. You have to be careful grabbing them and putting them in a bag, because their strong claws could take off a finger. Mike, Phillipe and Ludo made a couple attempts to catch some but came up empty handed. They did find a couple of smaller ones, but they weren’t big enough to keep. We’ve heard that there are lots of the crabs on Tahanea, so the boys plan to try again in a different atoll.

Overall, we had a fabulous week in Raroia. It was a great first atoll to explore, but we wanted to head to Makemo. Kini Popo and Ivadel decided to come with us, so we would continue the party heading west.

~katie

p.s. I sound like a broken record, but I’ll post photos and video of our dive with the sharks when we get to Tahiti.