Dive Fakarava

18 July 2024

Dive Fakarava

Charles Darwin himself already published an explanation for the origin of atolls. In a nutshell: a volcanic island in a tropical sea surrounded by a barium reef. The island erodes and sinks slowly ( or the water level rises) but the coral reef keeps growing so that eventually a ring-shaped island remains. Sometimes the ring is completely closed and then the lagoon can even be a freshwater lake. More often, though, there are some passages in the reef and the water is brackish or salty.

So we anchored inside the sheltered lagoon of Fakarava. The lagoon is huge, as much as 30 miles long, but the island is only narrow and you can hear the ocean swell breaking on the outside. The island is only narrow, you can hear the ocean swell breaking on the outside.  Atolls are not very fertile, even when there is fresh water. The only thing that does well here are coconut palms. As such, these stand waving at you from every patch of white. As soon as you take a few steps into the water, you are greeted by the area’s most famous inhabitant: the shark. There are hundreds, if not thousands. Black-tip reef sharks, white-tip reef sharks, hammerheads, nurse sharks, but mostly grey reef sharks. Sharks, the top of the food chain are there only when the reef is healthy. So this is a very good sign you keep telling yourself when three young sharks swim past your legs when paddling.

Snorkelling, sunbathing, swimming (among the sharks) are the things you can do here. But the most special thing is to dive here. Because the reef here is really healthy. Reefs cover only 0.02 per cent of the surface of all oceans, but are home to 30 per cent of all marine life.

And then that dive. We dive in the northern pass at rising tide. The current is strong and we quickly lower ourselves to the bottom, at about 25 metres deep. No one, not even those who have been diving for years and years is prepared for what we saw there. The incoming water current is like a giant jet stream with hundreds, nay thousands of fish. The water appears murky, but is crystal clear. It’s all fish bodies in the background, like a snow shower underwater. As far as you can see, fish shoot past in dense schools and at great speed. And if you look closer you can see them: the smaller sharks just among those fish, the bigger ones at a little more distance, above us, beside us, behind us. Until we ourselves become part of this unimaginable stream of fish and sharks. So staggering, so incredibly beautiful, and, I’m afraid, so hard to explain. But, when you’ve seen this you’ve seen enough for a while. The trip is finished, it’s all good, whatever we do next, I don’t think there is anything that can top this.