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Priska's Journal Entry
#3
French Polynesia; love at first sight
May 2004
Priska - a NAUI Open Water Diver trained
by her father, Captain and Dive Instructor on board the RV Heraclitus
We arrived in Rangiroa on the 1st
of May, after 70 days at sea since departing Mexico and a 4000 mile
voyage, exactly on the day we intended to. It was one of the most
beautiful atolls I have ever seen.
As we cautiously motored our way through the unpredictable Tiputa Pass, I
excitedly watched the palm trees and coral sand beaches pass me by. I went
to land in the first boat load of people, and walked the winding, palm
tree lined roads down to the crashing waves on the beach. All I could
think was: “ Paradise, this is Paradise!”
We forced our wobbly sea legs to walk on land and into the back of a
pickup truck which took us to yummy chicken, ripe bananas, friendly
Polynesian girls, big Polynesian men with frangipani scented hair and the
grandfather of the island Nanoa who sang us songs in Tahitian. After this
feast of friendliness, we sat in the back of the same truck and drove to a
gym in which “La Ball” was taking place. Inside men and women in brightly
colored clothes and big flour crowns danced the “Tamure”. The men shook
their knees looking a bit like chickens and the girls effortlessly shook
their hips as if their hips were not attached to their bodies… We tried
joining them, but I’m sure we looked really ridiculous.
Once we were anchored closer to the village, we made friends with the
local people and got frangipani and jasmine necklaces, which made the ship
smell like a garden. They told us about the canoe race which was going to
take place on the next Sunday and was bound to be fun. When that next
Sunday came, I clambered into the boat along with a few others and drove
to the port of Avatoru village. We missed the start of the race, so we
sat next to the grandfather of the island, Nanoa, and were given chocolate
cake and meat on a stick. When the canoeists came back, small girls
dancing Tahitian style in little green skirts and grass headdresses
awarded our long wait. They were so amazing, I wish I could shake my hips
like that. For about 10 magical minutes they shook their hips and wiggled
their arms to slow guitar music and fast drums.
A couple of days later, at our anchorage in Avatoru pass, I had passed my
dive test, and was now going for the first “real” dive.
I woke up at 8:00, feeling excitement in every bone, every vein, and every
strand of hair; today I would dive at the drop off!
Everyday exited divers would come back from a dive at the drop off,
telling us how they had come face to face with dolphins, sea turtles and
giant oceanic white tip sharks called Margarit. Today, after endless days
of diving in murky waters under the ship with Nicole, Nate and Eibes (our
dive instructor), I would dive on a slanting reef with 120 feet
visibility!
At 9:00, Nicole and I excitedly started setting up our gear, as we had
learned 2 months ago in Socorro when we first started our dive course. Our
tanks were handed down to Marlowe, our boat driver and tender for the
morning. At 9:30 after a short meeting with Eibes about the dive planning,
we jumped in the boat and started driving for the drop off. My stomach
cringed with fear as Eibes explained what we were going to do in case of
an emergency. When he finished explaining emergency procedures, I said in
an offhand way: “But that’s not going to happen to us any way” and prayed
that we would return to the surface unblemished.
One by one we slipped into our
BC’s as if they were heavy jackets and rolled in to the water backwards
holding our masks. After a two-minute search for my BC inflator/deflator
hose to let the air out of my BC I started descending, by totally
deflating my lungs and taking only short breaths. Once I was a few feet
under the water, my fears eased off and I relaxed. I tilted my head back
and watched the rays of sun light play on the surface.
Nicole had less weight than usual and did not sink easily, since we had
been appointed dive buddies, I went up and checked if she was OK. Holding
her hand, we descended to 50 feet and stayed there for a while enjoying
the clear water full of color full reef fish. I was floating about 5 feet
above the seafloor watching small, blue fish pop their heads in and out of
corals, when I heard Heather yelling something that sounded like: “shark”,
behind me. I turned and saw three big, streamlined bodies with
black-capped fins swimming straight for us. It took me a few seconds to
realize that a three hungry looking black tip reef sharks were swimming
straight towards me. Heather grabbed hold of Nicole’s hand and Eibes
grabbed hold of mine. We stayed in a huddled group and waited for the
sharks to swim away. For ten minutes they circled us coming as close as 5
feet! For ten minutes, I shook with fear of the majestic sharks circling
us. I looked at Nicole and then at Heather and Eibes, they were all
looking at the sharks with wide eyes. Looking down the wall into the blue
gave me little hope, for there lingered many more sharks, ready to chase
more fear into our forcefully beating hearts. I sucked about 200 psi in 5
minutes, until I consciously told myself to breath deeper and slower.
Finally, after 10 minutes of goose bumps, they disappeared into the blue
and we continued with our dive. Just as the sharks left into the blue, a
big group of bright colored reef fish appeared out of the blue. There were
huge fierce looking ones with blue stripes across their mouths, so that
they looked like they had fangs. There were pretty, dark blue triggerfish
with long crescent shaped tails, dancing around us. A group of big, dark
parrotfish swam around me, occasionally bumping into my mask. A school of
tiny, blue fish swarmed out of their coral like a wild hive of bees. I was
so distracted by these turquoise, yellow, black, green, brown, spangled,
spotted, striped and shining fish of all shapes and sizes, that I didn’t
notice the sharks coming back until Eibes pulled be to his side. They swam
back and forth between the wall and us a few times before disappearing
totally. After half an hour under water, I said goodbye to all the
beautiful fish that we had just met and started ascending slowly with the
rest of the group. The water was so clear, that when we where at 5 feet it
seemed as though we were at 20 feet depth. As we surfaced I took one more
good look at my pressure gauge, which I had been monitoring so carefully
during the dive, and saw that it read 1100 psi! This meant I was getting
my breathing under control and wasn’t sucking air like a horse which I had
been doing on most of our previous dives. I passed my tank and weight belt
up to Marlowe, kicked my way out of the water and onto the red and black
Zodiac and started talking loudly and excitedly about our shark
experience. As soon as Nicole and Heather had jumped out of the water, we
all started screaming out of joy. Our long hair fluttered in the wind as
we drove back to the Heraclitus across high swells. Within minutes of our
arrival back to the Heraclitus, everyone knew that we had just had a
breathtaking dive experience…
That amazing shark dive, was by far not the last of my dives here in
Rangiroa and
definitely not the last one
with a shark in it. I did about five dives with a slate and pencil in my
hand, recording the health of the corals along with the rest of the
science team. On some dives I would concentrate so hard on identifying the
coral and its condition, that I didn’t even notice when big sharks,
Napoleon wrasses or big underwater cameras in the hands of a camera man
from France looked into my face. I had so many amazing shark dives, one
better than the other but I think this one topped them all. As all the wet
divers beamed with happiness about what they had just seen in Tiputa Pass,
I set up my gear and prayed that I would see all the amazing things those
wet divers had seen on their dive. So Nicole, Sofia, Lindsey, Nate, Eibes
sat in the boat as Marlowe drove the red Zodiac to the entrance of Tiputa
Pass.
We tumbled into the water with
all our dive gear on and Regulators in our mouth and started descending
into the 2-3 knot current. I stretched my arms and flew over the ocean
floor. I flew over ridges and trenches, craters and mountains. The whole
dive I just let myself be carried by the force of the water. I t almost
felt like I was a spaceship and I was flying over the moon or mars, and
there came the aliens out of a deep trench. Suddenly 300 fins, tail and
shark faces emerged from deep trench and effortlessly swam against the
current straight towards us!
The whole dive I was so relaxed and flew with the flow of the water, but
the sharks scared and amazed me so much that I started swimming against
the 2-3 knot current in search of someone to hold on to. So I found
Sofia, who already had Nicole holding on to one hand. I grabbed hold of
her other hand and the connected dive trio effortlessly flew through the
water. It was like watching a movie in fast forward, all the amazing sea
creatures just passed by you in a matter of seconds and didn’t completely
go into the memory banks of your brain. Those sharks were just too
beautiful to be true, but sadly enough they are disappearing too fast.
Polynesia is probably the only place I will ever see them this close and
this many, because the shark fining industry didn’t creep into this corner
of the world yet. I was giddy with joy and didn’t even notice Eibes
signaling us to turn. When I did notice, it was too late and the current
too strong , so we missed our turnoff and drifted behind the little motu.
When 30 minutes of thrilling excitement and rushing adrenalin passed, we
all went to the surface, inflated our safety sausages and waited for
Marlowe to come racing towards us and pick us up. My head spun on the way
back to the ship and I was so happy to have been able to see the wonders
of this atoll.
For one exhausting week, the ship turned into a big floating movie set. A
crazy, French director, a co-director, a camera man and a soundman,
directed, co-directed, filmed and recorded our every move above and below
sea level. By the time they left, they had 21 tapes of footage, to put in
their wonderful movie in the making about thee Heraclitus called: “Dragon
de la Mer” (Dragon of the seas). When the movie is complete, the
Heraclitus and its present crew will all be stars in France.
When the French film team was gone, we left for "La sables rose" (the pink
beaches) on the southern tip of Rangiroa on the 13 of may. I lay face up
in an unsteady aluminum boat for 4 hours, as we drove 35 miles across the
nearly enclosed lagoon in the middle of the atoll.
We passed many “motus”
(small islands with coral rubble beaches) on the way, which I didn’t see,
because I was too busy shivering at the cold in my bones and too
concentrated on my stabbing back pains to notice the lonely palm tree
motus.
Slowly but surely, we bounced
our way through the choppy sea, until "pink land ho" was shouted and we
drove towards the pink glowing beach. The first stop brought us to a
slightly pink beach, which was more rubble than sand. A deserted house
with an ancient stove and rusted frying pans stood in the shade of a large
Mangrove overlooking a small pink stream, which led to the ocean. I slid
across pink-algae covered stones towards devastated coral sculptures. We
decided that it was too rocky for us here and drove on to another island
to collect coconuts. Baby black tip reef sharks lead us to the new island,
where a stingray rolled in the sand. Once we had set foot on the island,
we realized that we could not climb coconut trees! We walked through the
quicksand marshes, coral beaches and coconut jungles in search of a tree
our own height. Just as we walked towards the boat with sunken heads, a
small coconut tree appeared before our eyes. Now that we had food, we
needed a soft place to sleep. Not knowing where we were going, we drove
and drove until an island appeared in front of our noses. Since the sea
was starting to get rough, we had no other option but to tie our boat to
the small island and stay here for the night.
I was greeted by a booby bird’s
sharp cry and the buzz of a few hundred birds circling the island. A
fluffy baby booby sat in a nest on the top of a Mangrove tree. We had
arrived at bonsai lagoon on the lea ward side of Booby Island. After camp
had been set up, we went hunting for dinner. While the others spear fished
and dug giant clams out of their homes, I watched small groupers; snappers
and squirrelfish swim around massive Porites boulders and small bushes of
branching Acropora coral. The few coral heads that still stood, were
sediment covered, covered by algae or bleached with very little healthy
tissue and only a couple of overall healthy corals.
Eibes came back with a
good-sized marble grouper on the tip of his spear gun, which he started
cleaning out right away. It only took a few seconds for the baby sharks of
bonsai lagoon to detect the bleeding fish organs in the shallow waters
near the beach. We watched the small sharks rip apart the fish head with
glistening teeth. After that brilliant shark feeding show, we built a fire
on the sand/rubble beach and watched hundreds of birds returning to their
nesting grounds, while frying fish on the fire. Hermit crabs of all shapes
and sizes joined us for dinner. Birds squawked and crabs shuffled at my
head as I tried to fall asleep under the shadows of tall trees.
I was shook out of sleep at the
crack of dawn, by the high pitched cries and the flutter of birds leaving
the island. Walking down the beach brought me to a baby eagle ray, which I
marveled at for 20 minutes, before returning to camp for breakfast. Eibes
had speared two squirrelfish, which we ate for breakfast, before the 3
hour drive back to the ship. We said goodbye to our friends the hermit
crabs, by collecting a few and having them race against each other. I
named my hermit crab warrior, because he won all the races and was strong
as a warrior. We packed the boat and started driving.
The wavelets beneath the boat
lulled me to sleep until and the waves crashing on the hull of the boat
woke me. The shining bow of the blade runner dipped into the water and
crashed back down with such force that I thought my tailbone was going to
break. Soaking wet and with aching backs, we returned to the ship…
An 8 hour sail took us from
Avatoru Pass to Tiputa Pass, where we anchored and had a few last amazing
dives filled with, sea turtles, majestic Manta rays and sneaky gray reef
sharks. It has been one of the most amazing places for diving, dancing and
making friends. There will always be doors open for the Heraclitus and its
crew in Rangiroa.
Priska
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