Which operator to use ?? Fakarava

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chris kippax

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We are planning a trip to Fakarava and are unsure what operator to use? I really liked dive spirit until I emailed them and got told all dives are a maximum 50 minutes. They also use 15l tanks. Seems a very short dive with a 15l tank. Can anyone recommend an operator?
Thanks Chris
 
Well, Dive Spirit recently changed owner but the Instructors/DM are the same as before, strange as I had all dives exceeding 50 mins in May.
Anyway I can vouch for Kaina Plongee, I went with them to Tumakoua pass (south Fakarava, Dive Spirit was not going that day): they are not the fanciest outfit, boat isn't big (it's sort of a big dinghy) but gear was good and had one of the best dives ever.
 
I second Kaina Plongee. I can't compare with other operators because I have never used any other North Fakarava dive operator besides Kaina Plongee (KP - currently owned by Vincent), formerly Fakarava Diving Centre (FDC - was owned by Serge and Carinne). Went with FDC 3X in the past, and once in 2015 after the changeover to KP. At no time were dive times limited when I went......unless they changed the rules? In any case, the service was outstanding - I would go back with them again without hesitation.
 
Just was there, did 25 dives on the south pass in the month of July, and made friends with a lot of people in the area.
The North pass wasn't as fun or interesting as the South Pass in my opinion.
The south pass, the best operator is Tetamonu Diving, the dive god there is a man named Marc Reutenauer. A wonderful person a great diver, and knows more about the pass, and what there is to see and how to do it safely than all of the other operators combined.
It is great diving, there are great things to see. It isn't the end of the world. but you can see the end of the world from there.
Our schedule while we were there was pretty easy. Get up, dive, fill dive tanks, rinse repeat.
Out of all of the places we have dived, this is the most special to us. It is the place we think of when we think diving.
We did do all our dives on our own with some help from Marc in what to see, how to see it, and where to go in the pass. We spent most afternoons with him taking about what fish we had seen, the eco system and diving.
Guy
:)
 
I was looking into the exact same question regarding dive operators there. I had exchanged some email with Topdive. Has anyone used them? Thanks.
 
Its an old thread, but for anyone w/ the same question. Just got back from Fakarava. Dive Spirit was the best operator out of 4 that we used in various tahitian islands. Staying at next door Snack Kori Kori (aka lodge) was also really nice. We moved to the south and stayed/dove from there, but didn't have a great experience. To do it again, I would have stayed at Kori Kori and dove w/ Dive Spirit the whole time despite the long boat rides to the south. I would say just check their dive schedule ahead of time to make sure you can get the south diving you want to get in, which is very much worth the trip.
 
We just spent ~a week in Fakarava diving 3 days in the north with O2 and 2 days in south with Tetamanu. I can highly recommend O2- professional dive guides, small groups (usually 4), pretty good rental gear. The shop is owned by a really nice french couple and we dove with all 4 of guides there and all were quite good at reading currents/know the area really well. First dive of the day always done at slack tide with almost no current and second dive will be a drift and they will give you different options depending on what the majority of the group wants to do (i.e. one group can choose an adrenaline option to drift through the pass into Alibaba, another group can choose an easy relaxed option to drift closer to the reefs and dive Ohotu). Really phenomenal diving, much better than Rangiroa and easier too. We stayed at the Havaiki and it was a short 5 min pick up each day. We saw mantas every day there, tons of sharks, and Alibaba which we regrettably only did once was by far the fishiest place that we dove in FP. We also saw pods of dolphins and humpback whale with a baby on the surface interval. No limits on time, most dives were 55-60 min. Their boat is big and comfortable, we saw Dive Spirit boat too and O2 has the bigger boat. You'll see nurse sharks swim by the pier at the dive shop.

Staying a few days at Tetamanu is really your best/only option to dive the south in my view, you can try to do the daytrip from the north but a few others who had done it with O2 said the boat trip was quite brutal and it's hard to time it exactly right as the tides change daily. The guides at Tetamanu decide the dive times only on the day itself. The transport boat used by Tetamanu is much bigger/more stable/faster than the inflatable rafts used by the dive shops in the north, plus you only have the make the journey once, and you can do the night dive in the south which is not possible in the north. If you can you should get a bungalow in Tetamanu Village and try to avoid Tetamanu Sauvage, we stayed in B6V which was right next to the dive shop and right on the pass and could see tons of blacktips swimming in the shallow lagoon plus giant schools of reef fish swimming right under the jetty every day from our balcony. Tetamanu Sauvage is in contrast a 10 min walk or so from the main area and not convenient at all. The accommodations are very basic (stable electricity, no hot water, no AC but not needed, water pump broke our last day so you have to be able to overlook these kinds of things) but the food is very very good (have to be punctual tho). The diving is amazing, definitely ranks among the best dives we've had. The wall of sharks is so much denser and more packed than in Rangiroa or N Fakarava- and they come up much shallower at 20-25m so you're looking at them from eye-level instead of 10-20m below (Rangiroa was more like a carpet of sharks, did not see the wall of sharks like in the images at all, and we went down to 35m). Fakarava North has a place called the Drop Off where the effect is similar but Fakarava South was just so much more impressive. Not quite as fishy in terms of diversity as Fakarava North in our experience, but the wall of sharks cannot be beat, and you will 100% see them on every dive. They also have a pretty cool night dive where the sharks will literally come so close that you can pet them (and some will brush up against you occasionally) but you need to sign up fast because they cap the divers at 7.

While Tetamanu pass is the best quality diving the dive shop is the worst quality of all 3 places we dived in FP. But again it's your only option. They have a shortage of dive masters at the moment, Marc is no longer there, there is a new Polish divemaster named Domanica who is really nice, a pretty new French guy named Gill, and a local guy who another couple told me knows the area super well/has been there for years but is not actually certified to lead groups. Groups are 8 divers to 1 guide so you have close to 30 divers dropping into the water at the same time and it's not really staggered. There was quite a bit of confusion as people just moved as one giant group, some followed the wrong guide, and our guide did not really check on his group at all (we dived with Gill and he basically just took pictures on his go pro the entire dive). When you signal 50 bar or 5 min to deco to our guide he showed the ok sign but did nothing, so we basically dove as if we had no guide. If you are self proficient you will have a blast, but if you are new I found the dive op to be quite lax in safety. The rental gear was also in pretty poor shape, we did not bring our own equipment due to weight and this was the only place where I really missed it. Wetsuits were old and they only had men's version, no XXS bcds, my inflator valve was leaking, the 15L tanks were filled up not much more than the 12L (3200 psi at most), and they only have a single rinse tank for everything. You have to set up everything yourselves and they don't really help you with anything (had to ask another diver to help put my tank on the boat). Very different than the full concierge service you get anywhere else in French Polynesia - but then again once you're in the water the wall of sharks kind of makes you forget about it all. Of all the places we dove/stayed (Rangiroa with Y aka Plongee staying at Kia Ora, Fakarava North with O2 staying at Havaiki, Fakarava South with Tetamanu) this would be the one we come back to if we had to pick only one - despite all the shortcomings, that's how good the diving is.

I will post a full trip review at some point but hope this helps
 

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