Tahiti and Society islands ?

[leviathan1188]

I'm new here, but looking for advice from those in tahiti operations or who have frequented on where to go and who to dive with. Almost made a huge mistake and signed on with Paul gauguin, then i saw the boat... No cruise ships for me.
My wife and I are an instructor couple just looking for a reasonable day operator on any of the society islands or tahiti itself OR a liveaboard that doesn't want me to offer up one of my kidneys as payment.

This is somewhat of a working holiday for us, as we always are scouting for our dive travel groups at our busy dive operation in Hawaii.

 

[TSandM]

We dove with Top Dive out of Papeete. The first day was shark feeding, which I really don't enjoy, but the second day, we asked them not to do that, and they took us to a lovely little wall, and a couple of wrecks, and we had a good time.

BTW, we were there to get on the Paul Gauguin, and although I am not a cruise person, we had a wonderful time on the boat. We dove with a local operator at each stop, and the only thing I would do differently, were I to go back, would be to arrange those dives ahead of time for myself, rather than allowing the boat to book them. We dove Tahiti, Moorea, Huahine, and Nora Bora. I did not find any of the diving compelling. Shark feeding was common, and there was a lot of dead reef. In contrast, Rangiroa took our breath away, and remains one of the most amazing places we have dived.

 

[Wingy]

Are you firm on society islands or flexible enough for the Tuomotos where the better diving is?