Dive Review of
Blue Nui/Pearl Beach Resort in
French Polynesia/Manihi

Most of Caribbean, Fiji, Tonga, Maldives, Indonesia (N. Sulawesi), eastern
Pacific (Panama, Costa Rica)

Dive Conditions

Dive your computer  

[None]  

Overall Rating

Blue Nui Manihi, as run by shop manager Stèphane Hamon, is
absolutely top of the line.  They tried hard to please, we never had to
touch our gear, and we were treated as friends rather than just customers. 
This is one of the few times on any trip that when we left the dive shop
for the last time it was hugs & kisses all around—Marina for me and
Stèphane and Julien for my wife Léone.  The routine here is a
morning dive at about 8:30 (or 10:30 if no one wanted to dive early; they
bent over backwards to be accommodating), back in for lunch, and another
dive around 2:00 or so.  You do a back roll in, fairly easy exit on a
detachable ladder.  They were flexible about how you got out—i.e. whether
you want to take off your fins, BC, etc. in the water or not.  Restrictions
depended on what the dive staff perceived your experience level to be; we
could pretty much do whatever we wanted, while some others were closely
shadowed and held under a tight rein.

The diving is varied, ranging from calm, quiet wall & reef dives to
flying “drift” dives through the lagoon entry (“The Break”) at tide change.
 On the wall and reef inside and outside the lagoon, there are
coral-covered canyons, channels, and the undersides of ledges to swim
through.  There is plenty of healthy hard coral (for reasons I don’t fully
understand there seems to be no soft coral in French Polynesia).  Fish life
includes lionfish, white tips, black tips, eagle rays, Napoleonfish, clouds
of pyramid butterflies, unicornfish, flame angelfish, ringtail wrasse, and
unique to the Tuamotu islands, the beautiful bird wrasse.

The dives in the channel at full current were wild rides and great fun. 
You would either drop into the channel, or start in still water at one end.
 If you didn’t drop into the channel itself you would be in fairly calm
water for a few minutes with a moderate (1-3 knots) current, then
accelerate as you go through the shallow break.  When you again hit the
deeper water at the other end it’s like hitting a wall of still water, with
everyone tumbling head over heels as the currents meet.  Then it’s nice and
calm again until you’re ready for the boat to pick up survivors.
 

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