Diving on the Paul Gauguin

Hi....We are booked on the 10 day Tuamotus and Society Island cruise in June. This is will be our third trip on the PG and we have done almost all of the PG dives but it was with Regent. I wanted some feedback about the dive center and dive excursions offered by the ship. I heard that Dom is no longer there. Are the DM's still good? I noticed on the list that they are actually offering a couple two tank dive excursions now. Are these good or should we go to an outside op? Has anyone done the Fakarava two tank? thanks for any info....

We just got back from the 11-day Cooks Island cruise. We dove with four different ops - Top Dive on Papeete, Raro Dive on Rarotonga, the PG dive crew, and then Top Dive on Moorea. We had great experiences with all of them. Of course the private dive ops are far less expensive, but you can't beat the convenience of diving right out of the marina at the back of the ship!

Yes, Dom is gone - and I missed him, he was great when I dove with them a few years ago. Now they have Clement, William and dammit I'm forgetting the other guy's name! I'll think of it later......

Anyway, they really did a fabulous job. As always in any tropical vacation destination you're usually diving with a lot of vacation divers who rarely dive, which can be frustrating for frequent divers who are used to being on our own. But they did a really good job of ensuring that us experienced divers were pretty much left alone while they took good care of the less experienced ones. The visibility is so great there that you really never have to worry about losing the team. When the newer divers ran out of air before us, they didn't make us all end the dive - we were allowed to remain down there near the anchor line until we were done. And they made sure that they signaled us if they saw something interesting, so we'd get to see it too.

We brought our own equipment, and they took excellent care of it for us.

We also had a great time with Top Dive at both locations.

Here's a shot of Charlie with Clement, in Bora Bora:

And a few other dive shots for your enjoyment:

I saw so many eels on this trip, they took to calling me the Eel Whisperer. Here’s a white-mouth eel posing for me:

One of my favorite sights were the giant anemones with the families of clown fish living within their protective fronds:

Saw some VERY interesting creatures on our night dive in Bora Bora:

In Moorea I saw this spectacular octo, who I swear was posing for me! And color-shifting before my eyes:

I really wanted to find a stone fish, but they are SO hard to see! Fortunately Charlie spotted one:

And a lovely sea turtle resting her head:

Finally, this was the biggest freakin’ eel I’ve ever seen! Its head was far bigger than Charlie’s.

Oh, one thing to add: when Dom was onboard, he would go around and take a lot of photos during the various dives, and then sell a CD of photos at the diver cocktail party at the end of the cruise, which usually included at least a few shots of each diver. Now there is no DM who is a photographer, so no photo CD. That's no big deal for me, as (obviously) I brought my own camera. But I know there were divers who were disappointed that there were no shots of them.

I actually gave the dive team a flash drive loaded with over 100 of my best shots from our dives with the ship, and I told them they could give them away or do whatever they wanted with them. So I was a little surprised when they didn't even mention them during the diver gathering. Clement did go through a slide show of some shots of the various critters in the area, but frankly they weren't very good.

(I later offered to send photos to some of the divers, which they happily accepted.)

So if you want some underwater shots to remember your dives, bring a camera!

Great pictures. What camera and strobe did you use?

Fabulous pix! Thanks for posting---

Cheers,

Snorkling Lady

Thanks! These shots were all taken with an Olympus E-PM1 mirrorless camera in the Olympus housing, two Sea & Sea YS-01 strobes on ultralight arms, and various lenses including a Dacron +7 67mm macro lens, and a Panasonix Lumix G Fisheye 8mm/3.5 lens (with the Precision dome designed specifically for this lens with this housing).

I'm no professional - I'm totally an amateur. But I love to dive, and I love to bring home memories of my dives, so I'm trying to learn how to take decent underwater shots.

Great pics! No problem bringing a camera..I think we have more camera equipment than dive stuff now. If that is the eel at the anchor line on Moorea then I have a great pic of Dom biting and kissing him on the neck. lol

If you used the outside ops and the PG, were you still able to rinse and keep your gear downstairs?

When we went in 2009 there were a handful of advanced divers and they took very good care of us. In fact we were not getting our fill with only one dive so they let us come on a couple of the beginner dives with our own private guide! Some of the best dives of the trip!!! I was really excited to see that they were actually offering 2 tank dives on Rangiroa and Fakarava, but you can't pre book these.

Love the twin spot lionfish, aren't those a kick to watch flutter all around.

So that eel's an old-timer, eh? LOL! Yep, that's exactly where he was. We saw him on our very last dive...can't remember the name of the site, it's in my husband's logbook. I do know it was just outside Opunohu Bay.

About the gear: we didn't ask the PG crew to rinse or store our gear when we were diving with the outside ops. What happened is this: for our first dive, with Top Dive in Papeete, we were staying there at the IC and we did the dive on the morning of embarkation. The dive was over by 10 am, so we rinsed our gear there at the dive shack and hung it to dry for a few hours, until it was time for our transfer in mid-afternoon. It was almost dry by then, so we just packed it up.

In Rarotonga we walked off the ship wearing our BCs and carrying our fins. Raro Dive picked us up right at the wharf, and off we went to dive. When we were done we wore it again on the tender and took it to our cabin, where we rinsed it ourselves in the bathtub and hung it to dry there. It was dry by the next day.

We brought it down to the ship marina the night before our Bora Bora dives, and they had it all ready for us on the zodiac the next morning. We then did three dives with them, and left it with them for the rest of the cruise (we didn't do any more dives with them). They rinsed and stored it for us. We then picked it up on the last night, and brought it to Top Dive at the IC in Moorea for our post-cruise dives.

The ship also did dives in Aitutaki, which we didn't do as we had an excursion planned, and Moorea, which we didn't do because we were diving with Top Dive after the cruise.

I would really like to see some other dive sites in Bora Bora..so I was considering looking to an outside op

Does anyone know who the PG is using on Rangiroa or Fakarava these days? Last time they used Top Dive and it was horrible!!!

Loved your photos LeeAnne! Thanks for sharing!

I would really like to see some other dive sites in Bora Bora..so I was considering looking to an outside op

 

Does anyone know who the PG is using on Rangiroa or Fakarava these days? Last time they used Top Dive and it was horrible!!!

I'm not sure who the PG used, but I just did a reef dive with "dive spirit" in fakarava (a new dive company there, check trip advisor or google them) and they were FABULOUS. great equipment and their boat was right at the pier waiting for me when the tender dropped us off.

hope that helps.

Thanks Lee-Ann for sharing those great pics they were everybit as good as we saw in Great Barrier Au.

Can not wait for this trip