Swimming with stingrays in Moorea.
While anchored in Opunohu Bay we took a side trip in the dinghy to “stingray city”. The local tour boats bring the hotel guests out to a shallow spot and feed the stingrays. The mobs of tourists stand in the shallows and feed the stingrays which of course attracts lots of stingrays, and more tourists, and sharks.
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The trip is about 2.5 miles one way from our anchorage to stingray city, along this well marked but shallow and very narrow channel:
The water is so clear:
North coast of Moorea:
The channel leads to this bay. This is looking back toward Opunohu Bay:
From that bay you travel along another small boat channel which in places is barely wide enough for two boats:
The channel leads to the Intercontinental Moorea Hotel. The channel actually ends about 50 feet from those bungalows. The guests must love the traffic:
A few hundred yards past the hotel is stingray city, we went early, there was only one other boat:
I threw some bits of fish skin in the water and in no time there were a dozen stingrays around the dinghy. I had to get in the water:
When they know you have food they get excited:
They calmed down after a while and I was able to take some nice video:
Tanya actually got in the water even with a few small sharks lurking around. Once the sharks started to tighten their circle she got back in the dinghy and took pics:
I don’t have a problem swimming with sharks around as long as they are smaller than me. Good or bad idea I don’t really care. However…these two sharks came out of nowhere and they were bigger than me, I would say at least six feet, maybe seven feet long. These are the largest sharks I have seen in person since the Bahamas. These two were in formation, moving with a purpose and began to circle at high speed, and that was enough for me to get out of the water. You will probably need to click on the pic to see them.
So we hung out a little while longer and watched from the dinghy. “Look another shark”:
The stingrays were awesome:
We took a ride a bit further west and then back east to the boat. By the time we circled back to the stingray area the tour boats had arrived:
Heading back, right in front of the bungalows at the Intercontinental:
