Makemo West pass snorkel

 The big main reason to be in the Tuamotu island group is the snorkeling and diving in these amazing crystal clear waters. We sailed back through the bombies retracing our track,(which was much less stressful than the first time through) to get back to the West pass, far from the village. Makemo is 40 miles long East to West and 10 miles wide North to South. The village is on the NE side about 30 miles from this pass. That is a lot of bombie dodging!

We finally get the weather window we had been waiting for and it pays off. Here Mike is coming back up from about 25-30 feet of water.

I am using the GoPro for taking photos because it has a better water proof case than my other little Fuji camera. The draw back is, that there is no zoom on these cameras, so you just aim in the general direction of what you want to photograph and then crop out the rest with a program so you can see the details. A Moorish Idol swims among the coral rocks.

Bet you did not see the octopus in the previous photo! They are so good a camouflage when they want to be.

Can you see him now? He is back in his hole in the process of camouflaging again.

Mike dives down for a closer look.

Then we spot another octopus swimming across open sandy bottom.

And the funniest thing happened. One octopus reaches a tentacle into the hole of another octopus and taps him. It was like a game. “I got you. No I've got you, tag you're it!” (double click on photo to enlarge)

Looking into 40-50 feet of water, you can see most of the coral rocks here are small. And somewhere down there is another octopus!!

I can't see him so Mike dives down to point him out.

Once he does, the octopus shows himself and I get a good photo. How lucky to see four octopi in one snorkeling session!!!

As we swim back towards the boat, we realize there is a fairly healthy bombie not far from our keel.

And another one close to our rudder.

From this side of the boat we don't look near as close, but we will have to watch it closely. One thing to note on this photo is that Avatar is 44 feet long, and I am guessing we have 100 to 150 feet of visibility here!! Wow, just incredible!

I spotted this very rare bright yellow cigar wrasse. Looks a lot like the Trumpet fish, but very bright yellow! Could be either I guess, so hard to tell. 

Mike dives down to inspect a hole in a rock. We still to this day have not seen any lobsters!

On the way back to the boat, we see this 4 to 5 foot long black fin reef shark. He is just cruising along, not bothered by us at all. Let me just say, it does take a bit of time to be comfortable swimming with these guys, but the black tips are pretty docile. It is some of the others to be careful with. 

From this angle we look awfully close to that bombie again. Think we'll re-anchor!!