Diving Hunga Pass
Vava'u Tonga

Location

South side of the Hunga Pass, approx location 18-41.6S / 174-08.4W.

Accessible by big dinghy in settled weather from any of the Hunga anchorages.

Dive Info

We dove the snorkel site shown in the Sailingbird Guide, just outside Hunga's narrow pass, and found it to be a great dive.

We anchored in a sandy spot at the head of an underwater ravine reaching seaward.

The north side of this ravine was a long spur of rock cloaked with dozens of different kinds of hard corals, soft corals, leather corals, liberally bedecked with featherstars and bright green bubble algae and busy with fish of all sizes. At its outer end it probably dropped down as deep as 80-90', but with the good viz the view from 40' was just great.

The tip of the spur presented an "acre" of unblemished lettuce coral (sometimes called cabbage coral)-- a beautiful species with delicately-folded leaves that we have nothing like in the Caribbean. Through these leaves darted scissortail sergeant majors and other small tropicals, while above milled a large school of what back home we'd call boga.

We worked our way back on the other side of the "finger" and saw more of the same to the north.

We enjoyed this dive so much, we did it a second time the next day.

excerpted from http://TheTwoCaptains.com/logbook/131-140/135.html