櫻桃與魚 Tahiti 波拉波拉島

Swimming in the ocean with countless fish and sharks, and experiencing the thrill of locking eyes with a shark—it's an unforgettable feeling you just can't understand until you try it yourself! If you're planning to see the sharks and stingrays in Bora Bora, what should you pack before heading out? How do you book the tour? And what exactly is included in the full-day itinerary? We've got everything you need to know right here in this guide!

🦈 Tahiti Independent Travel Info

★ 【Bora Bora Activities】Shark & Stingray Snorkel Full Day｜Jet Ski｜ATV
★ 【Moorea Activities】ATV & Jet Ski｜ATV｜Jet Ski
★ 【Island Hopping】Bora Bora Flights & Shuttle Boat｜Moorea Ferry
★ 【Accommodation】Tahiti Accommodation Info
★ 【Guide】Trip Preparation｜Budget Tips｜Bora Bora Attractions｜Moorea Attractions

Swimming with sharks in Bora Bora

🦈 Full-Day Itinerary Table of Contents

🦈 Booking Your Tour

If you stay at the Conrad Bora Bora Nui, the resort can help you book half-day or full-day shark and stingray tours. They mainly work with two companies: Lagoon Service and Lagoon Safari. Lagoon Service takes you out on a traditional blue outrigger canoe, while Lagoon Safari uses red ones~

For the half-day tour, Lagoon Safari is a bit cheaper, but for the full-day tour, the prices are exactly the same! Both companies offer very similar itineraries, though we heard they take you to slightly different snorkeling spots. As for which one is better, we only joined Lagoon Service, so we can't really compare. We recommend checking out TripAdvisor reviews to see which fits you best!

➡️Book the Lagoon Service Full-Day Tour on TripAdvisor

We ultimately chose Lagoon Service! Most people suggest booking these full-day tours yourself online or directly with the operator. Before booking, I actually contacted them to ask for a quote. Booking directly with Lagoon Service costs XPF 14,000 per person, while the resort quoted us XPF 15,500—about $15 USD more per person. However, since our US Hilton Amex credit card earns 14x points for Hilton purchases, we did the math and decided to book the tour directly through the resort. The perk was earning all those points while saving ourselves the hassle of coordinating. If you aren't trying to rack up hotel points like Cherry and Fish, you can definitely book online yourself. Depending on the tour, you can usually save about 5-15%!

📌 Recommended Reading: Conrad Bora Bora Nui Review!｜Encountering the 100% Beauty of Bora Bora

🦈 Trip Preparation

The boat provides water, drinks, beach towels, life jackets, and snorkeling gear (fins, masks, and snorkels). We recommend bringing your own sunscreen, mosquito repellent, and motion sickness pills (if you get seasick easily). We also highly recommend wearing water shoes! They make walking around in the shallow sandy waters—where fins aren't suitable—much easier. But if you don't have water shoes, flip-flops will do just fine!

If you encounter a super sunny day, we really suggest wearing a long-sleeved rash guard. The sun in Bora Bora is so intense that after just 2 minutes, you'll feel like your skin is burning! We visited at the tail end of the rainy season in mid-to-late March. Over our 7 days and 6 nights, we had gorgeous, sunny weather. We occasionally got a 5-minute thunderstorm, but it cleared up immediately. We only had one entirely overcast day on the whole trip.

And as luck would have it… that one overcast day happened to be our shark tour day! It even poured rain during breakfast… The sky was so gray, it felt like some bad karma exploded on us 😓 The color of the ocean looks so different without the sunshine ahhhhhh…

🦈 Setting Sail on a Traditional Outrigger Canoe

Even though the sky was gray, at least there was no strong wind or rain. Lagoon Service arrived right on time at 9:30 AM to pick us up from the Conrad's dock. Once we hopped onto the traditional outrigger canoe, our guide gave us a quick briefing on the day's itinerary and some safety rules, and then we were off, heading straight to the shark spot!

🦈 Swimming with Sharks

After anchoring the boat, the first thing they do is host a shark feeding show! Once the feeding started, a massive school of sharks and fish instantly rushed in for the feast!

The sharks here are Blacktip Reef Sharks. They can grow to about 1.6 meters long and are generally quite shy. All those dark shadows beneath them are fish—there were absolutely tons of them!!!!

You can clearly see the distinct black tips on their fins~

Our guide only let us jump in to swim with the sharks after the feeding was finished. These sharks are naturally timid and won't attack humans. However, it's still best not to get too close during feeding time—when they smell fish blood and are aggressively eating, you don't want to accidentally get nipped! Seeing the Blacktip Reef Sharks didn't feel too scary at all, so we just jumped right in without overthinking it.

The moment we got into the water, we could see the Blacktip Reef Sharks in all their glory underwater.

This isn't a camera trick—they really were THIS close to us!! Oh my gosh!!

Seeing them underwater is a completely different vibe compared to watching from the boat~~!!!! Plus, there was a giant swarm of fish trying to snatch food away from the sharks!

Once in the water, we also spotted another type of shark: the Lemon Shark~

Now, this shark looked pretty intimidating!! Its fins don't have black tips, so it looks a lot closer to the great white sharks you see in movies! Compared to the 1.6-meter Blacktips, adult Lemon Sharks are about 2.2 to 2.4 meters long, and some can even exceed 3 meters. When this massive shark, bigger than a human, glided right past us, I completely held my breath~ Wow! It felt like I was in a movie. It was such a bizarre mix of terror and pure exhilaration~~!!!!

Our guide wasn't scared in the slightest—he kept swimming right along with the sharks, happily snapping photos~

Isn't it crazy how many fish and sharks there were? I just wish my camera lens was wider, because just out of frame, there were so, so many more~~~!

We highly recommend this specific spot! In the deep, rich blue water, the ocean floor was completely carpeted in beautiful corals, like a magnificent rug.

Floating there, completely surrounded by fish and sharks of all sizes, I suddenly felt really moved. We had traveled thousands of miles just to visit the home of these incredible sea creatures. I had a sudden poetic moment, wanting to just marvel at the greatness and wonder of nature~

Our guide was amazing; he free-dived so deep!

Eventually, our guide was just having a blast—he blew a perfect bubble ring underwater!

A French guy from our tour group actually swam right through the center of the bubble ring~

Haha~ So fun!

After we got back on the boat, the guides started strumming their ukuleles and casually singing a traditional Bora Bora song as we headed towards the stingray habitat~

➡️Book the Lagoon Service Full-Day Tour on TripAdvisor

🦈 An Intimate Encounter with Stingrays

These stingrays always look like they're smiling. When they swim, they look like they're flying, and when they beg for food, they act just like cuddly puppies~

They are seriously adorable!

Even though they look cute and harmless, everyone knows that stingrays actually have venomous barbs on their tails~

These "cute" stingrays actually made a few girls in our group scream their lungs out!! We even heard someone yelling, "Stingrays are so scary, I love sharks!" 😆 😆 😆 Doesn't that sound a bit backwards?! Hahaha

Honestly, you can't blame them for screaming~~ Before we got into the water, our guide warned us never to touch a stingray's tail. But the shallow sandbank we went to was literally packed with them! Unlike the sharks we saw earlier, which were a bit shy and kept their distance, these stingrays are not afraid of humans at all. Even if you're just standing there, a stingray might ambush you from behind and gracefully slide right over your feet.

From time to time, you'd see a bunch of those "venomous" tails swishing right in front of your eyes (maybe only 20-30 cm away…). It constantly felt like you were in danger of bumping into one. We were even afraid to walk in case we stepped on them~ So it's no wonder people were screaming!

Aside from feeding the stingrays,

Our guide also put on a show of hugging and kissing them, giving us tourists plenty of chances to snap away~

Our guide seemed to be having the time of his life playing with the stingrays too!

In addition to the countless stingrays, the guide used some bait to coax a moray eel out of its hiding hole so we could take a look~

🦈 Snorkeling in the Coral Garden

Next up, we headed to the Coral Garden for some snorkeling~

The sheer number of fish was unbelievable.

We swam alongside a huge school of fish all moving in the same direction~ It was such a surreal feeling, like we had just seamlessly blended into their community!

I had been looking forward to seeing the "I ❤️ Bora" sign, and it turns out it was right here in the Coral Garden all along!

Resting peacefully at the bottom of the Coral Garden, the "I ❤️ Bora" sign silently echoes the thoughts of so many travelers!!

It definitely lives up to the name "Coral Garden"—there were so many gorgeous corals.

There were also these colorful giant clams!

The coral reef seemed to stretch out endlessly as far as the eye could see.

It was truly spectacular~

Wherever our guide went, a massive swarm of fish would follow him.

Only after our guide urged us did everyone reluctantly say goodbye to the Coral Garden.

🦈 Traditional Lunch on a Motu (Islet)

For lunch, we were taken to a stunning private motu (islet).

At the entrance of the islet, there was a really mysterious-looking tiki statue.

There was a thatched hut on the island~

And a few tables and chairs set right in the shallow water!

The thatched hut was filled with traditional local food.

Even the plates were woven from palm leaves!

Super cool!

Thank goodness the skies finally cleared up a bit to show us some blue!

Eating lunch with our feet submerged in water full of fish was a completely unprecedented experience! This type of fish seems to be everywhere in Bora Bora's shallows—they have yellow tails and black fins—absolutely adorable! We later Googled it and found out they're called "squaretail mullet." I insisted on making up my own nickname for them: "Little Black Hands"! (Kevin was very amused but helpless 😆)

Every now and then, a few stingrays would slowly glide past our table, as casually as if they were taking a stroll in their own backyard~~

Coupled with a few seabirds hanging around the tables, the lunch setting completely and perfectly blended into nature.

The adjacent shallows were only about 30-40 cm deep.

So many "Little Black Hands"!

Aside from the mullets, there were also tiny sharks and stingrays!!! The miniature baby Blacktip Reef Sharks were S．U．P．E．R． A．D．O．R．A．B．L．E．!!! In Bora Bora, we honestly felt like it was easier to spot a shark or a stingray than a cat or a dog~~ They are literally everywhere! No wonder the locals think tourists make way too much of a fuss when we see them~ 😆

All the structures on the islet were built from natural materials, like this sunshade made of thatched palm leaves.

Even the restroom was super natural island style! The toilet was built directly on the sand~

➡️Book the Lagoon Service Full-Day Tour on TripAdvisor

🦈 Cultural Performances

Once everyone was finishing up lunch, the guide gathered us all together for a demonstration. First, he taught us how to weave the palm leaf plates we had just eaten from.

Next, he showed us how to husk a coconut barehanded using their traditional method—with just a wooden stake!

Freshly grated coconut straight from the shell is seriously delicious!

Finally, he demonstrated how to squeeze fresh coconut milk!

After the cultural performances wrapped up, we began our journey back, still wanting more~

To sum it up, this jam-packed six-hour tour is absolutely our number one must-do excursion in Bora Bora, hands down!! Swimming with sharks and stingrays, exploring the endless Coral Garden, seeing countless tropical fish, enjoying a delicious traditional lunch, watching baby sharks and stingrays in the shallows, and enjoying the traditional coconut and weaving demonstrations~ Doesn't it sound like an incredible value for the money?!

➡️Lagoon Service Full-Day Tour Info

Bora Bora has this magical charm~ Even before we left, we were incredibly reluctant to say goodbye, and we already started planning our return trip! Next time, we have to come back to see the corals and tropical fish we couldn't get enough of, and revisit the home of the sharks and stingrays to swim with them again~ Bora Bora, until we meet again! We hope you give us nothing but bright, sunny weather next time!

📌 Recommended Reading: 7 Must-Do Attractions, Itineraries, and Experiences in Bora Bora
📌 Recommended Reading: Must-Read Tahiti Independent Travel Guide｜Itinerary Planning Tips

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