What to do
on Moorea.

01 · How we ranked it

Worth the time,
in that order.

The order is editorial, independent and unpaid: no operator here has paid to be listed, and none knows it is. We ranked on four things — whether the experience is particular to Moorea, what it costs against what you get, how easy it is to do on your own, and how badly weather or crowds can spoil it. Prices are those published by each operator, read in October 2026; where an operator's page carries no date, we say so.

We only name businesses we could confirm are operating in 2026, from their own site or an official listing. Several places that still appear on maps and in older guides are not here, for reasons given further down.

Moorea has limits, and they shape the list. The lagoon is narrower than Bora Bora's, the famous ray site is busy, and the island is a commuter suburb of Tahiti at weekends. What it does better than most islands is land: a road up a valley of restored marae to a lookout, and trails that start from it.

03 · The rays and the sharks

Please don't
feed them.

The sandbank between Tiahura and Papetoai is Moorea's best-known half hour and its most argued-over⁹. The lagoon is managed under a marine-space management plan, the PGEM, first adopted in 2004 and revised in 2021; its map marks the ray and shark observation sites, the underwater sculptures, and a 70 m coastal strip where boats must slow to 5 knots³.

Feeding is the problem. Feeding wild animals has been banned under French Polynesia's environment code since 2017, with ray feeding tolerated only at sites designated by the PGEM²⁹; when the revised plan was approved in September 2021, the government summarised it as 'feeding of species is forbidden, except by derogation'³⁰. The government's 2026 brief for visiting boats is blunter: no feeding of fish — sharks, rays, moray eels — and shark feeding is forbidden³.

It is not a theoretical concern. In May 2025 a visitor was bitten by at least two blacktip reef sharks on the Tiahura sandbank and needed 38 stitches; the press report noted that the shark-feeding ban is not always respected, that the 2024 lagoon-management report described the lagoon as partly saturated, and that the commune was considering limiting the number of operators on the sandbank³¹.

What that means in practice: ask the operator before you book whether they feed the animals, and choose one that says no. Go early, when fewer boats are on the bank. Don't touch, chase or hold the rays, keep your feet off the coral, and leave the sharks alone; they are small and usually shy, until food is in the water.

05 · Not on the list

Closed, unconfirmed
or left out.

The Lagoonarium on Motu Ahi closed in May 2021; its operators were later fined over a 2019 shark bite²⁹. It still appears on some maps.

The InterContinental Moorea closed for good in 2020³². A captive-dolphin programme operates on part of its former site; we could not confirm its 2026 programme from the operator itself, and don't list it.

Mount Rotui (899 m) is the island's most dramatic ridge walk and Tahiti Tourisme calls it difficult¹. It is steep and exposed: go only with a local guide, in dry weather, and only if you are a confident hiker.

Glass-bottom boats, a second quad operator, and several smaller boat companies are left out because we could not confirm they were operating in 2026.