JIM'S ALLEY
Jim's
Alley is a soft coral garden in shallow water, home to
zillions of reef fish. Jim's is a prime example of the
kind of soft coral diving for which Fiji is famous. Cluttered
with multihued soft coral and nearly every kind of reef
fish known, Jim's is a lush garden which leaves divers
in awe. As an added bonus, Jim's is a regular stop for
four or five mantas, who can frequently be found feeding
in the adjacent channel during the waning tide. Macro
photographers, too, love Jim's because of the profusion
of little creatures living among the hard corals, soft
corals, and fans.
NIGALI PASSAGE
Nigali
Passage is a narrow cut in the surrounding barrier reef
which concentrates pelagics from miles around. Nigali
is home to female gray reef sharks which number from 8
to 25 depending on the season. The channel also concentrates
a huge school of trevally, three age-segregated schools
of barracuda, about a dozen big flowery cod and an annoying
concentration of fish I have dubbed snapass (one reference
calls them snapper; one calls them bass). Because of the
unique configuration of the channel, the incoming current
does not coincide with rising tide as one might expect.
With over six years of experience diving Nigali and using
a computer database to organize current observations,
we have become experts at diving the channel during its
optimum four hour window of opportunity.
Nigali Passage well illustrates the advantage of skiff diving over diving from the mother ship. NAI'A's skiffs are able to drop divers well up-current and pick them up again half a mile away after they have drifted through the channel with the current. This dive would be impossible if you had to get back to where you started.
