During the night, NAI'A had motored to our first destination, Beqa Lagoon, famous for its soft corals and firewalkers. There we did undemanding dives to get those of us who hadn't dived for months into swing of things.
The current and nutrient-rich lagoon accounts for the masses of filter feeding invertebrates at Beqa. We dived Three Nuns and Two Monks. Both are heavily colonised with soft coral seaweeds and sea fans. At Two Monks there was a tunnel so full of soft corals and gorgonians that it was difficult to find anywhere to place a knee or elbow.
At night we dived the coral heads called Seven Sisters. I found a parrotfish hiding in a cave, debris from its diaphanous veil of mucus wafting back and forth with each slight swell. It was Cetoscarus bicolor, which has an orange and white juvenile from that look like a completely different fish.
From Beqa we motored overnight to Wakaya. NAI'A's motion at sea is gentle, and the sailing rig can stabilise the motion if it is rough. On our trip it was like driving in a bus. Wakaya is one of the biggest privately owned islands in Fiji. There are eight luxurious houses owned by the rich and famous and an exclusive resort, frequently rated one of the top five in the world.
When the noise of the anchor chain had died away, and NAI'A was safely anchored in the lagoon at Wakaya, I went in search of the yacht's owner-manager, Rob Barrel. We took a tuna head out of the fridge for pre-breakfast dive.
I placed it on a ledge at 32m. Off in the blue, Cyphaea jellyfish passed sedately in the current like orbiting satellites. Grey reef sharks came in, fast and bold, not used to being fed here. Cathie Holloway, another diver in our party, was suspended in the blue somewhere on her own, circled by six greys and bumped by one. And then there was that strange shark above, shy, scalloped hammerheads weaving through the blue. A big manta came along the cliff through the distorting thermocline. I held my breath and it swept past a couple of meters away. Another pair passed overhead.
Wakaya is famous for hammerheads. On one occasion, one of NAI'A's dive guides saw 17 of these sharks in the pass. I hoped that the tuna head might attract a hammerhead, but they tend to be shy.
Two large coral outcrops lie in the entrance to the pass. On top of one there are lionfish which will come out and feed in the current. North of the pass, on the shallow reef top, is a manta cleaning station. Many have shark bites out of their trailing edges. Along the drop-off are walls covered with yellow and white soft corals, much like the famous Great White Wall on Vanua Levu.
Late that afternoon, After three dives, with a hammerhead on each, we motored across to the old capital Levuka, on the island of Ovalau. We sat in the old Ovalau Club drinking beer, the sunset trying ever more surreal filters on the sky, amid desultory chatter and a décor seemingly unchanged since the old sandalwood and whaling days, when the high street had 131 bars and one church.
After dinner, NAI'A slipped quietly out, bound for E-6, spectacular seamount in the deepest and narrowest part of Bligh Water. There, at first light, the inflatables were lowered and NAI'A was secured to the mooring cable. The drop-off is severe: vertical to 700m, and there is nowhere to anchor. Only the wind holds NAI'A off the shallow reef.
The cathedral is the best site at E-6, and was perhaps the prettiest we saw. The deep, circular gully is carpeted with soft corals growing from the sandy floor, and sea fans and sea whips adorn the sides. Shafts of light spear down as though from high church windows. This is fish-eye lens country, but macro subjects abound, like the strange glaucid nudibranchs and the scarlet gobies on the sea fans.
At night, lobsters and squid and Anomalops flashlightfish appeared. We found tiny cowries on the soft corals and red spider crabs on the fans.
NAI'A can hang there by day, but should the tradewinds be interrupted by a squall from another direction, the ship would be on the reef, so we moved to a safer anchorage for the night.
Nearby is Mount Mutiny, so called because NAI'A once stopped there for a single dive. The guests returned from a spectacular dive with other ideas and persuaded Rob to stay for a few more dives. Again, the drop-off on this seamount is severe, and our first dive was deep, to see a vertical field of orange, red and yellow siphonogorgia soft corals. Barracuda and dog-tooth tuna appeared, strangely distant, insubstantial, like ghosts, and then were gone.
After the dive Cathie Holloway was mesmerised by her recreational drug, nitrogen. Fifty-eight meters, her computer said, and she was like a thing apart, gazing into space, of which, at Mount Mutiny, there is much: only the distant outlines of Vanua Levu to the North, Viti Levu to the South, and the deceptively calm Bligh Water, heaving silently between.
NAI'A can accommodate 18 guests in nine air-conditioned staterooms. The air-conditioning just cools the air; it doesn't feed you airline-style zero humidity air to reduce your mucous membranes to sandpaper. The spacious photography room forward of the dive deck has multiple shelves and plenty of 110v and 240v outlets for charging batteries, and two big soaking tanks for camera gear. There's enough room to spread out and be untidy, a rare luxury on any boat. At night, either the photography room or the foredeck is the venue for a kava drinking and music session led by the crew. The singing will break your heart.
Aft of the camera room is the dive deck for kitting up. You don't carry dive tanks anywhere; you leave them empty in the inflatable, and they reappear, miraculously full, in the right boat with your regulator on. NAI'A carries two 5.8m RIBs with aluminum hulls and 60 hp outboards. They are fast and excellent. Two are always used. So while one is on standby near the divers, the other can ferry you back to NAI'A so you don't have to wait for other divers to surface.
Rob assumes that guests know what they are doing underwater. This mature dive protocol benefits everyone and is what makes NAI'A so attractive to photographers.
Rob's dive briefing are about the only thing that distinguishes him from one of the guests. The crew know their jobs and the ship runs smoothly. The low-key approach seems to work; the ambience is like that of a party at which there are no relatives (or rugby players), and the crew are cheerful even by Fijian standards.
Liveaboard dive boats used to take divers outside the Northern Gau Pass, until one day photographer Jim Church wanted to dive a series of coral heads inside the lagoon. Now Rob takes the divers to Jim's Alley, because its so much better than the outside. At the bases of the coral heads it was relatively barren, enlivened by blue ribbon eels, but the tops are a kaleidoscope of color and movement. Tomato red Heteractis magnifica anemones with their associated clownfish are almost overgrown by masses of coral. Above, clouds of fairy basslets-including Pseudanthias dispar-feed on plankton passing in the current.
One pinnacle had a narrow cleft carving it in two. Hiding in a cave was a sweetlips, which seemed never to have heard about spearguns. It must have known I had the fish-eye on, and obligingly came up to the dome. On NAI'A next trip the divers had 15 mantas pass them at this site.
Rob keeps all dive-site data on computer so he can quickly check at what state of tide the visibility is best, or the soft corals expanded, or what animals are likely to be seen. At Nigali Pass this kind of information is vital; the clear ocean water flows in the passage on the ebb, while most of the lagoon is emptying through the northern passes.
Our first dive at Nigali Passage was mid-afternoon, shortly after hors d'oeuvres in the form of sashimi had appeared in the saloon. There was some left over so I stuffed a few cubes into my wetsuit on my way to the inflatable. We dropped in at the seaward end of the pass to be greeted by huge school of barracuda just hanging in the current.
By groveling across the sand I was able to approach without disturbing them. There is something magnificent about wall-to-wall barracuda at close range, a kind of magisterial indifference. Big-eye-jacks poured through the pass towards the ocean, in a hurry, but still curious enough to cascade towards me.
Sharks & snappers are not fussy; they like sashimi even without wasabe sauce. What impressed me was the excitement a few cubes of tuna generated in all three species: snappers, sharks, me. The snappers soon demolished the tuna and the current blasted us up from 30m into a shallow, sandy area, carpeted with garden eels. At the lagoon end of the pass is a lovely area of cabbage coral Turbinaria reniformis , with soldierfish interleaved between the convoluted plates.
Rob suggested a shark feed the following day. Organisation in the stiff current was tricky; eventually we all assembled in the right place and the six tuna heads, wired together, were brought down and tied to the reef. There was initial chaos as snappers, sharks and yours truly got mixed up together; but, as usual, they behaved impeccably.
They fed, although the heads provide little sustenance, in cycles. The sharks scared away the red snappers, which returned immediately the sharks had lost interest. A green moray and several large groupers joined the fray. The grey sharks here are almost all females. Sometimes hammerheads are seen in the pass, but are shy and stay at the end of any disturbance.
With 100 million sharks being slaughtered each year, worrying about the ethics of feeding them seems pointless. If photographs produced while feeding saves a few of those 100 million through greater awareness, then feeding is worthwhile.
As a dive destination Fiji is far enough west to have high species diversity with consistently great diving, but neither malaria nor box jellyfish. Maybe thatís why Fijians never seems to worry about anything. The NAI'A experience is like being Fijian for awhile; your dive computer does the worrying about nitrogen and the dozen crew attend to everything else.
To get an overview of Fiji's best diving, which is spread out over a huge area, you either need to stay at several different resorts, or take a trip on a liveaboard like NAI'A.
Details from: NAI'A Cruises, PO Box 3179, Lami, Fiji ( tel 679 450 382, fax 679 450 566 )
Flights: From the USA on Qantas or Air New Zealand through Hawaii; or from Australasia on Qantas, Air New Zealand or Air Pacific. Fiji is a three-hour flight from Auckland, five from Hawaii. Two domestic airlines service Fiji; they have a 15kg baggage allowance.
More information: Fiji Visitors Bureau, Thomson Street, PO Box 92, Suva, Fiji ( tel. 679 302 433, fax 679 300970 ). Tourism Council of the South Pacific, Upper Richmond Road West, London SW14 7NX ( tel. 0181 392 1838, fax 0181 392 1318 ).