by Catherine Holloway
Rob and I had our heads hunkered down into some hard columns of fire coral off Wakaya Island. A precocious pair of scarlet lady cleaner shrimp had set up a grooming salon among the stinging pillars and dozens of skittish anthias were queuing for service. The coral head was engulfed by a fluttering veil of vibrant orange female fishes and purple males. One by one, a usually hyperactive anthias maneuvered briskly tail-first into place, held a pose with a shudder of its stretched-out pectoral fins and opened up its gills to allow the shrimpsí tiny pincers to pick away parasites. Freshly scrubbed and coifed, the anthias darted back out into open water while the next-in-line wiggled backwards into position. It was a fantastic scene! Whenever I look beyond the color and chaos of a coral reef, I am always amazed by the order and collaboration of natureís design. Itís everywhere, you just have to get up close and explore the tiniest crevices.
We returned to NAIíA gloating about our cleaning station video and photographs and expecting the other divers to share in our excitement.
"What the hell were you guys doing down there?"
"Didnít you hear us yelling and screaming to get your attention?"
"A huge great hammerhead shark was hovering right on top of you! He was trying to see what you were looking at. Whatever it was, I hope it was worth it - that shark was really close!"
This wasnít the first time since I began diving in Fiji that I wished Iíd had eyes in the back of my head. The same species of shrimp, in fact, at another of our sites had taken to thrilling even our most veteran divers by leaping gallantly into their open mouths and digging leftover breakfast crumbs out of their gums. One glorious sunny morning I had my head down again while a scarlet lady tickled the back of my throat. I did notice the sudden shadow over my head and I did think it strange. But, concentrating so hard on holding my breath and not giggling lest I swallowed the critter while he worked, I assumed it was a cloud in front of the sun and I did not look up. Back on board, the dive deck was buzzing with stories about the manta ray that hung around checking everyone out! I was the only one who didnít see it glide overhead. So, it pays to explore shadows tooÖ
Diving from NAIíA in Fiji is like this. Itís one of the reasons I came here to live and work as a dive instructor aboard NAIíA, exploring reefs, photographing the diversity and the drama and sharing everything we find and learn with visitors. Itís also the reason I know Iíll never get bored. Iíll never, ever, see it all. Iíve been lucky. Since learning to dive in the wild frontier waters of PNG, Iíve dived in many spectacular places throughout the Pacific and South East Asia - each with its own trademark attractions. For years I heard about Fijiís pretty beachfront resorts and its famous soft corals. But, when I finally came here, that was not what impressed me. I fell for the extremes of the place. The large pelagics alongside the small invertebrates, the rarity and the abundance, the deep and the shallow, the driving passage currents and the glassy calm lagoons, the wet volcanic peaks and the dry palm-fringed atolls, the Fijiansí pride in tradition and culture and their desire for progress and development. I also fell for NAIíA - itís dedicated owner/cruise director, Rob Barrel, and the research and conservation projects the vessel and her passengers support during their holiday experiences in Fijiís rich and remote subaquatic environments.
Of all the advantages of diving from a live-aboard, the three most obvious and important are that: you can reach more distant and more pristine places; you can dive new and entirely different environments everyday; and you can do more dives with less effort. NAIíA fulfills these ideals as a comfortable and beautifully appointed floating home as well as a stable, efficient diving platform. Her itinerary takes divers well away from the usual tourist haunts to reefs and islands that no others ever visit. For most of the year, NAIíA departs from Lautoka near Nadi international airport on the north western corner of the main island of Viti Levu. On 10-day charters she travels north east before turning south into Fijiís Bligh Water - a deep channel between the main island and Vanua Levu through which the prevailing trade winds funnel current enriched ocean water - and the Lomaiviti Group of islands. There are still many unexplored island coasts and even uncharted reefs in Fiji and NAIíA continues to open up those places to divers. Most memorable for traveling divers though, are our visits to remote Fijian villages on the fringes of these distant islands. Unlike the staged "traditional" performances at resorts, these visits offer a unique and genuine glimpse of Fijian people, their surviving culture and their subsistence lifestyle. No souvenirs are sold, but hospitality and good cheer are given away with relish. As we arrive to offer the regular sevu-sevu (a gift to ask the chiefs for permission to be there), we are welcomed as old friends and invited to a kava ceremony and a lively celebration of song and dance. And as we leave, we take in our hearts the warmth of new friendship.
It is this combination of comfort and a cultural experience that makes live-aboard diving journeys special. NAIíA is a 120-foot motor sailor (with a conspicuous 103-foot mast) crewed by 12 of the friendliest and most attentive Fijians Iíve met. Among them is Rusi Bale, a Fijian dive guide and former fish collector, whose amazing knack for finding tiny critters has made him somewhat of a living local legend. Scuba units are set up at the beginning of the trip and remain on the back deck near the compressor. After detailed dive briefings at each new site, divers dress, gather mask/fins and accessories from their individual storage bins on the cool shaded dive deck and walk to the back deck to be assisted onto two waiting skiffs (5.8m NAIAD rigid inflatables with 60hp Yamaha outboards). Competent skiff drivers spot and pick up divers quickly wherever and whenever they surface. We usually schedule three or four day dives plus a night dive. There are freshwater dunk tanks and a large camera preparation room on the dive deck with plenty of 220 and 110 volt power outlets. The staterooms are also spacious and all are air-conditioned and with private bathrooms. With 29 tonnes of fresh water - shower as you please! The ship carries a maximum of 18 passengers and both the salon (complete with stereo, video and slide projection systems) , the shade deck and the upper sundeck provide much room to relax. NAIíAís chef, Manasa, prepares three varied and delicious full meals each day plus home-baked snacks ready for gobbling immediately after each dive. Fresh fruit, tea, coffee and juice is always available and special dietary requests are catered for.
Boats and bunks aside, let me take you on an armchair dive to a few of our favorite sites and creatures. If itís soft corals youíre looking for, I have to admit, Fiji is certainly the place to be. Every site we dive boasts various species in abundance - on the tops of coral heads, inside caverns and archways, along sheer walls and lining the sloping edges of passages. From even the first check-out dive site at Nanu-i-ra where one spot has been dubbed Sunset Ridge for its blanket of gold and orange soft coral, through to Mount Mutinyís wall of spindly siphonogorgia stretching from about 60 feet downwards and right up to Namenaís Kansas, so named for the Sinularia covered bommies that resemble wheat fields.
But shift your eyes away from the bursts of color against the blue water for just a moment. Hidden among the branches of this soft coral are numerous easily overlooked critters. Allied cowries nestle in the nooks, their mantles mimicking the complex characteristic texture of the coral stems. Long cowries and minute gobies compete to match the tone of the spine of a sea fan exactly. Long nose hawkfish and tiny toadfish hide and hover among the puffed-up feeding polyps. Decorator crabs steal tufts of soft coral to fashion themselves a clever costume. Razorfish gather within black coral bushes and brittle stars wrap so tightly and so numerously that the stripes their arms create along the branches appear part of the design.
Itís a law of the sea that where there is soft coral there is also current. The reason NAIíAís dive sites are so lush is because they are places that funnel the most current carrying the greatest nutrient flow. That flow is also often the source of schooling pelagic fish. Choosing the right time to dive such spots is crucial if youíre looking for clear, calm water. Nowhere is timing more crucial than at Gau Island. The shallow lagoon around the island opens to deep ocean via two passages. As the tide rises, clear water rushes into the lagoon through the wide channel but is forced out through the narrow one. Then, after the change of tide the opposite occurs. On a rising tide we dive along two chains of coral heads within the wide passage, Jimís Alley and Anthias Avenue. Reef fish clamor for space among the coral gardens atop the bommies. Nudibranchs and pipefish hug the walls and blue-ribbon eels peek tentatively from the rubble at the bottom. But the waning tide is an excellent time here to spot manta rays who regularly feed in the current between the bommies.
When the current turns here though, itís time to move NAIíA to the narrow slit in the barrier reef named Nigali Passage. Divers rarely notice the sloping walls of soft corals here because they are too busy getting in among the big fish! Nigali is home to a group of sleek gray reef sharks. Usually all females, the group numbers between 4 -25 (depending on the season) and males are sometimes spotted. During certain times of the year the "girls" turn up exhausted, cut, punctured and grazed from passionate mating sessions. Itís a mark of the resilience of these animals that within days the scars have healed and within weeks any evidence of injury has disappeared. These sharks patrol the passage and come easily into a diversí view without any bait to lure them. However, passenger demand led us to run small scale shark feeds here to encourage the sharks even closer for dramatic photographs. Some prefer not to participate in the feed for safety or environmental reasons - opinions I sympathize with. Inevitably though, this dive is one of our most exciting and it is fascinating to watch the control and the power in the sharksí behavior. Any chaos and frenzy is usually caused by the mannerless school of more than 150 snapper. A few massive floury cod and a couple of courageous moray eels often get in on the act. Itís definitely a hot dive for pictures and video.
But the sharks are merely one attraction out of many at Nigali. My favorite are the bigeye trevally. As soon as you hit bottom these magnificent fish stream past at lightning speed seemingly in an attempt to escape out the channel to open water. But, wait! Hold yourself in the current if you can. The trevally gradually re-gather, in a spectacular choreographic dance, into a school of more than 300 that engulf you as if you were one of their own! Just inches away in every direction, those bulging black eyes watch your every move and avoid your desperately feeble attempts to reach out and touch them. Snapper single out a trevally and chase it vainly around the fish ball before relenting and releasing it back into the fray. Beyond this curtain are three separate schools of barracuda - apparently different size/age groups - who also investigate divers in spiraling displays. Weíve even spotted sailfish here.
If big fish arenít your bag, Nigali also happens to be an ideal spot to stalk skittish garden eels. A field of them sway from their sandy burrows in just 30 feet of water. Small bommies provide excellent hiding places for divers, enabling you to get your camera lens close without frightening them away. Just watch out for the white tip reef sharks and sea snakes resting on the other sides of these bommies.
At Wakaya, the resident great hammerhead, schooling scalloped hammerheads and gray reef sharks and manta rays often cruise behind unsuspecting divers concentrating on the reef. Less unpredictable are the barracuda and pelagic unicornfish that gather in the mouth of the channel. I love to watch tiny cleaner wrasse work a rusty colored unicornfish that responds by glowing a stunning iridescent blue with flashes of white. This is a brilliant place to find otherwise elusive creatures such as Helfrichís and decorated dartfish and Randallís goby who each build burrows in rubble at very specific depths. There are various anemones including the oft overlooked carpet anemones and an extraordinary branching anemone called hellís fire presumably by someone who brushed too close and copped a nasty sting. The anemone is able to shoot its stinging nematocysts away from the surface of its tentacles giving it a predatory edge. Not that it bothers the plucky anemone shrimp who live there. The first to spot the green and white leaf scorpionfishes will find them perched proudly atop the hard coral. Unlike the shy senior blue ribbon eels, the juvenile (black with a yellow stripe) of the species is a joy to watch and will innocently test bite a macro framer. Nearby, another wonderful but mysterious example of cooperation is a dinner plate-size hole in a coral head where two white ball anemones, a lionfish and some banded coral shrimp appear to live together! The den is guarded by numerous goby and shrimp pairs as well as two tone dartfish who share their burrows with fire gobies.
If one site has it all, itís a massive pinnacle dubbed E-6 after the record breaking amount of film processing we do during our stay here. Even our most experienced and hard-to-impress divers return chilled and breathless declaring it the "worldís prettiest dive" only to change film and go straight back in again. E-6 rises from 3000 feet in the narrowest section of Bligh Water. Apart from the lure of the vast open blue water around the reef, the most popular section is directly under the mooring where a sheer wall of mullet-colored dendronepthya soft coral and enormous schools of reef fish front several sea caves. In one large cavern, we call the Chapel, giant trees of soft coral have taken root in the sand and rubble bottom. When the sun is high, beams of ethereal light penetrate the split in the reef roof, illuminating the fans and branches like stained glass. Myriad bizarre invertebrates are scattered on the floor and walls of the cave including dozens of purple poison bristle nudibranchs and flatworms. Here we have also seen giant salps draped over the reef, a bulbous soccer-ball sized nudibranch and cuttlefish. White tip sharks rest in the adjacent caves which, at night, are crammed full of lobsters and flashlight fish. When you finally exhaust your shutter finger and your no-decompression limits, go back in and snorkel around this grand sea mountain. Some say the best stuff is all in the top ten feetÖ