Dive Sites

Naia Dive Cruise (Fiji)

Dive Sites & Dive Practices

NAI'A's crew have evolved an overall approach to safe diving practice which has worked remarkably well for both our safety record and the satisfaction of our experienced and discerning clients. The secret is is to put the responsibility of diving safely squarely on the shoulders of the divers, all of whom are well trained and know their limits better than anyone else and many of whom have hundreds or thousands of dives. NAI'A's sites lend themselves to safe diving anyway. Even where there are bottomless walls, some of the most interesting stuff is up at 15 feet.

While divers are not required to follow the guides, we stress the sensibility of diving the profile that and the guides use. For one thing we know the sites, local critters and conditions, having dived them hundreds of times. We are very particular about our own profiles: we go to whatever depth is appropriate as our deepest right at the beginning of the dive and then ascend slowly and gradually, always rising above 40 ft. with 1000psi remaining and continuing slowly on up past 20 feet. Safety stops are mainly redundant after spending a third of the dive in 15-20ft.

NAI'A's crew have found that divers respond well to being treated like they know what they are doing, and as a result, they tend to dive more carefully than they might otherwise. Having said that, the other guides and I do watch our new passengers closely the first couple of days and very occasionally have to take someone aside for a little chat about diving safety. New divers sometimes want to shadow a guide the whole time and that's okay too, since NAI'A usually has two guides in the water every dive.

North Save-a-tack Passage, Namena

The dive site which drew Cousteau to Fiji. This site has it all (when the current is right): concentrated schools of big fish and phantasmorically beautiful soft coral bommies. With an incoming current (which is not synonymous with a rising tide), divers drop into the deep blue and swim along a sheer wall which tops out in about 100 feet. On the plateau above the wall, giant schools of bigeye trevally, scad, and barracuda are watched over by several gray reef sharks. On the periphery, white-tip sharks lie napping on the bottom in preparation for their night-time forays. When your computer finally signals the end of your time on the plateau among the big guys, you let the current carry you deeper into the channel, where a line of bommies rise nearly to the surface. Two of the bommies are connected by an arch you could drive the ALVIN through. The sides and tops of the bommies are alive with color: gorgonia fans, black coral, soft coral, and every reef fish imaginable. As if this weren't enough, you can allow yourself to drift even further into the channel to Kansas, a small bommie covered with Sinularia soft coral which looks just like wheat fields swaying in the wind. This spot deserves at least two days of diving to appreciate fully.

Nigali Passage:

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.

Jim's Alley:

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.

Wakaya Island - A Treasure Chest of Exotic Creatures

The site of a small exclusive resort and a treasure chest of exotic creatures. Fortunately very few of Wakaya's clientele are divers, which is good for us because it leaves the reef pristine. Wakaya's diving is a mix of unusual reef fish and large pelagics. Permanently found on a shelf at 85 feet are between three and six blue ribbon eels, often two to a hole. Slightly deeper on a nearby shelf are several pairs of decorated dartfish, a rare cousin of the ubiquitous fire goby. Lucky divers sometimes find the even less common elegant dartfish there. Further along is a purple leaf scorpionfish which lives among a stand of yellow soft coral.

The ridge above is named Lion's Den for all the lionfish which live there, and a large black coral at one end of the ridge marks the home of two green leaf scorpionfish and their tan colored cousin. The worst part of diving Wakaya is having to decide which lens to put on the camera; nearly as common as the blue ribbon eels and leaf fish are mantas and hammerhead sharks, which are apt to sweep past while you are setting up for a close-up macro shot. NAI'A's crew have identified eight of the manta rays who frequently feed in the channel at Wakaya by their distinctive underside markings and the even more distinctive shark bites in their wings. Other regular visitors to Wakaya are scalloped and great hammerheads. Usually just cruising in to check out divers along the wall, the hammerheads range from eight feet up to about thirteen feet. Sometimes divers see several together in the channel, and one group saw a school of seventeen hammerheads parade past.

Mount Mutiny

A seamount similar in many ways to E-6, yet much smaller, located only four miles away and named in honor of both Captain Bligh, who passed nearby shortly after the mutiny on the Bounty, and the passengers on a recent NAI'A charter who threatened mutiny unless they were allowed to dive the seamount again and again....

Diving is very much like E-6 in terms of pelagics and other fish life. The highlight of Mount Mutiny is the Rainbow Wall, a wall of unusual thin-stalked Siphonogorgia soft coral in a broad range of colors which blankets the south flank of Mount Mutiny for a distance of 200 meters in depths between 60 and 120 feet. This is one of the single prettiest soft coral dives anywhere.

Sunset Ridge

A ridge of coral jutting straight out to sea from the edge of the reef near Nananu-i-ra, on the northern coast of Viti Levu fronting Bligh Water. Depth varies from 10 feet near the barrier reef to over 100 feet furthest out to sea.

The shallow area between bommies at the start of the dive is covered in blue, red, purple and -- especially -- sunset-orange soft coral which is found nowhere else in such profusion. At 56 ft., living in a crinoid at the tip of a gorgonia fan, is a black and orange harlequin ghost pipefish.

The area is home to many anemones and their various species of clownfish, numerous lion and scorpionfish, and unusual crabs and shrimp. The deeper part of the ridge bisects the current flow through Bligh Water and thus tends to concentrate pelagic fish.

Typically found along the up-current face of the wall are schools of big-eye trevally, rainbow runner, barracuda, and surgeonfish. Also resident are a handful of whitetip reef sharks and several gray reef sharks as well as two large bumphead maori wrasse. Occasionally spotted are silver-tip sharks, hawksbill and green turtles, and eagle rays.

E6 - A Photographer's Heaven

A seamount rising sheer-sided from 3,000ft right in the center of the narrowest part of Bligh Water, where it intercepts the flow of nutrients funneled between the two large islands of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. Extraordinary diving! Pelagics are normally found on the two sides of the pinnacle flushed by currents, while delicate soft corals and fans decorate the protected lee side where NAI'A moors.

The Cathedral is a large swim-though lined in gorgonia fans and soft coral, with soft-coral trees growing up from the floor. A narrow opening above allows sun rays to penetrate to the floor of the Cathedral, illuminating the bright fans and soft coral like so many panes of stained glass, giving it the feel of its namesake. The floor is home to several different colors of poison-bristle nudibranch, while adjoining small caves shelter many large lobster. It is not unusual on night dives to encounter 20 big lobster out patrolling their territory.

Other highlights of night dives at E-6 are giant cuttlefish, arrowhead crabs, tiny soft coral cowries, colonial anemones on the gorgonia fans, and so many flashlight fish that you can navigate by their bright green light. Day dives at E-6 feature schooling barracuda, trevally, and surgeonfish, occasional hammerhead sharks and eagle rays, and a plethora of reef fish including anthias, fusiliers, and leaf scorpionfish. I discovered both E-6 and Mount Mutiny from the air, having chartered a private plane to scout potentially good dive areas in waters not normally frequented.

SHARKS!

NAI'A initiated a small-scale shark feed in Nigali Passage in 1994 as a means of drawing the resident shark population closer to photographers eager to get epic photographs. We are very careful about how we organize the shark feed so as to minimize our impact on the resident population of female gray reef sharks.

Because we discovered Nigali Passage and are the only divers ever to visit it, we feel responsible for the animals who have called it home for years. Therefore, rather than feeding the sharks copious amounts of food on which they may become dependent over time, we use the minimum amount of bait necessary to pique the sharks' curiosity. Nor are the sharks handfed, a stunt guaranteed to cause problems sooner or later. The NAI'A baiting technique does not create a feeding frenzy suitable for the Discovery Channel, but it does draw curious sharks in close enough to the circle of divers for photographers to capture full-frame photos and for non-photographers to get a close-up look as these sleek predators glide past.

Skiff Diving

Many people diving in the Pacific for the first time seem apprehensive about skiff diving. By the end of the charter, those same people realize that well orchestrated skiff diving is the only civilized way to dive. For the most part the Western Pacific is either two feet deep or two thousand feet deep, so there is no way to anchor or moor a big ship close to the dive sites. And, where currents are a part of the picture, "close" to a dive site isn't close enough. You want to be right on top of the site when you drop in.

Even more important is the freedom of not having to get back to where you started. NAI'A's skiffs will pick you up wherever you surface. Divers accustomed to the 40-40-20 rule (swim out for 40% of your air; swim back for 40%; and hope the last 20% covers your navigation mistakes or the current you didn't account for going out....) will be delighted by the extended dive time, photographic opportunities, and room to maneuver that the skiffs allow. Skiff diving is safer, too, since you never have to stress yourself getting back to where you started.

NAI'A uses two 6.8 meters rigid inflatables designed for the lobster grounds at the bottom of the South Island of New Zealand. These are robust boats, and their low freeboard makes them easy to exit and enter. Because NAI'A uses two skiffs, divers who surface early are whisked back to the ship where they can have a shower and a brownie while they wait for the hard-core macro photographers to complete their dive.

NAI'A offers four or five guided dives a day. The mad keen can do as many extra dives in between as they want. Because her itinerary is so extensive, NAI'A generally travels at night so that she doesn't have to move much during the diving day.