Winter2016AlertDiver

WINTER 2016

hotographers typically dive this site with a

wide-angle lens; this day I concentrated on

medium-sized fish portraits simply because

the backgrounds were so rich, textured

and colorful. While my yellow frogfish was

unsurprisingly absent, the rest of the site

was as pristine as ever. Revisiting the site

was an epiphany, a testament to the healing

waters that constantly flow through this

place, the soft coral capital of the world.

The fact that I was jumping into the water

here so soon after leaving Los Angeles is

insight into something notable about Fiji

diving: It is so very good and so very near.

Unlike some exotic dive destinations, which can involve

40-hour treks and hotel stays en route, Fiji is blessedly

accessible to North American travelers. From Los Angeles

International Airport, Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu, is a

direct, 11-hour flight away. The port of departure for

our liveaboard was just another two- to three-hour bus

ride from the Nadi International Airport. Leaving LAX

at midnight and gaining some hours by chewing through

time zones along the way allowed us to settle into our

cabins, prep our cameras and actually get into the water

on the very first day of the charter.

CRUISING THE VATU-I-RA PASSAGE

The first dive on many cruise itineraries, the dreaded

checkout dive, is quite often fairly marginal. These tend to

be close to shore and offer a shallow bottom so guests can

refresh rusty skills and dial in buoyancy on a reef sufficiently

devoid of life that an errant bump won’t matter. True to our

expectations, this dive was the least impressive of those we

did, but that was only because of the poor water clarity from

days of rain pouring into the near-shore waters. The dive

itself had potential for greatness.

Amazing Maze

, the amazing part was the series of

tunnels rimmed by soft corals and a profusion of anthias,

lionfish and clusters of anemones and clownfish. It would

have been stunning but for the detritus and particulate

matter that had washed onto the reef from nearby Viti

Levu. With a 100mm macro lens mounted, I was perfectly

happy to concentrate on reef minutiae. However, the

songs of an obviously nearby humpback whale kept

making me look up in expectation of the ultimate

photographic frustration: a friendly whale, crappy visibility

and a macro lens on my camera. I guess I was lucky I

never saw a whale so I could avoid that angst.

Seeing what the near-shore reefs delivered made it all

the more special to jump into the 150-foot visibility at

Mellow Yellow the next morning after an overnight steam

to the Bligh Water in the Vatu-I-Ra Passage. We weren’t

in Kansas anymore (but we’d be going there later).

The Bligh Water is named for William Bligh, who in

1789 found himself exiled from command of the HMS

Bounty

by master’s mate Fletcher Christian and a crew of 18

mutineers. Bligh and 18 loyal crewmembers were set adrift

in a 23-foot launch to embark on a 3,600-mile journey to

the Dutch port of Timor. Fear of cannibalism convinced

Bligh not to dawdle in these waters, but dawdling here for

the next 10 days was exactly what we had come to do.

After spending our first full day of the charter alternating

among Mellow Yellow,

Black Magic Mountain

and

Coral

Corner

, we steamed overnight to sample dive sites off the

island of Makogai. My first dive was at a site known as

Half

Pipe

. It would have been quite productive if for no other

reason than the giant crimson gorgonians that adorn the

face of the drop-off, all densely populated with small reef

dwellers such as fusiliers and anthias. But I was fortunate to

find an incredibly docile hawksbill turtle swimming along

the wall, weaving beneath and between the abundant filter

feeders. Of course there were the other usual reef suspects:

titan and clown triggerfish, puffers, whitetip reef sharks,

goatfish, clownfish and schooling Moorish idols. There

were smaller creatures for the macro enthusiasts such as

longnosed hawkfish, popcorn shrimp and leaf scorpionfish.

This was a very fruitful dive that we would revisit by

request later in the cruise.

After spending the day diving the nearby sites

Ratu

Ridge

and

Dominoes

, we visited a village on the island

of Makogai, a former leper colony. Before more humane

treatment for leprosy became the norm, lepers sometimes

were clubbed to death. When Fiji became a British colony,

clubbing was outlawed, and the Leper Ordinance Act of

1899 addressed the contagious nature of the disease by

preventing the infected from handling food for the public or

bathing in public pools. In 1908 the government isolated the

country’s lepers at Makogai Island, and in 1911 nuns from

the Missionary Sisters of the Society of Mary, along with a