Winter2016AlertDiver

The hard-coral formations

in the shallows are often

quite extraordinary, as I

experienced in a series

of photos from a 2012

expedition there.

To spend a bit more time

in Taveuni, we opted not to

dive

Nigali Pass

on this trip.

This was a very tough call,

and it might have been the

first time I’ve ever missed

a shark dive on purpose. I

revisited previous trip logs

to recollect this iconic Fiji

drift dive. The pass is a long

channel that features almost

certain encounters with

horse-eye jacks and chevron

barracuda. Once divers arrive,

bait is strategically placed on

the portion of the reef the

crew calls “the bleachers.” Red

sea bass swarm the bait so

eagerly that I think it makes

the gray reef sharks hang back

a bit. But the sharks come

within camera range — 3 to

5 feet away, typically. The

site features a large, scenic

patch of lettuce coral in very

shallow water, which provides

an interesting place to offgass

at the end of the dive.

This 10-day expedition

featured many other dives

of significance, one of which

I hadn’t visited since the

beginning of the digital era,

which for me was 2001. I

guess it is appropriate that

the site is called

, named

for the chemical process

used for developing certain

transparency films, and

last time I was there I was

shooting Fujichrome Velvia in a Nikonos V. This time I

was using a 50-megapixel Canon EOS 5DS, and happily I

had far more exposures than the 36 that film had allotted.

The ship’s dive log indicated that those who were on a

quest to photograph marine life on this dive saw schooling

jacks, gray reef sharks, Moorish idols, clown triggerfish

and the ubiquitous regal angelfish. With my fisheye lens

better suited to large reef scenics, I ignored the reef dwellers

and concentrated on the immense soft-coral-decorated

foreground, while shafts of light pierced

The Cathedral

WINTER 2016

The dive site known as E6 is rich with soft

corals. These are all the more engaging

with the beams of light that pierce

through the perforations in the overhead

environment at The Cathedral.