Story and Photos By Kevin Baldacchino

Recently, my family, some friends and I were fortunate enough to escape the rain and cold weather of our part of the world and enjoy the warmth of Fiji for a couple of weeks. We quickly acclimatised to the very warm weather and made good use of the pool and snorkelling in the lagoon with 27 deg water. We managed to visit some points of interest while in Fiji, but I won’t bore you with these, what I will share with you is the diving I managed to do while there.

During our first week I met some people from Bega in NSW, after chatting over a few ales they told me that they were planning a dive for Friday with the dive shop at the Warwick resort and if I was interested in joining them, I reluctantly accepted their offer. A few days later a big crowd of people from the Latrobe Valley turned up at the same resort and as it turned out there were a few divers in amongst them. Andrew who joined me on the dives is the nephew of my team leader at work, small world isn’t it.

Our group was transported over to the Warwick where completed the formalities and those that needed gear were kitted out. Off to the boat we went and with all passengers aboard we set off for the 40km run down the coast to Beqa Lagoon for our dives which were to be on the wreck of the Tasu and some reef named the Golden Arches. As we left the protection of the reef the boat encountered its first problem, fuel was leaking from a hose and blew a fuse in the engine management system, easily fixed as the crew had spare fuses. But this problem reoccurred a few more times which restricted the boat to one motor and doing about 12 knots which increased our supposedly 40 minute trip to 2 hours on the one engine, but this gave us lots of time to chat to the other divers on the boat.

We finally arrived at the dive site and geared up and entered the water in 2 groups. For anyone visiting this area of Fiji the Tasu dive should be high on your list of dive sites as the wreck is adorned with loads of soft corals of all colours and fantastic marine life, this was my second visit as I had dived this wreck two years ago with Jason Hender and Dave Calleja. It is possible to penetrate this wreck even though it is not huge and as you exit up the stairway to the rear deck there are usually one or two big Lionfish sitting on the stairs and on this dive they were there also. When it is time to return to the boat you move over to the reef area to complete your safety stop in about 4m of water with fish of all colours engulfing you and even picking at your hands as this is a cleaner station. This reef area has such a large concentration of Clownfish with about 4 different species seen, I could spend ages just watching these little fish and was the last one out of the water.

With the engine problems the boat was experiencing we ended up spending our surface interval moving to our next dive site which was not far from the first site and having our lunch on the boat instead of the island we were supposed to visit. The second dive was a site called the Golden Arches, which really lived up to its name. Magnificent swim throughs with large golden soft corals hanging from every available surface and loads of fish. All to soon it was over and we were heading back to the boat. The interesting part of our day was about to happen, as the boat was spluttering along it was decided by the crew that at this rate it would take us about 3 days to return to the resort at this speed, so they picked a point on the mainland and headed for it. About 500 metres from the beach we ran aground, so it was all hands out of the boat pushing, this must have quite amusing for the locals as they lined the shoreline watching and laughing. We finally made it back to dry land and got into the cars that travelled up the coast to return us to our resorts.

A few days later l organised to do the AWESOME shark dive up at Beqa Lagoon with Beqa Adventure Divers. Andrew and l arrived at Pacific Harbour with light drizzle falling, but this didn’t dampen our enthusiasm with the thought of doing “the best shark dive in the world”. This was to be my third visit to this site and l was still very excited to be there. We finally boarded the boat and sped out to Shark Reef, on our arrival to the site the crew started to throw in some fish bits to let the residents know that the chuck wagon had arrived with a fresh load of meat, l meant divers!

Our first dive at Shark Reef was to 28m where we were to make our way to the viewing ledge, and once there were totally engulfed by Giant Trevally and Rainbow Runners. The strangest site you will ever see diving happens on these dives as you look up and see large wheelie bins being lowered to the bottom with all manner of fish circling these bins ever hopeful for a juicy scrap to escape from the bin. The feeder quickly settled in and started the feed with the massive resident Queensland Groper showing up for his feed and shortly followed by a few Bull Sharks that didn’t come in to close. It was mayhem with fish everywhere, suddenly due to the lack of shark action we were able to descend off the viewing ledge down to the main arena at 32m alongside the food bin to experience what the feeder sees. This was a fantastic feeling to have all these fish so close and even having the Giant Trevally bumping in to us, this was a major highlight of this first dive. All too soon it was time to head up to the second feed area where the White Tips and Grey Whalers got their feed before we ascended back up to the boat.

With all divers on the boat we had some refreshments and a short surface interval before preparing ourselves for the next dive, with our divemasters being confident that a Tiger Shark would show up on this dive. We descended to the 14m feed area for the second dive and settled in for the show, we didn’t have to wait long either with the Bull Sharks moving in for some awesome action. These sharks are absolutely massive, being about 10-12feet long and very bulky. As the time passed we still had no sightings of any Tiger Shark and this is how it remained, but the Bull Shark action made up for this. As with all these dives, the time passes so quick with everything that is happening around you and then you find yourself back on the boat reliving what you have just witnessed.

If you find yourself in this part of Fiji, you must visit Pacific Harbour and dive the “Shark Reef”, it is a must do as this is claimed to be the best shark dive in the world and then you might follow this up with maybe a dive or two in Beqa Lagoon.