Diving in the South Pacific

This trip was a 10 dayer with guests from the U.S and Germany.

One of our guests was Paul Humann, of whom we have a dive site named after here in the Bligh Waters and who has authored many a fish and reef ID book.  It was nice to finally put a face and personality to the name.

Many of the guests were keen photographers and put our camera room to good use!

We started the trip in the Bligh Waters, on the Vanua Levu Barrier Reef then on to Vatu-I-Ra where the reefs are just teeming with life.  Maytag was a veritable fish soup.  Some of the highlights from that dive was the Longface Emperror hunting with the Bluefin Trevallys and the clouds of Blue and Yellow Fusiliers.

There was a great Oriental Sweetlips cleaning station on Coral Corner where divers watched the Bluestreak Cleaner Wrasse swimming in and out of the Sweetlips mouths.

There were some great moments in the Lomai Viti group also, like the Mantas at Wakaya and the cool critters at Makogai, notably the Ornate Ghostpipefish that Eddie found and the two Golden Mantis Shrimps hanging out at ‘Rick’s Rocks’.  

We spotted the Leopard shark again at Nigali Passage on this trip.  We have been seeing her so often now that I think that we can safely call her a resident.

Eddie found the big Stonefish that likes to hide on the top of ‘Mushrooms I’ in Namena and Nora spotted a very odd pipefish in amongst the Sinularia Coral on top of ‘Kansas’

We finished the trip back in the Bligh Waters with two great dives on E6 where Nora found a Hairy Ghostpipefish and Big Mo found a Robust then one more day in Vatu-I-Ra to round off another great trip.