Our third day on the Nai'a began with our approach to dive sites off the island of Gau (pronounced ngau). By this time we lucky nine passengers knew we had an incredible crew of 13 doing an exceptional job of making everything run smoothly, too schedule, with great diving and fabulous food.
The Fijian crew have been working together, happily, smoothly, efficiently, for years. Our two Cruise Directors, Vanessa and Chad, had been with the team for nine months and were clearly closely knit with it. Chad is from the US east coast, Vanessa is from Scotland. They were fun, easy going, and very proficient.
Passing by the island of Gau as dawn is breaking to our day's dive sites nearby.
With our arrival at Gau we had reached our farthest out point for our seven day cruise.
If you look at the board, Guy Foster and I were diving on the Port boat "Lucky Lefty" generally with Stuart, Helen, Mara and one of the three dive guides: Chad, Vanessa, and Big Mo. As you can see, first dive at 7 am on Anthias Avenue (after continental breakfast), then "Brekkie" which the English and Scottish folks knew stood for SECOND BREAKFAST (hot, from the menu the day before!), second dive at 10 am on Jungle Jig (aka Jim's Alley), then, glory be, lunch, then the third dive in Nigali Passage at 1 pm or whenever the tide started really coming in...Then a village visit at 4 pm and back to the boat for dinner at 6:30 pm.
Dive briefing drawings for Jim's Alley (aka Jungle Jim) and Anthias Avenue.
Dive briefing for Nigali Passage. It's a high voltage dive when a strong incoming tide is running with lots of big fish action, barracuda, giant grouper, lots of sharks. Unfortunately, though the dive was carefully planned around the expected tide change, it didn't happen at all that afternoon, it just kept slowly ebbing for hours beyond the "standard" six hour tide chart timing.....So this dive was a let down compared to what it could have been though we did see barracuda and sharks, just not close up and active....
Guy shooting an anemone with transparent, nearly invisible, anemone shrimp.
Here's my best shot of the nearly invisible anemone shrimp. They had me thinking about the "invisible swordsman" from "Three Amigos"! He's maybe 3/4 inches long. Not bad given that this was shot with my Tokina 10-17 mm fisheye wide angle lens.
Guy has moved on to shooting anemone fish and their anemone.
Here's my shot of the Orange Fin Anemonefish and their home.
Trumpetfish are cool looking ambush predators and I can't resist taking their pictures.
Stuart maneuvering a one square meter grid, dividing into 10 cm squares, for doing marine sampling of coral growth. He and Helen were counting new corals which are growing in place of shallow corals that were recently killed by a major cyclone that hit the area last year. Don't worry, the diving is brilliant and recovery is underway.
Pastel Ring Wrasse with beautiful soft coral at Anthias Avenue.
Orange Spotted Pipefish at Jungle Jig aka Jim's Alley
The all important pickup at the end of a dive. The skiff drivers do an exceptional job of keeping track of everyone and pickups are quick and easy.
Here we're making our way to the village of Somo Somo on Gau across a mud flat exposed by the incredibly low, endless, low tide. Guy to the left of the picture, the Nai'a offshore in the distance.
I didn't do well with my Apple phone to get pictures in the village. The welcome and singing were wonderful.
The Kava ceremony is a very important social interaction between visitors and villages. They kept offering, I kept drinking for five rounds or so....
