Two Great Dives with Ocean Ventures Fiji in Natewa Bay September 9, 2024

Donna and I got out for a second great day of diving with Ocean Ventures Fiji, in Natewa Bay, for a pair of very enjoyable dives, my 781 and 782 dives, post retirement. Matthew and Sara were excellent, very helpful hosts for our outing on their boat. We enjoyed excellent visibility, over 80 ft, 79 F temperature, and an incredible mix of healthy hard corals and a few of Fiji's famous soft corals, which prefer higher currents, too. The drive to their boat on Natewa Bay took an hour from our vrbo and the last couple of miles were on a pretty rough dirt road, but it sure was worth the beautiful drive. The boat ride out to our first dive site was about 30 minutes out towads the mouth of the bay, about 2/3 of the length of it. The Bay is very deep in the center near where it joins the ocean, over 4000 ft. I bet it would be an excellent site to try black water diving! Our first dive site was called "The Zoo", I'd call it Zoo Station after the wonderful U2 song, for the pelagics and turtles that frequently happen by. They actually named it Zoo for the incredible psychedelic zooanthids, which are from the same Order as Sea Anemones and Corals, and are found on a shallow coral ridge at the site, see below, the individual zooanthids range between 1/4 and 1/2 inch across:

The site has some beautiful, huge sea fans, below:

I'm a sea fan, she's a sea fan, we're all fans of Sea Fans!

The site has an endless variety of beautiful hard corals, below:

Donna swims over a huge expanse of fragile, beautiful, Lettuce Coral, below:

Matthew, our dive guide, pointed out a Giant Clam, below:

We found a beautiful Sea Anemone with Three Spot Damselfish which live with sea anemones, and Anemone Fish below:

Pelagics come through the site, here's one of the Rainbow Runners that sped past us, below:

Our second dive was just a few minutes away from the first at another beautiful site called Sleeping Beauty. More huge expanses of beautiful, healthy hard corals, below:

Matthew pointed out this really cool grouper, type tbd, back in the dark under a pinnacle, below:

Donna with another big, beautiful sea fan:

Below: Donna with some beautiful yellow soft coral

Some great coral heads at this site, very richly populated with invertebrates and fish, below:

Below: Love these Tomato Clownfish nestling in their Sea Anemone

The top of the coral heads were at a perfect depth to do our safety stop before ending a fantastic dive, below:

Two Very Good Dives with Korosun Dive off Vanua Levu September 9, 2024

After three days of blustery winds with very heavy rain, we finally got a break in the weather today and Donna and I got out for two very enjoyable dives with Colin of Korosun Dive, whom we dived with 10 years on our last visit to Venua Levu (Fiji's second largest island). Despite the days of rain and wind we had decent 80 ft visibility and were thrilled to see thriving coral reefs with lots of fish. Wonderful. These were my 779 and 780 th post retirement dives! Below: All trimmed out, Donna is ready to descend to the first of three pinnacles at this site, called Purple Garden because when the current is flowing there's great purple soft coral (Fiji is the renowned best in the world for soft coral), but we didn't have current on this dive, which made for a relaxing dive.

Below: Donna cruising around the first pinnacle

Below: I can never resist photoing Anemone Fish

Below: A large, maybe 18 inches long, Many Spotted Sweetlips on a cleaning station, if you look closely you can see a cleaner wrasse on the end of its tail

Below: More Clowning around

I've seen many Moorish Idols but I don't think I've ever encountered a dense school of them before. Below:

Time to start our safety stop to end this dive. Below:

Our second dive after a slightly over one hour surface interval, was at a site called Sea Turtle Alley and it lived up to its name with a couple Green Sea Turtles plus gorgeous coral reefs. Below:

I realized that a stand of Staghorn Coral (well, the South Pacific version of it) had a cleaner station and I was separate enough from the group to quietly hover until I got one of the best shots I've ever gotten of a Parrotfish (species tbd) getting cleaned. Two pictures below:

I'm really pleased with these shots of a beautiful, shy, Angel Fish, species tbd, below:

A cool bottom dwelling fish in the foreground, species tbd, below:

I was really thrilled to see very healthy coral reefs on today's dives, very relieved because our continued rapacious ruinous consumption of fossil fuels is killing the world's magnificent coral reefs with coral bleaching from marine heatwaves caused by the over 50% increase in heat trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Below are some coral reef seascapes:

Today we're headed out for more scuba dives with Ocean Ventures Fiji, in a new area for us, Natewa Bay. Even the drive to get to them promises to be an adventure on a rough dirt road past the Salt Lake, another cool place to see here on Vanua Levu.