Next up, the third largest island in Fiji, Taveuni. Also known as “the garden island” this lush island has great volcanic soil but is most famous amongst tourists for diving and gorgeous waterfall hikes. This post covers diving, stay tuned for the waterfall!  It was often quite rainy, making for beautiful photos.

From Vanua Levu you can reach Taveuni by plane only by flying back to the “mainland” (Viti Levu), so instead we opted for the direct ferry.  The islands are quite close - Vanua Levu is always visible from the Western side of Taveuni except on the  foggiest of days - so the ferry itself only took about 40 minutes.  But the ferry doesn’t leave from Savusavu where we stayed, but from a tiny village in the east of the island (Buca, Fiji),  about 90 minutes drive away. Half that drive is on steep dirt roads.

On the other end, we also had a 40 minute drive from the ferry to our dive lodge (Paradise Taveuni, on the southern end of the island), mostly on dirt roads. But this gave us time to get acquainted with Zach, our driver and later tour guide and partner in crime. More on Zach in the next post.

Like all dive shops in Taveuni, Paradise’s main attraction is its proximity to “Rainbow Reef”, a collection of some 20 dive sites. While Rainbow Reef is actually just off Vanua Levu, that part of Vanua Levu is so remote almost no one lives there and there is only one small dive operation. So people stay in Taveuni, boat 25 minutes across the channel on good days. When the weather doesn’t cooperate, Taveuni also has very nice dive sites.

In fact on our very first dive, which was at Taveuni, we were thrilled to see not just one octopus, not just another octopus, but the two were mating! Andrew didn't bring his camera (something something get acquainted with the area first something something), but here's a picture of another octopus of the same species (common reef octopus),  flicking sand as it sashays away. The male follows the female around, extending its special arm to insert sperm into her cavity. He keeps his distance, stretching the arm out far as he can to avoid aggression from her.  Mating can last a good while, we watched for several minutes then left them to their privacy. 

The dive lodge itself was quite nice, stretched out comfortably on a grassy area along the coast. The food was …. mixed, but our snack after every dive was cinnamon rolls and pineapple slices, so we definitely weren’t hungry. The guest list was dominated by a group of 24 from Washington State, with a few other Americans and Canadians mixed in. Having a large group ended up working out just fine - they all went out on one huge boat and we had the smaller but less crowded boat with the few other couples. 

The highlight of the diving here was the famous dive site called “The Great White Wall”. When there is strong enough current, this steep rock face comes alive with white soft coral. While these white corals live elsewhere, this site is renowned for its high concentration.  We dove the wall a total of 3 times in weak, medium and strong currents and the difference in appearance is huge!  Our first dive in weak currents left Vera thinking “that was it? What is all the fuss about?” But for our very last dive of the trip we asked to see the best soft coral. “Well that’s the white wall, but there is very strong current today. Are you sure?” “Let’s do it! We’ll drift and leave behind Andrew’s camera.” And it was the best dive of the trip, a top memory.

The wall looks much more impressive in strong current because the corals open more fully and extend their polyps to capture food.  Their structures also fill with water making them more rigid and pointed further out from the substrate. Some soft corals even fully retract so they are barely visible in weak current. 

The great white wall, in most of its glory. Unfortunately the best coral is from ~60 to ~100 ft down, so it is a bit dark.

Close up view of the famous white coral.  

It wouldn't be called "Rainbow Reef" if all the coral were white, of course, and the other dive sites lived up to the name with a gorgeous range of soft and hard corals. Here are just a few examples:

We saw plenty of other sea life too, more photos in the album: 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/z8z1tdZK64aaQVXv7

A teeny tiny crab says hello from its hole in a sponge, which is about 5mm across. 

The house reef at Paradise was also a highlight. There’s a resident blue (adult) ribbon eel we returned to several times, a leaf scorpionfish, and several octopus (up to 4 in one dive). Night diving here was excellent too with tons of two-spot lion fish, and more octopus behavior (octopus are often more active at night).

The strange head of the ribbon eel.  Named for its long, thin body (~3 feet long and 2 inches wide) they spend most of their time buried in the sand with less than this much of their body exposed.

Other dive sites on Taveuni itself were mostly lovely. But our last dive there was very sad, we saw several “crown of thorns” starfishes. These creatures eat coral, but unlike most coral eating fish, they are extremely efficient at destroying reefs and when they get too dense they can be catastrophic. One or two in a dive is okay, but we stopped counting at 40. Some dive guides do try to help by tossing the starfish into the deep or placing heavy rocks on top of them, but it might be too late for this particular site.

We took two afternoons off from regular diving to complete our next scuba course, Rescue Diver. This course is about responding to emergencies above and below the water. It covers situations like finding a lost diver or item underwater, performing CPR in the water while towing a non-breathing diver to shore, administering emergency oxygen,  safely bringing a panicked diver underwater to the surface (slowly). These are serious topics but the course is actually a lot of fun! The instructor throws a scenario at you by acting it out themselves or having a classmate play tired/unconcious/lost/panicked. When you are the rescuer, you triage the situation and can boss others around to help you (you, on the dock, throw me that life jacket for floatation!)

The most fun is acting the victim and getting to improvise, e.g. becoming panicked after being saved and starting to attack your rescuer.

The hardest scenario is bringing a non-responsive diver up to the surface safely, performing CPR on them in the water all while towing them to shore and removing their gear and your gear then hoisting them onto a dock.

Selfie by our instructor, James, a masters student visiting from Australia and the one foreigner on staff.

Next post will cover the above-water portions of Taveuni!

Everything is already in the full photo album: 

Diving in Taveuni, Fiji