Saturday, February 9, 2008





NAI’A….Tuesday, February 5

An early morning journey brought us from Namena Marine Preserve to Makogi Island. With the remaining effects from Cyclone Gene still exhibiting themselves, it was decided to leave Namena and look for calmer waters.

The first dives were split between Becky’s and Rick’s Rocks. We dove with Captain Johnathan and dropped into calm waters…we made our way along the pinnacle just observing all the marine life to be seen. With the flashing of John’s “torch” , we headed over to see what amazing critter he may have found…..it was a HAIRY ghostpipefish…our first ever! It was tucked into a little crevice on a small patch of coral, red in color and totally awesome!

Other sightings on the dive were a beautiful white leaf scorpionfish, lots of different nudibranchs and then a beautiful banded sea snake hunting along the top of the reef!

When we surfaced, Johnathan told us that we’d missed “Becky’s” but that we were at “old Becky’s” and we were renaming it “Hairy’s”!

For the second dive, we went to Rick’s Rocks and the other tender went to “Hairy’s” and Johnathan found a second, smaller, hairy ghostpipefish, so there was a pair there!

Rick’s was also covered in hard and soft corals and an eagle ray was spotted out in the blue and a juvenile rockmover wrasse sighted.

Dive three was at Ron’s Delight and it was, indeed, delightful! It was time to take out the wide angle lens (finally) and it wasn’t a disappointment! The coral bommie is totally covered in soft corals of every imagineable color. We also spotted two pairs of lionfish cruising along the walls of the bommie and watched a small turtle chomping on a sponge near the top of the reef. The reef-top was amazingly covered in all shades of pink hard & soft corals…a most beautiful dive, one for which Fiji has earned the title “Soft Coral Capital” of the World!

After the third dive, it was time for our village visit….more later!

No comments: