Put together a short video of the shark feeding dive we did.
We were staying at Nanuku resort in Pacific Harbour, we drove over to Beqa Adventure Divers about 5 minutes from Nanuku, to see about scheduling some diving. They were booked too far out for us and almost all of their dives were the shark dive with very few "soft coral dives" which is what everyone down there calls any dives other than their shark dive. We drove over to Aqua Trek to try our luck.
Aqua Trek had better availability for the shark dive, but little for soft coral dives, so we booked the shark dive and the one available day of soft coral dives they had. We drove over to Waidoroka resort about 20 minutes away to see if they had any diving availability, but they had a huge group of Australian youngsters staying with them doing some sort of camp/ diving / fish counting / internship, or something, never really got a great grip on exactly what, but they were all booked up. We were staying at the Royal Davui later in our trip and we ended up doing a few dives with their house dive operation, which was the best dives we did on the trip, so we ended up with 8 dives total for the trip.
Beqa Adventure Divers seems to be the more well known over Aqua Trek, with Aqua Trek considered to be the upstart, newer kid on the block with many of the Aqua Trek staff being alumni from Beqa Adventure Divers, they turned out to be the better choice as I was to find out later from everyone I talked to, most of whom had no dog in the fight. Basically no matter who you go with for the shark feeding dive, they all operate about the same, what you are paying for is two dives at the same site with a surface interval on the boat in between - the different dive operations have their own specific dive sites, apparently each has a business arrangement with a village, allowing them to create a shark feeding dive site for their own use by paying the village a fee for each diver. The Beqa Adventure Divers site from what I've seen from videos and was told is at 90ft and sort of on a wall, which keeps the sharks a bit far away from you, plenty of reports of divers doing deco with no deco experience and I was told about rushed surface intervals which is the last thing you want with two back to back 90ft dives.
The Aqua Trek site is next to a wreck that you will explore a bit at the end of the 1st dive. Their shark feeding site is at 60 ft instead of 90ft, so lot shallower which gives you more bottom time, a safer dive profile and basically no reason to approach deco on the dives, their site is also set up on a flatter area so where you sit and watch the feeding at gets you very close to the sharks, your safety stop is also about 10 feet over a reef so you get a great show doing your stop with white tips racing around under you. How it works is you do the first feeding dive and then you explore the wreck quickly, do your safety stop on ropes set up horizontally at 15 ft while you watch the reef, the surface interval wasn't rushed. The second dive is the same as the first, but since the water is now essentially 'chummed' due to your first feeding, you can expect a lot more sharks on the 2nd dive, if I had to guess the 2nd dive probably had 3x as many sharks as the first.
No tiger sharks on either of our dives and from what I've been told the tiger(s) haven't been seen in a while and nobody knows when they might if ever return. There was a diver on our boat who told us she had been an employee or intern with Beqa Adventure Divers for the summer and she hadn't seen a tiger shark after 4 months of diving, she was now getting ready to head back home to the states and was booking one last dive with Aqua Trek just to see what happened. So whatever is going on, according to this gal who has been diving for 4 months as an intern or something, she's not seen a single tiger shark.
The video is made up of footage from the two dives combined, there is some slow-mo toward the end of the bulls chomping their fish heads. Just to warn you, there is some rough handling, slapping and punching of sharks displayed so if that stuff bothers you, you've been forewarned.
We were staying at Nanuku resort in Pacific Harbour, we drove over to Beqa Adventure Divers about 5 minutes from Nanuku, to see about scheduling some diving. They were booked too far out for us and almost all of their dives were the shark dive with very few "soft coral dives" which is what everyone down there calls any dives other than their shark dive. We drove over to Aqua Trek to try our luck.
Aqua Trek had better availability for the shark dive, but little for soft coral dives, so we booked the shark dive and the one available day of soft coral dives they had. We drove over to Waidoroka resort about 20 minutes away to see if they had any diving availability, but they had a huge group of Australian youngsters staying with them doing some sort of camp/ diving / fish counting / internship, or something, never really got a great grip on exactly what, but they were all booked up. We were staying at the Royal Davui later in our trip and we ended up doing a few dives with their house dive operation, which was the best dives we did on the trip, so we ended up with 8 dives total for the trip.
Beqa Adventure Divers seems to be the more well known over Aqua Trek, with Aqua Trek considered to be the upstart, newer kid on the block with many of the Aqua Trek staff being alumni from Beqa Adventure Divers, they turned out to be the better choice as I was to find out later from everyone I talked to, most of whom had no dog in the fight. Basically no matter who you go with for the shark feeding dive, they all operate about the same, what you are paying for is two dives at the same site with a surface interval on the boat in between - the different dive operations have their own specific dive sites, apparently each has a business arrangement with a village, allowing them to create a shark feeding dive site for their own use by paying the village a fee for each diver. The Beqa Adventure Divers site from what I've seen from videos and was told is at 90ft and sort of on a wall, which keeps the sharks a bit far away from you, plenty of reports of divers doing deco with no deco experience and I was told about rushed surface intervals which is the last thing you want with two back to back 90ft dives.
The Aqua Trek site is next to a wreck that you will explore a bit at the end of the 1st dive. Their shark feeding site is at 60 ft instead of 90ft, so lot shallower which gives you more bottom time, a safer dive profile and basically no reason to approach deco on the dives, their site is also set up on a flatter area so where you sit and watch the feeding at gets you very close to the sharks, your safety stop is also about 10 feet over a reef so you get a great show doing your stop with white tips racing around under you. How it works is you do the first feeding dive and then you explore the wreck quickly, do your safety stop on ropes set up horizontally at 15 ft while you watch the reef, the surface interval wasn't rushed. The second dive is the same as the first, but since the water is now essentially 'chummed' due to your first feeding, you can expect a lot more sharks on the 2nd dive, if I had to guess the 2nd dive probably had 3x as many sharks as the first.
No tiger sharks on either of our dives and from what I've been told the tiger(s) haven't been seen in a while and nobody knows when they might if ever return. There was a diver on our boat who told us she had been an employee or intern with Beqa Adventure Divers for the summer and she hadn't seen a tiger shark after 4 months of diving, she was now getting ready to head back home to the states and was booking one last dive with Aqua Trek just to see what happened. So whatever is going on, according to this gal who has been diving for 4 months as an intern or something, she's not seen a single tiger shark.
The video is made up of footage from the two dives combined, there is some slow-mo toward the end of the bulls chomping their fish heads. Just to warn you, there is some rough handling, slapping and punching of sharks displayed so if that stuff bothers you, you've been forewarned.
