Louwphotography
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My husband and I just got back from a trip to Fiji and Australia. I'll post about the Fiji portion here and do a separate thread on the Great Barrier Reef.
We stayed at Maravu Plantation Resort on Taveuni and chose to dive with Jewel Bubble Divers after reading some positive posts here about them.
Jewel Bubble Divers was excellent -- the owner, Qiolele, and Captain Harry on the boat were terrific. For each dive, they helped us put on our gear and between the 2-tank morning dives, they offered us cold water and snacks. Also, even though our hotel was just up the street from them, they picked us up and dropped us off every day since my husband had a heavy underwater camera with him. Our dives were either just me, my husband and the DM or else the 3 of us plus one other couple. Unfortunately we only had about 2.5 days of diving available, but we tried to make the most of it.
Our first dive was an afternoon dive. I just finished my checkout dives in August and this was my first open water dive, so the DM kept it fairly easy. We dove in an area near the Three Bommies and got down to about 59 feet, seeing soft coral (mostly purple), parrotfish, fusilier, anemonefish and a sea cucumber.
The next day we did 2 morning dives and a night dive. The first dive was at the Somosomo Straits -- I was pretty excited since I had heard how great Taveuni's diving is. We saw a few cool things -- barracuda and a black tip reef shark, but I felt we had not seen "greatness" yet.
The second dive was at Jerry's Jelly and was pretty nice -- saw 2 white tip reef sharks, a blue ribbon eel, spanish mackerel, trevally and more soft coral.
Our night dive was at Matei Point. I was nervous about the night dive at first, but once we got in the water and had our torches on, it was pretty bright. The dive was quite shallow (only got down to 7.5 meters) but we saw some cool things -- white tip reef shark fairly close by, sea snakes, moray eel, giant clam and blue starfish.
After these dives, I was feeling pretty good about scuba and we only had 1 more day of diving left. We begged the owner to take us to the Great White Wall the next day, since I had read a lot about it.
The next day, we got our wish! I was so excited about the dive site. We descended down to the site and it was AMAZING!! Large fan corals, small swim-through caves, a wall full of soft coral and small fish that went down as far as the eye could see. Everywhere I looked there were tons of things to see. I was completely in awe after the dive and knew we had seen something very special. It was by far my favorite dive site of the entire trip.
Our final dive was at The Ledge, which was my second favorite dive site. We saw tons of fish -- damselfish, angelfish, triggerfish, moorish idol, parrotfish, pufferfish, etc.
More photos can be seen on our website.
Thanks to everyone on Scubaboard for their posts, which helped us pick Taveuni and Jewel Bubble Divers!
We stayed at Maravu Plantation Resort on Taveuni and chose to dive with Jewel Bubble Divers after reading some positive posts here about them.
Jewel Bubble Divers was excellent -- the owner, Qiolele, and Captain Harry on the boat were terrific. For each dive, they helped us put on our gear and between the 2-tank morning dives, they offered us cold water and snacks. Also, even though our hotel was just up the street from them, they picked us up and dropped us off every day since my husband had a heavy underwater camera with him. Our dives were either just me, my husband and the DM or else the 3 of us plus one other couple. Unfortunately we only had about 2.5 days of diving available, but we tried to make the most of it.
Our first dive was an afternoon dive. I just finished my checkout dives in August and this was my first open water dive, so the DM kept it fairly easy. We dove in an area near the Three Bommies and got down to about 59 feet, seeing soft coral (mostly purple), parrotfish, fusilier, anemonefish and a sea cucumber.
The next day we did 2 morning dives and a night dive. The first dive was at the Somosomo Straits -- I was pretty excited since I had heard how great Taveuni's diving is. We saw a few cool things -- barracuda and a black tip reef shark, but I felt we had not seen "greatness" yet.
The second dive was at Jerry's Jelly and was pretty nice -- saw 2 white tip reef sharks, a blue ribbon eel, spanish mackerel, trevally and more soft coral.
Our night dive was at Matei Point. I was nervous about the night dive at first, but once we got in the water and had our torches on, it was pretty bright. The dive was quite shallow (only got down to 7.5 meters) but we saw some cool things -- white tip reef shark fairly close by, sea snakes, moray eel, giant clam and blue starfish.
After these dives, I was feeling pretty good about scuba and we only had 1 more day of diving left. We begged the owner to take us to the Great White Wall the next day, since I had read a lot about it.
The next day, we got our wish! I was so excited about the dive site. We descended down to the site and it was AMAZING!! Large fan corals, small swim-through caves, a wall full of soft coral and small fish that went down as far as the eye could see. Everywhere I looked there were tons of things to see. I was completely in awe after the dive and knew we had seen something very special. It was by far my favorite dive site of the entire trip.
Our final dive was at The Ledge, which was my second favorite dive site. We saw tons of fish -- damselfish, angelfish, triggerfish, moorish idol, parrotfish, pufferfish, etc.
More photos can be seen on our website.
Thanks to everyone on Scubaboard for their posts, which helped us pick Taveuni and Jewel Bubble Divers!
I used a small Fujifilm Finepix and he used a Canon DSLR.
