Rowley Shoals - advise

[garycrano]

Thanks for the reply, I have booked the TrueNorth. Looking forward to the diving.

Where and what time of year, would you recommend to dive in north Fiji? I would need to find a resort to be based from as the wife doesn't dive nor does she enjoy boats.

Nick

Hi Nick
I have been to northern Fiji three times and if you want nice land based diving it is a great place. I went to three different resorts last time and this is really easy as there are not big distances and the resorts all seem to know each other and will arrange travel between them.
Last trip I flew to Savusavu nd stayed at Savasi island [lovely but not cheap] and dived with Koro Sun divers which is owned by a bloke originally from Busselton in west aus.They dive a place that has a really good strike rate for seeing schools of hammerheads. Namena is an amazing place to dive but the rest of the area does not compare to Somosomo area.
From there we took a taxi half an hour to Buca Bay where we met a boat for a 10 minute ride to Sau Bay resort which was lovely and is 10 minutes from Somosomo straights.
After this they took us by boat to Taveuni where we were picked up by Paradise Resort which is very nice but there are places on Taveuni closer to Somosomo area.
We have also stayed at Qamea twice. It is a beautiful resort on a little island a few miles north of Taveuni and has some good diving. I think your wife would love this place just for their jungle spa.
Google Laucala island which is right next to Qamea. It is owned by the red bull people and you would need to win powerball to stay there.
Summing up it is a stunning area with great diving and resorts and do not be scared to try more than one place.

 

[moorish8idol]

Unless someone that went last season (2018) can provide contrary info, I understand that the ol' friendly Potato Cod had passed on... I went on the Odyssey in 2017 and we did a lot of dives down at Cod Hole and never saw him (was told secretly after that he had died the season before in an unfortunate plastic-bag incident - whether legit or not, I can't say). Saw a lot of friendly ones at the Exmouth Navy Pier though! I was a much less experienced diver when I went to the Shoals, so I thoroughly enjoyed myself but comparing it to most of the diving I have done since, I would say it is just ok. The positives are of course the remote location and the fact that there won't be any other divers around. You will have the atolls pretty much to yourself (the crossing on the way was a bit rough - just a warning - though we had less than normal/ideal conditions since the 'wet' had hit quite early that year). Rowleys is known for its "glass-off" days though we only had one of them (amazing though - you could see clear 30 m down from the boat and watch all the marine life without even being in the water) and visibility is generally pretty good though we had a few days that weren't great, which meant we didn't see any of the big sharks we were hoping for (sometimes you can see a hammer or a tiger but I think it is pretty rare). We did see a lot of white tip sharks, some nurse sharks, smaller rays and lots of gorgeous coral (hard and soft) and all of the fish life you can name. So it's nice but at this stage I would want something with a bit more action and variety.
As for the humpback sightings, I am told that was a unique occurrence. The mama whale and baby that wandered into the lagoon (you can check out the vids) was actually more tragedy than luck - our boat operators told us that mama was sick and had gone in there to rest and eventually die. Baby didn't make it either