As cameras get better and better, lots of people now come armed with digital cameras that can be used underwater; others have small waterproof casings that they can load their camera into. As a result, we all have much better photos. But when you go out with a pro with all the gear – well!! It’s a quantum leap in quality. Normally they concentrate on the dive sites, but this time we went snorkelling to Charlie’s Point with Daniel Schwartz and he came back with some stunning shots.

Charlie’s Point is one of the shallower sites along Lesciaceva Reef just past the point where the Jean-Michel Cousteau resort is situated. We had great visibility that day and there was lots of both coral and fish life to be seen. And a special bonus was a huge spiral triton shell sitting on one of the coral pinnacles. Have a look at these great shots.

Daniel will be back to run a marine photography course in June 2012.

The snorkelling week in June was our biggest yet. We had uninterrupted sunshine although the opening few days were windy and the sea had a fair chop. Nevertheless, the snorkelers saw plenty of fish and several sharks which is always a buzz.

There was also a turtle sighting – a special joy to see the grace of this creature, so clumsy on land and so fluent and powerful in the ocean. The later part of the week was calm and clear, with fantastic visibility at Lighthouse.

The best coral of the week was a toss-up between Nuggets and Maravu beach – both of them seen in good sun and offering a lovely range of hard and soft corals.

We also saw several giant clams and, less happily, a number of crown-of-thorns starfish. Split Rock continues to delight with its clouds of sergeant majors.

Johnny’s evening lectures were lively and informative and the snorkelers soaked up the all the information he had to share and laughed at all his silly jokes!

Our relatively new snorkelling weeks are proving to be very rewarding. We only take a maximum of 8 guests; this trip had 4. Two were from Brisbane, and two from Adelaide – and I asked one of them to write up the week as they saw it.

In January, my husband and I arrived at Daku for a much anticipated snorkel holiday. Neither of us is very experienced and I was a little anxious about what to expect. I need not have worried: from the moment we arrived (me without luggage due to too much cargo on the early flight) everything was taken care of. In a borrowed swimsuit I was straight into my first dive at Split Rock and was mesmerised by the variety of marine life before us.

We had a very experienced guide in marine biologist Johnnie. Every day we went to different dive sites in the inner or outer reef depending on weather conditions. During the dive and on set evenings we learnt about the reef and surrounds, I now can recognise butterfly, angel, parrot, wrasse, groupers, altheas, snapper, sweetlips, surgeons and – my favourite – damsels. When we went to Charlie’s Point there were hundreds of them; it was like floating above multi coloured confetti – a truly magical experience.

We saw a turtle on the dive out to Lighthouse – so graceful and amazingly fast through the water.

We even got to dive on the pearl farm and look at the operation from below.

We had the most relaxing holiday and have gained a new passion for snorkeling and cannot wait to get back for more time below the water.

Anemone Clown Fish at Split Rock

Who cares? you might say…..but in this day of search-engine driven marketing, it matters. When we put up details of our snorkeling weeks, the Americans will find it – but if we want the Australians and English to come along, it has to be snorkelling. Well, I’m probably exaggerating a bit because people trawl around and have a look. And once the quibbling is over, the snorkel(l)ing is fantastic. I’ve already blogged about it, but there’s always more.

Our recent group of singers had a lot of keen snorkellllllers amongst them and we ran trips out to the reef on a daily basis. Here’s what one of them said:

We came to attend a singing course. The opportunity to combine two of our favourite activities (singing and snorkelling) on a daily basis was incomparable. Easy access to posh resort (Cousteau) for diving, Savusavu for trinkets and Indian tailors, reefs for snorkelling and even a local scooter hire place. Who could complain!

Catching the early morning reef activity is always great – when I’m at Daku I often take people out to Split Rock at 7.00am, which is when there’s an abundance of fish feeding around the rock and the nearby coral gardens.

And in July and October we’ve got snorkelling weeks with lectures, so people can learn more about what they’re seeing.

Delia on the boat (oh!! the hair!!!)

The last two months have been fantastic for snorkelling – great visibility and lots of fish. Split Rock continues to astound me – and everyone I take there. Last time I swam out from the beach with a family staying at Daku, and we saw a striped sea snake in the shallows. Although venomous, they are shy creatures and won’t bite unless you really annoy them. We hung back and it swam off lazily. The shoals of black and white soldier fish which are always at Split Rock seem to multiply – and they’re cheeky little things and often give you a nip. I also saw a line of small cuttlefish. I tried to get closer but they just disappeared leaving only a small squirt of black ink.

Damsel fish at Charlie's Point

There are at least three big clams on the rock – and the anemone at the end of the split is still there, along with the clown fish that lives inside it. These fish have an extraordinary biology: they are hermaphrodites, so they develop as males first, and when they reach maturity, they become females and can mate and reproduce.

We also went out a couple of times to Charlie’s Point out towards the lighthouse. It’s only accessible by boat, but is one of my favourite spots. The coral is spectacular – a range of coral heads with all sorts of plate coral, and clouds of fish of every shape and size. There are also some Christmas tree worms – those pretty little red and blue and yellow creatures that look like tiny Christmas trees, and which flick back into their tubes if you disturb them. They actually build these tubes by secreting a calcerous substance – the tube is both home and protection to the worm.

I saw a couple of trumpet fish at Charlie’s Point, drifting along quietly, almost translucent in colouring. It’s hard to tell which is its head and which its tail – and that, of course, is part of its feeding strategy. it hangs about in the water, going with the current, and then ambushs its prey when the other fish swim unedrneath it, sucking them up. It’s a method called “pipette feeding.” Its mouth creates a vacuum and sucks up small animals by expanding to a size equal to its body diameter.

People often ask if there are any sharks around, and of course the answer is yes. They are reef sharks and well fed so they never show any interest is snorkelers. I haven’t seen any there for some time, but once we saw a group of 6 chasing each other in a circle just like they do in the cartoons! Normally, though, the biggest fish we see are the groupers and sweet lips.

Don McKern came to dive at the end of last year and his wife Bridget looked down on him as she snorkelled 30 foot above. Here’s her account of the week:

When Don and I booked in August for our Fiji Dive trip we were both pretty sick in bed with flu.  The email with the special discount dive package using Cousteau’s dive boat came from  www.paradisecourses.com – I was on their list from a year before when I enquired about a writing course at Daku Resort.  Somehow this idea of a dive holiday lifted our spirits and we said (typical Don style) “Why not?  Let’s go for it.”
Because we were both out of condition, and frankly I wondered if Don would mange the rigours of diving again with his arthritic shoulders and knees, I decided to make a get-fit programme for both of us.  From then on until November, we went to the Hurstville Olympic pool each week and dressed in our snorkel gear and flippers, trolled up and down the indoor pool. I rashly joined  a gym too to get my stamina working – as it turned out I have really enjoyed doing the Curves programme 3 times a week as it only demands a mere 30 minutes each time using resistance equipment.

What with one thing and another November came round really fast and we found ourselves winging it to the lovely Fijian Island of Vanua Levu. We were greeted by friendly Fijian girls who made us welcome, gave us lunch and showed us to our little buré (Don preferred to call it his burrow).  We were introduced to the two girls from Canberra who had come in the day before and already had their first dive.  They were full of praise for the dive team which was at Cousteau’s five star resort just up the road.

Fiji is a classic tropical paradise in a third world condition.  Our first impressions from the air and road were the sparsely populated areas – little villages stuck away on top of mountains or alongside rivers with no obvious roads connecting them.  Small subsistence farms of sugar cane in the north, copra and yams, in the south.  As we came down the mountains towards Savu Savu we saw a beautiful big harbour surrounded by steep mountains and somewhat muddy after the rains but changing to clear green-blue water further out to sea. Steep hills all around are covered with verdant impenetrable rainforest covered in creepers. The mountain ranges look as if they have just been spat out of a volcano.  Sharp ridges on the sky line appear to have faces of the ancestors gazing skyward in an eternal dream.

The next day we joined the other two girls to start on our daily diving routine at Cousteau’s.  Well-organised dive masters made sure our equipment was all OK and we got into our first dive boat – a rather narrow flat bottomed tinny 30’x 5’ with a sparse shade along the middle and two 85 hp Yamaha engines to take us out to the reef.  Mostly we went outside the reef at the southern end of the island and occasionally inside the reef.

Blue Green Chromis

Each dive site was a separate entity with names such as Whale’s Tale, Wonderland, Shark Alley, the Grotto and  Lighthouse ….How they knew where to stop the boat was a mystery as most dive sites didn’t have any sign of a marker.  The skipper would haul up with the reef breakers only 200 metres away and there was the underworld beneath us, clear waters that felt as if you could see for ever down into the depths.

The divers prepared themselves with all their gear and then one by one tipped unceremoniously backwards over the gunnels into the clear water below. As the only non-diver amongst them,  I watched with fascination  to see how it was done and then slipped myself over the side with my snorkel on and watched as they slowly let themselves down into the deep.  I had never been out on a dive boat before and Don had always felt sorry that I could not join him in his favourite sport.  This time I joined him from above and found it fascinating to float serenely on the surface above the divers, watching their progress as they explored the reef below me.
I discovered what fun it is to play in their bubbles – like a dolphin I swam merrily in the bubble wake and tried to catch the big ones as they rose in front of me.  I discovered what a delicious tickly feeling it is to swim in a sea of fine bubbles.

When I was tired of that I had the whole reef gardens to myself with the millions of glorious fishes darting about.  I could watch and see how they looked after their coral gardens, chased each other away from their babies and swam in schools or groups of the same kind all going about their business undeterred by the strange fish on the surface looking down on them.  My favourite pastime was to swim over the top of the skyscrapers and look down the edges – I felt like a base jumper who never takes off.
Window shopping in the reef is wonderful.

I was surprised that I wasn’t more fearful when I looked up, there was only me and sea and the reef pounding away over there – in between surges I could see the dive boat skipper as he trolled around the area looking for the divers’ bubbles.
I knew he could come and get me in a moment if I needed to get out  so I just enjoyed my solitary reef-gazing as much as I could.

My longest time in the water was probably about 45 minutes.  No problem.
The water is deliciously warm and even though I wore a tee shirt to protect my back I forgot that the backs of my legs were exposed to the sun and came home the first day with cherry pink backside and legs.   From then on I wore a white pair of long pants which kept the sun off.  As I had yellow gloves and a cobalt blue Keep NZ Nuclear Free Tee shirt, I think I matched the reef fish quite well.  I would wave at them sometimes, but they never actually waved back.  The most notice they took of me was an occasional sideways glance and then it was back to the business of protecting their young, or chipping away at the coral gardens.

On the last but one dive, the divers went to what was called Shark Alley.  I hopped in the water as usual after they had all submerged, and was happily amusing myself among the condominiums of the deep when I noticed a big White Tip reef shark cruising along slowly underneath me about 100 feet down.  I was fascinated but hid myself as far as I could, behind the nearest bommie.  Another one and then another one came along after the first one.  Three in all!  All heading in the same direction… looking for dinner.  I hope they don’t look up at me, I thought. When the divers came back from their run, they complained that they didn’t see one shark in the shark gutter.  ‘They were all out fishing with me,’ I said.

What rainbow colours there are in the fish world and the coral gardens!  Apparently the colours are not as bright the deeper you go so I had the best of both worlds up on top near the sunlight. Don’s favourite fish was a gorgeous purple one called Anthis.  Mine was the tiny cobalt blue fishes that live in the coral ‘bushes’ – they hide when they see you coming but if you stay still enough they will come out and play again before long.  Another of my favourites was a stripy Nemo mother with six or seven tiny little Nemo babies around their coral nest.  I also enjoyed floating amongst a fluttering cloud of “butterfly” fishes who hang out over the edge of the big drops.  They don’t seem to notice the oversized blue fish with white pants and yellow flippers that has suddenly joined them from above.

Common Lion Fish

Then there was the pulsating coral – looks like a cauliflower but has a soft furry surface which waves in electrical pulses across the surface.  Don found a Magic coral which fakes dead coral, going white as soon as it is touched and then comes back to life again after the threat has gone.

Dan, our divemaster, told us about a segmented nudibranch like a little train with carriages which breaks apart into separate pieces when threatened – once the danger is passed it reconstitutes itself again!  He also told us about a certain fish family that is all males except one.  If the female dies or goes away, another male turns into a female and then they are complete again.  Perfect population control.  Ain’t Nature grand?

On our last night together we headed for the Surf & Turf, the favoured eating house in town.  Don was thrilled to get two lobster tails for $25 and ate to his heart’s content.

What a lovely holiday it was.  We felt cleaned and refreshed by all that wonderful ocean and the warmth and dignity of our hosts the Fijians.
Thanks Daku.