Diveaway Fiji

Diveaway Fiji operates from the beautiful Coral Coast of Viti Levu, Fiji’s main island. Our boats run out from our bases at the Fiji Hideaway Resort and Spa and Mango Bay Resorts; we have diveshops at the Outrigger on the Lagoon and the Beachouse as well as being the dive op of choice for many of the boutique resorts and backpackers dotted along the Coral Coast.

As a small, friendly dive operation, we enjoy sharing our beautiful dive sites with divers from complete beginners through to the very experienced. Dive groups are deliberately kept small and as there are no other operators on our dive sites there is never a crowd underwater to spoil your view. Since we have started diving here in October 2003 we have discovered some great dive sites and a host of amazing marine life.

We are helping the village of Tagaqe to establish a marine protected area within their traditional fishing grounds to help preserve and nurture their fish stocks.

We have a variety of sites from dramatic wall dives and coral covered reef slopes to adrenalin buzzing drift dives. Frequent encounters with turtles, sharks, eagle rays, barracudas and of course all those other fantastic tropical reef fish. The flamboyantly coloured soft coral that Fiji is famed for grows prolifically, as do hard corals and gorgonian fans.

We are very lucky to have incredibly easy access to all our dive sites. The furthest away is 10 minutes by boat and the closest has been recorded at 19 seconds! This enables us to offer the deeply civilised option of a morning two tank dive returning to the Hideaway between the dives for a restoring cup of tea or even a hint of breakfast. We are also usually back from the second dive by 11.30, giving you the rest of the day to do all those relaxing holiday things that you can’t do bobbing around on a boat.

Affiliation:

PADI

Training Level:

Up to Divemaster

Boat Description:

2 aluminium covered 30ft dive boats with sun cover.

We are very lucky to have incredibly easy access to all our dive sites. The furthest away is 10 minutes by boat and the closest has been recorded at 19 seconds!

So they really are fast rides!

Sites Visited:

Gunbarrel

The legendary ‘Gunbarrel’ – Not for first timers!

An adrenalin dive for the first part of the dive as you fly through an underwater canyon, herding the schools of snapper and surgeon fish through the narrow underwater gorge.

Graceful grey reef and white tip sharks glide up and down the walls through all the swirling fish. The canyon then opens up to an underwater beach where the current suddenly stops and we pause and wait for the sharks to return single file past us back into thechannel. Then a short swim through takes us out into the clear blue of the Pacific.

The second half of the dive is very different – a leisurely meander over hard coral gardens and though a long, sunlit tunnel with a wavy sandy floor, before we drift up through the sun pierced blue to surface by the boat.

Bigfoot & Sundance

A wall dropping down 60 metres, with curling encrusting corals, waterfalls of fusiliers scattered by predatory trevally and snapper and a cave with a balcony frequented by hawksbill and green turtles.

Shallower, the reef is pierced by crevasses and gullies that we can swim through into a pool of light where there is prolific hard coral growth, then a tunnel through the reef to ‘Sundance’. Here, as we swim under the lip of the reef, the sun pours through holes and cracks, producing swaying, shimmering beams of light through which swim reef surgeonfish, sweepers and trumpetfish, illuminated by the glittering rays cutting through the blue.

Purple Haze

The walls of this dive site are thickly carpeted with soft corals which blossom in the current. Whilst there is a rainbow of different colours, here it is the purples, plums and violets which dominate, hence the name of the site.

There are also big gorgonian sea fans, bright red in the glow of lights, white and black fans and sea whips. Around and amongst the coral there are an array of reef fish such as golden and purple anthias, zebra angelfish, clown triggerfish, oriental sweetlips, unicorns, bannerfish and an incredible variety of butterflyfish.

Off the walls, under the overhangs and in the swimthroughs there are white tip and black tip reef sharks, nurse sharks, spotted eagle rays and much more.

No matter how many times you dive the Haze, you always want to come back.

Stingray

Perfect for beginners, great for the experienced diver, Stingray includes what must be one of the shortest boat rides to a dive site anywhere in the world – under 20 seconds at low tide! (High tide does add an exhausting 15 second extension to the trip)

Starting very shallow, there is a resident school of barracuda in the bay, so many lionfish spotting and stalking their prey that after a while you can start ignoring them and concentrate more on the snapper, trevally, angels, butterflies, goat fish, flash coral and white tips.

We have also been lucky enough to see the prehistoric-looking shovel nose ray here four or five times. The dive ends on a bommie called ‘Nemos’ – covered in anemones and clown fish, as the name suggests, but also home to stonefish, leaf scorpionfish and a school of particularly dozy looking vermiculated rabbitfish. No idea what vermiculated means, mind you.

Bordello

A reef wall that drops down to 30 metres, covered in colourful soft corals, sea whips and fans, strangely reminiscent of the paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec. OK, maybe not, but it’s a lovely dive and you have to call it something.

There are shallow caves underneath that often shelter a sleeping nurse shark, morays in holes on the cliff face, banded sea kraits and , yep, the usual colourful array of reef fish and corals.

These are just a few of the dive sites we can visit along this short stretch of Fiji’s Coral Coast. I could carry on and describe Casbah, Three Amigos, The Edge of the World, or any of the others, but I’m running low on descriptive phrases and praises of undersea beauteousness, and I’m pretty sure not many people read these dive site descriptions too closely anyway.

Come and dive them and describe them yourselves – we’ve already stamped many teeming logbooks.

Facilities:

• Own Boat(s)
• Camera Hire
• Gear Service
• Diving seven days
• Showers

• Own pool
• Own accommodation
• Scuba hire
• Resort/Intro Dives