Savusavu Diving = KOROSUN DIVE
We did a total of 9 dives with Korosun Dive over a period of 6 days. Enjoyed the great company and good humor of Colin, Janine Skipper and Blyh the 9-year old boat boy. Grace was an amazing wonder-girl who single-handed multi-task everything from loading your equipment/tank to the boat, rigging up your setup and matching your personal fins and booties, cleaning your mask with baby shampoo, dive guide, boat lady ... etc.
Diving was pretty much limited to 2 morning dives a day. Its Fiji time! So, although the meetup time was 8.30am at the dive shop, the usual routine was to get out of the marina at about 9am+, into the water at about 9.30-9.45am. Do a 2 tank dives and back at the resort 1pm +.
The local dive sites are generally 10-15 mins ride. Unfortunately, the boat had engine problems and was literally running on 1 engine, it took a little longer.
We chose to stay at KOROSUN Resort as it was a 3 mins walk across the road to KOROSUN DIVE. Very convenient if you are doing a lot of diving.
The Dive Sites
The best local dive sites in Savusavu are namely Turtle Alley, Around the Corner, Purple Garden.
We saw turtle, school of about 20 baby black tip reef sharks, Napoleon wrasses, tunas trying to pose for us, playful batfish, school of parrot fishes and of course needless to mention the various soft and hard corals formations.
Dungeons and Dragon and Devil's hideout offers a cool "mini-cavern" experience. Some of the swim-through could be quite tight especially for new divers. Requires some vertical entry, side twisting and wriggling to get through. Good test of your buoyancy control, nice play of lights in the caverns.
The sites are actually very good marco opportunities, e.g Juv Razor fish, and lots of Juv Rock Mover Wrasse in various stages of development. I had my wide-angle lens on most of the time hoping that the hammerheads would appear. As such, limited photos from the 1 day that I decided that I will put on my macro lens for 2 dives ... instead of staring out into the blue.
Eilin having fun with the friendly batfish
The soft corals that Fiji is famous for !
Alien Coral formation ?
This was definitely the highlight of the trip. After diving DREAMHOUSE for 3 days and staring into a lot of blue waters, we were finally rewarded at 25m, pure blue water diving without any point of reference, being surrounded and checked-out by a school (50? 100?) of scalloped hammerhead sharks.
During the early part of the dive, Colin spotted a few of
them but they were quite far out, we finned towards them but
they quickly swam away.
Colin knew that the school would return to check us out, so
he hang out in the blue waters for quite awhile. Of course we
did not know that, and it looks like aimless swimming in the
blue or trying to find the direction back to the reef :P
At that moment, we were all thinking, that's it for the hammerhead encounter, and its better to have a glimpse then not at all. We then ran into a school of barracudas. Just when I finish changing all my camera settings to shoot the barracudas from a bottom-up angle against the light ... suddenly there was this sense of chaos and excitement.
It was then that I realized that the entire school of
hammerhead (50-100s) were just below us ! A few of them would
rise from the blue to check us out. I look down to find a
hammerhead tailing me just 2-3m below my fins. When I change
my body position to try to take a shot, it would just twitch
and quickly swim away ... very shy and curious.
Crap ! my camera settings are all wrong from the previous
barracuda shot!
The excitement and multi-tasking made it very chaotic. I was
trying to change my camera setting, trying to take photos
without looking at the camera screen too much so that I can
observe them with my eyes instead via the screen, trying to
keep a side glance at Colin to make sure I don't lose the
group, occasionally remembering to check my depth and air ...
etc
One of those dives that you get back into the boat, look at
your dive buddy and the only word necessary was WOW ! The
adrenaline last for a few hours !
Later back at the shop, Janine told me that in the hammerhead
school, the larger ones at the front of the school are
usually the scouts and the babies are in the center of the
school. That's why you would always get checked out by a few
of the big guys before you spot the whole school.
I was not able to capture the entire school on camera as they were spread wide beyond my lens. It was a heavy overcast day, so these semi-clear photos are the only proof we had that there was indeed a school of hammerhead there. We were all so happy, excited and in total chaos that someone forgot to press the camera shutter too (I shall not print names here, but for the record I am not referring to myself ! ha ha).
I guess everything was made more magical that the hammerhead school decided to find us on the last diving day of our trip. It was a surreal experience etched into our memory.
What a great way to end the trip. Thanks Colin for trying so hard to lead us to them.