Aqua Trek, Ring Gold, Fiji: Undercurrent 08/2024

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After a mid-April work-related stint in Australia, I sought a low-key, direct flight destination out of Brisbane for a few days of diving. Fiji's island of Viti Levu was a three-and-a-half-hour flight. I picked a six-day itinerary that hit the island's two diving hotspots -- Pacific Harbour for the Beqa Lagoon's bull shark dive and then the soft corals of the Bligh Waters on the island's northeast side.

Shark Feed in Beqa Lagoon Unlike most divers who prefer dive hotel accommodations with other divers around to talk diving, I wanted to hang with the residents and enjoy the culture. What better place than friendly Fiji? At Nadi's airport, I rented a sedan to circumnavigate Viti Levu and headed out on the Queen's Highway, twisting and turning through several villages before arriving on the Coral Coast. Pacific Harbour has a few resorts, but I booked a simple two-night homestay and a two-tank shark dive with Aqua Trek, which, after running bull shark dives for 25 years, has it down to a science. Local villagers give up their traditional village fishing rights for a cut of the profits, which makes the sharks worth more to the islanders alive than dead.

Aqua Trek's two aluminum dive boats can accommodate at least 24 divers for the 15-minute ride to the Bistro, their feeding site. After a giant stride off the stern into the 84°F water, I kicked down 60 feet along the fixed mooring line to the rubble bottom, then the group made a short swim to the feeding area. A twofoot- high handmade rock wall arcs around the feeding station where a diver feeds fish by hand to the sharks. We divers kneeled behind the wall, facing the feeder; divemasters knelt with and behind us, aluminum looped poles in hand, to watch our backs.

I was blown away by the sheer number and size of the bull sharks that came rushing in. Three, maybe even four meters long, they appeared, almost on cue, interspersed with toothy lemons, a few sizeable silky sharks, and long, slender nurse sharks sticking close to the rubble bottom while swarms of reef fish finned around them....

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