Dive Review of Matava in
Fiji and Tuvalu/Kadadvu, Fiji

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Matava: "Fiji Bucket List Trip Part 2 – Matava Eco Resort, Kadavu Island", Aug, 2022, by Rene Cote, VA, US ( Sr. Reviewer 11 reports with 13 Helpful votes). Report 12043.
Photos Submitted with this Report Click on an image to see an enlarged version and captions
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity
Dive Operation		Shore Diving	N/A
Snorkeling	N/A
Overall Rating
Value for $$	N/A
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	In Part 1 of my trip to Fiji, I started with 4 days of diving on the island of Taveuni. My next stop would be Kadavu Island. Bluewater Dive Travel had suggested diving in Kadavu because of the Great Astrolabe Barrier Reef, along with the possibility of spotting mantas. Departing Taveuni (TVU) I flew first to Suva Airport (SUV), on the main island in Fiji, had a one-hour layover and then took a 30-minute flight to Kadavu (KDV). I was greeted by a Matava staff member, we loaded the pickup truck and headed to… the grocery store. There, another Matava staff member was waiting with supplies she had purchased for the resort. They loaded the truck and we continued on for a short and bumpy ride to the harbor where we loaded everything into a small water taxi. It was a 40-minute ride in the open boat to Matava resort; I was VERY grateful it wasn’t raining. The waters were crystal clear with colorful shades of blue, and along the way we had a brief encounter with a couple of dolphins. Arriving at Matava in low tide, I had to get out and wade through ankle-deep water to get to shore, which was no problem – the staff carried my luggage. Matava is an eco resort and relies on solar power and a generator for power. The resort is comprised of separate bures located on the property’s hillside, a garden near the top of the property, and the main buildings near the waterfront. The property felt a bit worn to me. Perhaps due to low tourism from covid, or other reasons, they didn’t seem to be hitting on all cylinders. My orientation didn’t cover things I learned on my own like: fill a water bottle to take to your room from the ONE potable tap available as there’s no potable water in the bures; be prepared to use a flashlight to get to your bure after dinner since there is no path lighting (by the way, the night skies were amazing!); leave your key in the morning when going diving or else housekeeping thinks you don’t want your room serviced; and the ‘hot water’ in the bures are solar heated and you might not have any hot water in the mornings or at night. The main building has the dining area, bar, lounge, and library. It is also the only place that has a charging station – and by “charging station” I mean that there is one 7-outlet power strip to be shared by all, and it is only energized from the morning to about 10pm. As there were only 2 other divers and a few kayakers at the resort when I first arrived, I didn’t have to do rock-paper-scissors to get access to the plugs I needed to connect my own power strip and multitude of camera and diving accessories that needed charging. Next to the main building is the “pool”, an empty structure with damaged concrete floor that probably held water at some point but looked as if it had not been functional for years; there’s a ‘yoga studio’, though yoga was never mentioned other than “there’s a yoga studio”; and I think I found the small building that might have been the spa/massage area – a “spa” is described on their website, but it was never mentioned in the brief and there was NO literature anywhere on the services and amenities that might have been offered at the resort… I suspect the ‘spa’ was like the pool - exists in name only. Wi-Fi requires purchase of an access code which provides 15 gigs of data, it only cost 15 Fijian dollars and I found the connectivity to be rather decent; I was even able to get connection from my bure about 75 meters away. There is NO cell phone service here – but my phone has Wi-Fi calling as a feature, so I was able to use that to dial home. The coffee and tea were put out daily around 06:30, with breakfast at 07:30; lunch was around 1pm after diving, and dinner at 7pm. The meals were surprisingly good. They didn’t offer menus, everyone got the same meal except for guests who had identified dietary restrictions, but I didn’t find anything to weird or exotic, it was all just good food; the food was the best part of the resort. The bar had a small assortment of liquors, 3 choices of beer, of which they only had 2 available, and 3 types of wine from New Zealand. The dive shop is a small building a short distance from the main building. It has the air compressor (NO nitrox) and along one wall are places to hang up gear. Another dive shop related item is that they only run 2 dives per day, which may be a factor of why they don’t bother to offer nitrox. Outside the shop are a couple of concrete rinse basins and a hose to rinse off gear and cameras – but there are no camera tables or charging stations. My bure was up on the hill about 75 meters down a concrete path; it was simple but acceptable. It had an outside porch with a couple of plastic chairs. The bedroom was a good size, with mosquito net around the bed, a small seating area, and plenty of space to unpack and lay out gear. There was only one low-powered light above the bed, and though there was a fan in the room, it only runs when the generator is running, which is never at night, and almost never otherwise. The bathroom is a small 1/2 step down, which can be tricky navigating at night with no lights. The bathroom seemed old to me and on my first post-dive shower, there was NO hot water…. now THAT was a bit of a surprise! It seems that the hot water is solar powered and sometimes doesn’t work. The next day they had repaired my shower and I did have a hot water the rest of my stay. The Diving: To get to the dive boat, we waded through shallow water and boarded a small boat that took us to slightly deeper water and the anchored dive boat. The dive boat was somewhat old double hull aluminum craft, with ladders at the bow and stern, and it was powered by two outboard motors. After boarding I set up my gear and checked the tank pressure. It registered about 2750 PSI on a couple of tanks, but we finally found a tank with closer to 2900 psi. Now I admit, I have a real pet peeve about tank fills, as I’ve experienced this all over the world - the typical “fill” for many places I have travelled to is a ‘hot fill’ to 200 BAR. Here’s the problem, a standard 80 cuft aluminum tank has a fill rating of 3000 PSI, that’s actually about 206.8 BAR. Admittedly, sometimes the BAR fill pressure rating is not stamped on the tank, only the PSI, but I examined these tanks and discovered that BOTH 3000 psi AND 207 BAR were stamped on the tanks – pretty easy to know what the proper fill pressure is if you ask me. As any experienced diver or gas mixer knows, when you ‘hot fill’ a tank, it will cool down to a lower pressure, losing 5% or more. So, problem number 1 is that dive operators are using “200 BAR” as a fill standard, and problem number 2 is that the tanks will cool down to lower pressures. The results are predictable: 2700-2800 PSI tanks, sometimes up to 10% loss of capacity. I don’t recall getting a 10% discount on my diving for low fills. The staff was responsive to my concerns, and my tanks on the following days were closer to 3000 psi. After getting the low tank situation sort of worked out, we started to head out…. but one of the outboard engines wasn’t working (side note, one of the engines one their other boat wasn’t working either as I saw them trying to fix it). We lumbered out on one engine and anchored inside the reef at a channel. Hmmm… I was skeptical. At this point, we had boarded, set up gear, pulled anchor and motored for a half hour. At no point did any of the staff give a boat briefing – I had to ask if there was a DAN kit on board (thankfully there was), but I never found where the fire extinguisher might be hidden, and I didn’t bother to ask. The dive briefing was another eyebrow raising moment – the boat captain gave a basic briefing, wall on left, deep on the right, follow the guide, max depth 20 meters max time 40-45 minutes…… wait… WHAT?!?! I flew three quarters of the way around the world to do 40-minute dives at 60 feet??? REALLY??? I think my ‘outside voice’ might have engaged when they said that, and I mumbled “that’s too short”, which was met with raised eyebrows. Whatever happened to dive safely and within your limits and experience, manage your air, monitor your NDL, never go deco, and come up with at least 500 psi? My concern about the dive site location was confirmed within seconds of entering the water. We were in the channel in the protected area inside the reef. There was little coral on the walls, just a lot of broken, dead coral, sand, and a few fish. We were also diving during outgoing tide, so as a main outgoing channel, there was a cloud of sand; I’ve had better visibility in a quarry. Later that day after returning, the general manager asked how my diving was, and I honestly told him “That first dive was a shit dive” (diving improved the next day), and I explained why I felt that way. For our second dive the boat captain had gotten the other engine to work, so we left the channel and got outside the reef and dived the wall. FINALLY, I got to start experiencing the Great Astrolabe Barrier Reef. I was greeted by a few Sweet Lips shortly after descending. This particular area had a lot of soft corals and sponges, but still not much fish life. Visibility was better but not anything close to what I had experienced the week before in Taveuni, yet it was still a nice dive, good healthy corals and colorful. My second day of diving was much better. We motored further north (on 2 engines this time) to the end of Kadavu and did our first dive on the outer reef. The visibility was much better as the tide was coming in from the blue. There were many more species of hard corals, a few more fish, and a couple of sharks. The second dive was inside the outer reef and was pretty decent. A couple of coral heads I filmed were very colorful with several species of corals. I even came across a juvenile hawksbill turtle - it was a good dive. The third day of diving started lackluster. We were on the dock ready to go and had to wait and wait and wait… it appears that they had not filled enough tanks for the day’s diving. Only 2 divers were added this day… but not enough tanks, oh well. About 40 minutes later than usual, we finally pulled anchor and headed out. We went back to exactly the same channel as the previous day, but instead of diving the left side, we dived the right side of the reef. The right side had less colorful coral than the previous day. We had excellent visibility, probably 75 feet or more, there just wasn’t a plethora of aquatic or coral life. I did get some nice images of purple soft corals, but the camera was idle much of the dive. For the second dive we stayed on the inner reef; visibility was fair and towards the end of the dive there were some rather impressive stony coral formations – they were stunning. I only had 3 days of diving at Matava Eco Resort, and since they only offer 2 dives per day, only did 6 dives. Perhaps there are other dive sites that we might have visited had I been there longer. I had hoped to see mantas, but the famous ‘manta reef’ (advertised on Matava’s web site) is nearly an hour away from the resort and that trip was not offered. As an eco resort, I think they do a wonderful job. They have a focus on sustainability, the staff was friendly, helpful, courteous, and fun. The meals were excellent, good Wi-Fi and amazing night skies. It seems to be a nice place for kayakers to visit, as we met a couple of groups doing that, kayaking resort to resort. But as a dive destination I consider it to be at best a 3-star, so-so location. Here is the video of that trip: [youtu.be link]
Websites	Matava
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	501-1000 dives
Where else diving	Most of the Caribbean, FL, Morehead City NC, Okinawa, Socorro, La Pax, Cenotes MX, Yap, Palau, Komodo Islands, Bali, Maldives, Hawaii, and now Fiji
Closest Airport	KDV	Getting There	I was on Taveuni, so I flew TVU to SUV to KDV
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny	Seas	choppy
Water Temp	76-79°F / 24-26°C	Wetsuit Thickness
Water Visibility	30-75 Ft/ 9-23 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	no
Enforced diving restrictions	They specified 60 feet depths 40-45 minute dives.
Liveaboard?	no	Nitrox Available?	no
What I Saw
Sharks	1 or 2	Mantas	None
Dolphins	None	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	1 or 2	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish
Large Pelagics
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter	N/A	Boat Facilities	N/A
Overall rating for UWP's		Shore Facilities
UW Photo Comments	No facilities for cameras. No dedicated rinse tanks at the dive shop. The only charging station is in the main building which was just one 7-outlet surge protector for the entire resort.

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Dive Review of Matava in Fiji and Tuvalu/Kadadvu, Fiji

Matava: "Fiji Bucket List Trip Part 2 – Matava Eco Resort, Kadavu Island", Aug, 2022,

Photos Submitted with this Report

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Dive Review of Matava in
Fiji and Tuvalu/Kadadvu, Fiji