Fiji - Taveuni and Somosomo Strait

First, I wanted to start by thanking the various people on this forum who helped me immensely with setting up my rig. I would not have been half as successful without the help. I came from shooting a small rig (Sony RX100 series) to the Sony Full Frame A7RV +Nauticam with WACP-C, 28-60 lens, and YS-D3II strobes. Needless to say, what the rig is capable of exceeded my abilities, but I plan to use it for a long time and will hopefully one day be able to bring it justice. I would like to share some of my highlights from the trip, any photo C&C is welcome

As for diving in Fiji, I had an excellent experience overall, and was surprised at the good health of the reef (both hard and soft corals, fish, etc.) While the smaller fish are in huge abundance, there is a lack of bigger fish, and for this I do wish Fiji would consider making the strait into a marine protected/marine conservation area. So the focus there is primarily reefscapes and small fish, with the occasional nudibranch. For this reason I kept the wide angle setup on for the most part, mainly because I wanted to master the use of it. Someone interested in fish portraits or macro might do well with the standard lens+bayonet diopter, or perhaps the macro on a few dives. The small stuff, when found, was outstanding, but few and far between. The exception to that would be at night when tons of small things came out on the reef like crabs, shrimp, etc. 

Highlights for me included diving the great white wall (at the appropriate time to see the Dendronepthya) the array of colored soft corals and swim throughs, and the massive Turbinaria reniformis cabbage coral. Night dives were also rewarding as a lot of the small things come out like shrimp and the like.  

Lastly I'd like to mention that while Fiji is in the tropics I was happy I brought my 5mm suit and way too many divers on my boats had inadequate exposure protection. It's so much easier to flood a warm suit than to try to be warm after getting cold due to lack of proper exposure protection. There was a lot of "tough" people out there who tried to swing by with shorties and the like and I could tell they were suffering. I can say the 5mm was just about perfect for me. 

Beautiful photos first time with a big rig, I had kind of similar upgrade from RX100 to A7III without flashes when I travelled to Fiji but now I have Inon Z330s that I haven't used much. I have also got a new camera A7IV but haven't tried it yet underwater. 

Taveuni is a nice diving spot but as you mentioned it lacks any sort of bigger creatures underwater, I quite liked the current and how strong it was on some days.

13 hours ago, newdiver said:

Beautiful photos first time with a big rig, I had kind of similar upgrade from RX100 to A7III without flashes when I travelled to Fiji but now I have Inon Z330s that I haven't used much. I have also got a new camera A7IV but haven't tried it yet underwater. 

Taveuni is a nice diving spot but as you mentioned it lacks any sort of bigger creatures underwater, I quite liked the current and how strong it was on some days.

Thank you very much for the feedback. 

Admittedly, I still have a lot to learn about underwater scene lighting, and one thing I wasn't prepared for was just how close I had to be to light a wide-angle scene of the reef with the strobe power I had. One issue I kept running into with the YS-D3 II's was having the overheating circuit turning on and being unable to take consecutive shots until it cooled down. I found that I needed to temper expectations on distances and coverage and lower the strobe power more often than not.

@BobbyV

Good stuff with your first trip with the bigger rig. Yes - you are going to need to get close to light up wide angle scenes... that's a learning experience that everyone goes through when switching rigs. Even more powerful strobes will only give you a little more space - it's the water that dissipates your light more than anything else. Get close (then get closer)...

BTW - I dove the Somosomo Straits for the first time 30 years ago. There weren't larger fish (incl. sharks) present then either. Fiji has a few places where you can see bigger schools, mantas, and sharks, but it usually takes a liveaboard to get there. The Lau group of islands, the Namena marine preserve, the Bligh Water region, and Wakaya all have consistently good large animal (or large schools of fish) to encounter. Namena (for example) has a drift dive along a wall that more times than not will lead you to 2-3 (very large) grouper, as well as a few grey reef sharks (one of the grouper was almost the size of a VW bug). 

Fiji's north (Somosomo) is known for it's soft coral above everything else (which is why the area is called the Rainbow Reef). Did you get to dive some of the other more famous sites? Yellow Tunnel, Purple Wall, Rainbow's End? 

I've heard some of these sites are not what they used to be, but still very colorful.

31 minutes ago, oneyellowtang said:

@BobbyV

Good stuff with your first trip with the bigger rig. Yes - you are going to need to get close to light up wide angle scenes... that's a learning experience that everyone goes through when switching rigs. Even more powerful strobes will only give you a little more space - it's the water that dissipates your light more than anything else. Get close (then get closer)...

BTW - I dove the Somosomo Straits for the first time 30 years ago. There weren't larger fish (incl. sharks) present then either. Fiji has a few places where you can see bigger schools, mantas, and sharks, but it usually takes a liveaboard to get there. The Lau group of islands, the Namena marine preserve, the Bligh Water region, and Wakaya all have consistently good large animal (or large schools of fish) to encounter. Namena (for example) has a drift dive along a wall that more times than not will lead you to 2-3 (very large) grouper, as well as a few grey reef sharks (one of the grouper was almost the size of a VW bug). 

Fiji's north (Somosomo) is known for it's soft coral above everything else (which is why the area is called the Rainbow Reef). Did you get to dive some of the other more famous sites? Yellow Tunnel, Purple Wall, Rainbow's End? 

I've heard some of these sites are not what they used to be, but still very colorful.

I'm missing one or two, but I have down in my log book that we dove the Zoo, Great White Wall, Jerry's Jelly, Coral Gardens, Cabbage Patch, and Fish Factory. We did not visit Purple Wall due to conditions that day. I don't know if it was another site in the Strait or the same one, but we also dove a site called Fish Factory off Vuna Reef. Jerry's Jelly, the White Wall, and the Fish Factory off Vuna reef were the standouts for me. There were also a couple other sites we were able to do near Savusavu, but I can't recommend the dive outfit I used there (long story).

Needless to say, I could have stayed there for a month and not gotten bored if I had the means to do so. One of the DMs asked if I would mind diving the same dive site twice and I just laughed. I can't imagine getting bored there but I guess it must happen. The variation between these sites and even at the same site really kept things interesting. 

I also dived with sharks in Pacific Harbour and that was an unforgettable experience specially the first dive because the sun was up and no cloud cover. Lots of reef sharks.

@newdiver

Glad you enjoyed the shark dive in Pacific Harbour. Lots of folks really like the action (fish, small sharks, and the big sharks...). I'm not a huge fan of shark feed dives, but the Fijian version is is unique.

You used to be able to occasionally see a bull shark or tiger shark while diving in Beqa Lagoon (just to the south), but as the shark dives in Pacific Harbour became more regular the sharks have "learned the schedule."

23 hours ago, oneyellowtang said:

@newdiver

Glad you enjoyed the shark dive in Pacific Harbour. Lots of folks really like the action (fish, small sharks, and the big sharks...). I'm not a huge fan of shark feed dives, but the Fijian version is is unique.

You used to be able to occasionally see a bull shark or tiger shark while diving in Beqa Lagoon (just to the south), but as the shark dives in Pacific Harbour became more regular the sharks have "learned the schedule."

Yes it was good fun and one of the divers who was very scared managed to empty his tank in 15 minutes flat and decided to surface, however he got a shark in tow thinking he was going to feed him, as the shark started trailing him one of the dive masters went up to chase the shark so that it wouldn't harm the scared guy. This meant one less dive master with the metal pole to push the sharks away from the 15 or so divers.

I then got an upset American girl who wasn't happy with my flash going off and ruining her video, it was a fairly chaotic dive but I still enjoyed.

I would love to dive in Beqa lagoon in the future and it was part of my plan but I didn't have time as I caught covid there and had to spend most of my time in quarantine and only managed the shark dive two days before I left.