Shark Diving at Beqa

We just returned from an exciting shark dive which is among the “must-sees” of Fiji. We took a taxi from Suva to Pacific Harbor where we boarded a dive boat along with a dozen Danish college girls (no extra charge) and headed out to the reef at Beqa Island. It was a beautiful calm day and we made the trip in 10 minutes.

The dive is very controlled since they don’t want any customers getting bitten. We descended to 70 feet and were positioned behind a rock wall that was constructed to keep us near to but out of the feeding area. The dive masters have garbage bins full of fish heads that they hand feed to the sharks. Soon there is a feeding frenzy with sharks darting through thick schools of fish, all competing for the diver’s treats. We saw seven different shark types with the only absentee being the humongous and dangerous tiger shark.

It was a bit of a zoo with dozens of divers lining the wall with their cameras flashing away. Dive masters stay behind the paying customers to keep sharks from coming in to close from the rear. We were stunned when a large gray reef shark came right at us and bumped Brian’s arm as he turned in front of us. We were warned not to poke cameras out and take pictures in such instances since the sharks can confuse a camera for a fish head and take off an arm. A few weeks earlier someone lost a GoPro to a large grouper.

At the end of our second dive we checked out a ship wreck that the dive boats use as a mooring anchor. The dives were deep and we had to make a decompression stop at 15 feet. The weather had deteriorated when we reached the surface and the trip back was a little slower and wetter. It was really blowing and raining by the time we got back to Persephone and we hunkered down and took a long nap.

Remoras piggy-backing on a shark

Sandie at the decompression stop

Ship wreck

Spectators liked up behind the wall; note dive master watching their backs

Sandie making a graceful entry

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