NAI'A Offers the Best of Fiji's World-Class Diving

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The Island of Gau:
Nigali Passage, Jim's Alley

Nigali Passage: A narrow cut in the surrounding barrier reef which concentrates pelagics from miles around. Nigali is home to female gray reef sharks which number from 8 to 25 depending on the season. The channel also concentrates a huge school of trevally, three age-segregated schools of barracuda, about a dozen big flowery cod and an annoying concentration of fish I have dubbed snapass (one reference calls them snapper; one calls them bass). Because of the unique configuration of the channel, the incoming current does not coincide with rising tide as one might expect. With over six years of experience diving Nigali and using a computer database to organize current observations, we have become experts at diving the channel during its optimum four hour window of opportunity.

Nigali Passage well illustrates the advantage of skiff diving over diving from the mother ship. NAI'A's skiffs are able to drop divers well up-current and pick them up again half a mile away after they have drifted through the channel with the current. This dive would be impossible if you had to get back to where you started.

Jim's Alley: a soft coral garden in shallow water, home to zillions of reef fish. Jim's is a prime example of the kind of soft coral diving for which Fiji is famous. Cluttered with multihued soft coral and nearly every kind of reef fish known, Jim's is a lush garden which leaves divers in awe. As an added bonus, Jim's is a regular stop for four or five mantas, who can frequently be found feeding in the adjacent channel during the waning tide. Macro photographers, too, love Jim's because of the profusion of little creatures living among the hard corals, soft corals, and fans.