Dive Locations

Ras Bula is a long boat ride for us – just over 10 minutes down the coast! Our mooring at Ras Bula is on a ridge of reef in front of the pier at Maui Bay. The ridge is carpeted with hard corals – there is an amazing one that has grown on our mooring line! Eagle rays frequently cruise down the side of the ridge and it is a great spot for Scorpion fish. Sometimes they take a bit of spotting – camouflage gone crazy!

The Maze is, well, a maze… In Midra Passage we have bommies which pop up close to the surface. Around and through these bommies and under the overhangs of the passage edges are swimthroughs and tunnels that twist round and about until we get to the Chimney – a tunnel through the reef that starts at 18m and pops out into the sunlight at 7 metres. There are schools of snapper and unicorn fish here and frequent encounters with reef and nurse sharks.

A wall dropping down 60 metres, with curling encrusting corals, waterfalls of fusiliers scattered by predatory trevally and snapper and a cave with a balcony frequented by hawksbill and green turtles. Shallower, the reef is pierced by crevasses and gullies that we can swim through into a pool of light where there is prolific hard coral growth, then a tunnel through the reef to ‘Sundance’. Here, as we swim under the lip of the reef, the sun pours through holes and cracks, producing swaying, shimmering beams of light. Through all this swim reef surgeonfish, sweepers and trumpetfish, illuminated by the glittering rays cutting through the blue.

A reef wall that drops down to 30 metres, covered in colourful soft corals, sea whips and fans, strangely reminiscent of the paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec. OK, maybe not, but it’s a lovely dive and you have to call it something. There are shallow caves underneath that often shelter a sleeping nurse shark, morays in holes on the cliff face, banded sea kraits and of course the usual colourful array of reef fish and corals.

Rock the Casbah! Casbah is virtually underneath the surf break directly in front of the Hideaway (it is important to mention that surfers generally don’t like having their ankles grabbed from underwater whilst sitting on their boards……) allowing for a very short boat trip and our traditional quick trip back to the resort for a coffee in between dives.

Slap bang in front of Hideaway, Fanny Hill is a fantastic dive site for more experienced divers. Currents push through and around a series of underwater ridges pushing out towards the deep, crowned with coral and fringed with large gorgonian fans. Between these lie deep submerged valleys. The topography on its own is impressive, but this site is at its best when the currents are flowing and the big fishes come out to play. As you descend, barracuda schools appear from the blue, wrapping around divers until we almost disappear inside the vortex. Deeper down, we hover over the top of fan covered bommies, often causing turtles to swim grumpily off, and watch as grey reef sharks circle elegantly around. This is also probably our best site to see a Silvertip, a truly beautiful shark that appears, swooping in with the silver edges on its fins glowing. The dive moves across the valleys from ridge to ridge, before moving up to the main reef to do a safety stop on a sloping reef covered in beautiful hard corals typical of diving in Fiji.

An adrenalin dive for the first part of the dive as you fly through an underwater canyon, herding the schools of snapper and surgeon fish through the narrow underwater gorge. Graceful grey reef and white tip sharks glide up and down the walls through all the swirling fish. The canyon then opens up to an underwater beach where the current suddenly stops and we pause and wait for the sharks to return single file past us back into the channel. Then a short swimthrough takes us out into the clear blue of the Pacific. The second half of the dive is very different – a leisurely meander over hard coral gardens and through a long, sunlit tunnel with a wavy sandy

The walls of this dive site are thickly carpeted with soft corals which blossom in the current. Whilst there is a rainbow of different colours, here it is the purples, plums and violets which dominate, hence the name of the site. There are also big gorgonian sea fans, bright red in the glow of lights, white and black fans and sea whips. Around and amongst the coral there are an array of reef fish such as golden and purple anthias, zebra angelfish, clown triggerfish, oriental sweetlips, unicorns, bannerfish and an incredible variety of butterfly fish.

Perfect for beginners, great for the experienced diver, Stingray includes what must be one of the shortest boat rides to a dive site anywhere in the world – under 20 seconds at low tide! (High tide does add an exhausting 15 second extension to the trip). Starting very shallow, there is a resident school of barracuda in the bay, so many lion fish spotting and stalking their prey that after a while you can start ignoring them and concentrate more on the snapper, trevally, angels, butterflies, goat fish, flash coral and white tips.

The Edge of the world. From here south all there is is the great blue Pacific Ocean. The fish on The Edge don’t seem to be particularly phased by their proximity to these vast depths, mind you. The tip of the reef where we moor here is a favourite spot for green and hawksbill turtles, and fusiliers and unicorn fish swirl around higher over the coral. The outer reef drops off at the end of Taqage channel. From there there is an easy swim across to the main reef. On the wall here there are proliferations of brightly coloured small soft corals, yellow sponges and pinkish white lace corals. From 5 metres up in the reef surge zone where the waves are breaking at low tide, amongst many other things we find schools of pyramid butterfly fish, hawkfish poised ready to swoop