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I was in between Nadi and Suva on the southern coast of Viti Levu in Fiji, a place on earth I always wanted to see. On this trip I was going around the world with stops in five countries and Fiji was one of them. It was in late december 2002.

Well it was morning after a hot night in the little apartment I was staying at with the very green garden in front and thousands of little frogs everywhere. Where ever you were walking around the hostel at night you had to look out for the little fragile creatures. It was like stepping on a cross of a tomato and a cow turd when I accidental smashed one under my flip-flop.

I took a shower to wake up, got some coffee and meet up with three other divers who were going dive this morning. We were taken literally across the road in a car to the dive shop. Tony, the guy I booked the dive with insisted that we were taken by car. He asked if we were nervous before the dive and laughed out loud. Even though we were about to put on dive equipment, go down to 30 metres below the surface and dive around with sharks, I was more excited than nervous.

The usual Padi papers that basically says its you own fault if you die and no one will be able to sue anyone, were signed. All over the little dive shop were photos with sharks. The two dives we were suppose to do today had a cost of US$120 and US$10 to the local village. Beqa Lagoon Reef is a protected area so the village is not allowed to fish in the area and therefor a compensation is given of US$10 for every diver going there.

There were about 11 divers who jumped on a small diveboat and took off towards the reef which took around fifteen minutes. The divemasters threw fish heads and other very smelly fish stuff in the water around the reef and in a split second the calm surface was broken by hundreds of fish with some jumping completely out of the water. You were unable to see if there were any sharks among the eighty cm fish jumping... Everyone looked at each other with a smile. Some more nervous than others but one thought was the same, is it really smart to jump in the water with all these fish in a frenzy and hungry sharks waiting around the corner?!!?!?!

With this in my mind I put the regulator in my mouth, put my hand on my mask and jumped into the deep blue water. The fish that jumped out of the water three minutes ago swam around us for a while when we emptied out BCDs and slowly sank into the deep. There were a few Whitetip Reef Sharks and Grey Reef Sharks cruising in the distance and I had never seen so many Giant Trevallys in one place, it was amazing. In twenty-nine metres of water we were sat behind a little rock formation and as instructed in the briefing, with our hands down to the side. A Giant Grouper - also called The Queensland Grouper - the size of a small car was swimming by. It must have been around two and a half metres in length and a meter high, it was massive and moving very gently.

One of the divemasters came swimming down to the rock formation with a rubbish-bin filled with small dead fish followed by four to five White Tip Reef Sharks being very interested in the dead fish. When the divemaster had placed it ten metres from the rocks where we were sitting, still with our arms down the sides, he took off the lid of the rubbish-bin and everything went into a feeding frenzy. I looked back up the reef toward the surface and saw five to six Black Tip Reef Sharks shooting down to the rubbish-bin and joining the frenzy. Grey Reef Sharks, Nurse Sharks, White Tip, Sliver Tip and Black Tip Reef Sharks were going crazy around the rubbish-bin, there must have been around 50 sharks or more but it was difficult to see in the very fast moving pile of predators.

In twenty-nine metres of water you can only stay for a short period of time and after fifteen minutes we had to go shallower. Slowly slowly we went up to nine meter with the divemaster holding the rubbish-bin. He took out some fish-remains and hand-feed the sharks. More often than sometimes, he had to be very quick to remove his hand when one of the sharks took a bite. One White Tip Reef Shark swam less than twenty centimetres from my mask. I could see its eye focus on my eyes, the only thought in my mind was to keep my arms down my side but a big smile was forming on my face, this is what diving is all about, excitement! Like in twenty-nine metres, sharks were swimming behind us and we were surrounded to every side. No matter where you were looking you could see sharks.

The time was running out again in the nine metres of water we were sitting and the sharks had eating all the dead fish. We went up to the safety stop in five metres of water and stayed there for three minutes. A small Ribbon Moray Eel was poking its head out trying to impress and don't get me wrong it is a very beautiful animal but when you just have had sharks in every direction you were looking, a Ribbon Moray Eel is not that impressive.

Later in another country, I was talking to some guys and they could not understand why I would participate in such a dive. They told me it was stupid to feed sharks so divers like me could get out of the water saying, "I have been diving with sharks, I'm very tough!!!". The sharks would associate food with humans and more attacks would come because the sharks would get closer to humans. I shook my head at the guys and thought, these guys are just scared of sharks.

The dive operation I was diving with in Fiji now has two successful Shark Marine Reserves that directly involve the Fijian people in the protection of sharks. They have taught the locals that if you remove the sharks from the reefs the natural regulation of other species are not maintained. They have taught them that sharks are not killing machines trying to eat human beings on every chance they get. Sharks are very important to the ecosystem.

Every year around 100 million sharks are killed for their fins worldwide. It is a multi-billion dollar industry where one kilo is worth around US$600.

Between January and October there are Bull Sharks and Tiger sharks on the shark feeding dive I did near Beqa Lagoon in Fiji and not so many other species of sharks. One divemaster told me when I asked him if it doesn't get boring after a while? ..... "No, every shark dive is different!" and he smiled.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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