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Fiji: Nugget

Location: Off Savu Savu Bay on Vanua Levu, Fiji
You get there with Eco Divers based in Savusavu or from Jean Michel Cousteau's resort a few kilometres out of town.

Nugget is a coral bommy, probably the size of a reasonably big house, sitting inside the lagoon, not far from the reef on the south east side of the passage into Savusavu Bay.
It only takes about 15 minutes to get there from the Copra Shed where Eco Divers are based. They use rigid bottom Zodiacs, of the type used by North Sea oil platforms, with some pretty powerful outboards on the back.

Nugget is a fantastic place to dive with a video camera for several reasons. Around the bommy there is an incredible variety of fish life, big and small. We filmed a scorpionfish on a background of mulitcoloured soft corals. There are tiny garden eels sticking their heads out of the sandy bottom at about 17 m depth. There are coral trout, sweetlip, unicornfish, many different butterflyfish; triggerfish; wrasses; snappers; rock cods; a variety of assesorfish and much more.

 
Because the bommy is relatively small and so rich in diverse marine life, it takes almost no effort at all to do the dive and get great filming opportunities. There is very little current, which makes the dive even easier.
It is not very deep - the top of the bommy is at about 5-6 metres depth - so the ligth is good, and therefore, the colours are good.
And when you don't work hard, and you don't go deep you end up using very little air, and your dive just seems to go on and on.
We had one dive there which lasted 90 minutes on a single tank...

Beware: you really want sunshine when you dive Nugget - that's when the colours come out.

Hans la Cour
hans@tradewind.co.nz