AD 2016 Q1
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
The dive site known as E6 is rich with soft<br />
corals. These are all the more engaging<br />
with the beams of light that pierce<br />
through the perforations in the overhead<br />
environment at The Cathedral.<br />
The hard-coral formations<br />
in the shallows are often<br />
quite extraordinary, as I<br />
experienced in a series<br />
of photos from a 2012<br />
expedition there.<br />
To spend a bit more time<br />
in Taveuni, we opted not to<br />
dive Nigali Pass on this trip.<br />
This was a very tough call,<br />
and it might have been the<br />
first time I’ve ever missed<br />
a shark dive on purpose. I<br />
revisited previous trip logs<br />
to recollect this iconic Fiji<br />
drift dive. The pass is a long<br />
channel that features almost<br />
certain encounters with<br />
horse-eye jacks and chevron<br />
barracuda. Once divers arrive,<br />
bait is strategically placed on<br />
the portion of the reef the<br />
crew calls “the bleachers.” Red<br />
sea bass swarm the bait so<br />
eagerly that I think it makes<br />
the gray reef sharks hang back<br />
a bit. But the sharks come<br />
within camera range — 3 to<br />
5 feet away, typically. The<br />
site features a large, scenic<br />
patch of lettuce coral in very<br />
shallow water, which provides<br />
an interesting place to offgass<br />
at the end of the dive.<br />
This 10-day expedition<br />
featured many other dives<br />
of significance, one of which<br />
I hadn’t visited since the<br />
beginning of the digital era,<br />
which for me was 2001. I<br />
guess it is appropriate that<br />
the site is called E6, named<br />
for the chemical process<br />
used for developing certain<br />
transparency films, and<br />
last time I was there I was<br />
shooting Fujichrome Velvia in a Nikonos V. This time I<br />
was using a 50-megapixel Canon EOS 5DS, and happily I<br />
had far more exposures than the 36 that film had allotted.<br />
The ship’s dive log indicated that those who were on a<br />
quest to photograph marine life on this dive saw schooling<br />
jacks, gray reef sharks, Moorish idols, clown triggerfish<br />
and the ubiquitous regal angelfish. With my fisheye lens<br />
better suited to large reef scenics, I ignored the reef dwellers<br />
and concentrated on the immense soft-coral-decorated<br />
foreground, while shafts of light pierced The Cathedral.<br />
74 | WINTER <strong>2016</strong>
Change language