Sam Snaaps

Fiji time. Mataka mataka. Seqa na leqa. Whichever expression you choose to use, one must adopt this mindset in order to live a serene life here in Savusavu, as if you expect anything done in a hurry, you will end up feeling like the only person at the party. There is no next day delivery (or it seems even next month delivery) despite how popular the word mataka (meaning tomorrow) is, and generally if a job has no deadline, you’re better off doing it yourself and save yourself the patience.

Life here really does require a lot of waiting, which is difficult for a person like me who is all about the here and now, but this week my patience has rewarded me in other aspects of my life.

Teaching my students.

One of the most rewarding parts of my job is as a teacher. I remember my first ever experience underwater, in a swimming pool in Mauritius when my grandparents located someone brave enough to allow my brothers and I to strap some basic equipment on and breath compressed air underwater.

My buoyancy was uncontrolled, arms flapping like a fledging chick, and I was completely unaware of the skills required to be a diver, but in this pool, a new world was unlocked for me, giving the cauldron of my dreams a fresh batch of ingredients, stirring them into a mystical potion. I try to do whatever I can to give a taste of this potion to all my students who take their first breaths underwater with me, igniting their flame like mine was years ago, which has been burning ever since.

Another memory I have of Mauritius was seeing the beautiful paille en queue, and I have noticed some very similar white-tailed tropicbirds which closely resemble them.

I have been teaching in the swimming pool a lot this week, and no two sessions are the same, as everybody responds in unique ways to the barrage of information and skills of a diving course. This couldn’t have been more true about my students recently…

Some could be mistaken for a fish in a wetsuit, how they take to water so naturally, and these courses are a great chance for me to teach extra lessons about marine science on top of their diving lessons.

Others, however, require a lot more guidance to pick up the necessities to make their diving experience as pleasurable as I know it to be, for example, accidentally taking in pool water through your nose is entirely unpleasant and could deter many people from submerging again. I do my very best to let people leave on a high note, instead of finishing with a nose full of water, and this week I feel a sense of triumph as my struggling students persevered to success!

They keys to success in this situation for me was patience, perseverance, and belief. Sometimes my students understandably find a skill like clearing a flooded mask unbearable, and overwhelming, and it can break my heart to see the anguish in their irritated eyes that they are struggling.

It can be incredibly frustrating, especially when you remove the ability to effectively communicate with a new diver while underwater, but I do my very best to guide them, being as patient as they need me to be, and by providing them with the security and reassurance they need to finally feel comfortable taking off their masks while breathing underwater. Being patient with these people can be so rewarding for me as well as for themselves.

The gleaming accomplishment on peoples faces when I give them the news that they have completed all their skills, and are ready to graduate from cloudy, teal, chlorinated water to clear and colourful reef is one of the strongest sources of pride I have as a diver. These moments make the hard times worth every second of patience.

Perhaps this lesson is transferrable to many more aspects of life, I will certainly remember the importance of waiting, and also learning to provide the right reassurance to the people around me who need it.

I have also been in contact with the local headmaster, offering my knowledge on the marine sciences to the school which is very exciting! Maybe once we move into the new year, I will be able to start going in and teaching some more!

They’re back!

My patience has also been tested by the schooling enigma that are the hammerhead sharks. I hadn’t seen the school for about six weeks, through a handful of reasons.

The times I had been searching in the blue, there was never more than an individual sighting, and by chance I was always in the wrong place to catch the fleeting glimpse of the shark cruising past. Other times I have been teaching students, and so have been confined to the top of the reef where the hammerheads seldom visit. I also believed, as I mentioned in a previous blog, that I suspect their occult and elusive behaviour might be linked to the nurturing of young away from danger.

Namena island is the perfect place to raise young seabirds. No land predators, no humans, and plenty of fish to hunt. The brown feathers will soon become white for these brown booby’s which have a wingspan up to two metres!

The dive began and honestly I was feeling pessimistic about our chances. I hadn’t had any luck for a long time, and the reef was quite sparsely occupied as the ideal current for bringing all the fish onto the reef was absent. Despite this, we swam into the open water with fabulous visibility, roughly 30 meters of horizontal clarity; brightly sunlit.

Shortly into our search, a school of rainbow runners appeared which are a slender fish with a forked tail and are colourfully striped by blue and bronze along their bodies. Maybe it’s my own superstition, but I feel like many divers would agree with me, these fish are a really good omen as I seldom encounter them without there being a huge surprise nearby, like a whale shark, or a manta ray.

This reef manta ray from Indonesia was not accompanied by any rainbow runners, perhaps there was a bigger animal nearby taking all their attention…

This time, the solitary ocean giants didn’t arrive. Instead, the runners swam off (all they need now is to learn to cycle and they’d be the oceans first triathletes) and ironically, on the far side of the group to me a singular hammerhead came to observe. Luckily visibility was akin to gin and so at least I had a distant view!

The enormous female, easily three meters long swam a slow motion perimeter of the group, clearly watching our behaviour. She then pointed her wide, razor sharp head directly toward me and approached. Her wide eyes and flat head looked one dimensional, and her tail shifted from side to side behind as she came closer… and closer… and closer! So close I could almost reach out and stroke her brass coloured head, she finally dropped her fin and banked away from me disappearing into the blue.

The next event was perhaps the most interesting for me. No more than 20 seconds after I lost sight of the first shark, I was looking below, towards the seemingly endless abyss, when 30 more hammerheads rose from their deep hiding, overlapping each other and swimming in seemingly random directions, like being in a helicopter and watching the dark grey ash rise in plumes from an erupting volcano.

They too came closer and closer from below until they were at the same depth as us, but this time not only large females. Little babies too! I just knew their absence was for a reason, and being greeted by the young sharks almost certainly confirms my idea that they were being raised and protected.

I felt as though they came to tell us they had missed us and wanted to introduce us to the new and healthy infants. Was the large female from the beginning testing us before telling the rest of the sharks that it was safe to approach? I hope so.

The rest of the dive was similarly euphoric as we were serenaded by rounds of fly-by’s from the whole school, both down beep below us, and unusually, above us too. I have never encountered them swimming so shallow, let alone more shallow than us! They were everywhere, and they were back after a long, disheartening period of absence. I WISH I HAD MY CAMERA!

Some reef sharks will have to be my models in lieu of the hammerheads this time, I will photograph them one day…

Merry Christmas!

Another week in Savusavu draws to a close, and Christmas is somehow appearing out of the depths of winter faster than a curious hammerhead shark. I spent one Christmas in Fiji before, but I had the delight of a holiday to Qamea island with my family who came to visit, and what a heartwarming, wholesome time that was.

This year will be my first away from all my friends and family. It doesn’t feel like Christmas at all, maybe the festive feeling is also on Fiji time and will arrive one day, but at least for now I hope to spend it with some of my fishy friends. I will have to provide some fin friendly crackers that we can all pull.

To everyone else, have a wonderful Christmas, I hope I can finish all your unwanted brussel sprouts some time in the future, and teach you all a thing or two about playing cards ❤ Love to all!