August 8, 2006

When Amy and I went out today, I finished my collections before she was done, so I swam around and watched marine life live. I moved along the channel edge, where it’s shallow on one side and very deep on the other due to the shear drop of the channel wall. There are also huge coral heads, like underwater mountains, large crevices and small caves all along the channel wall. I headed to where the channel opens into the ocean. It gets deeper and deeper as you move in that direction. I went further than I’ve ever gone before, probably because the visibility was so good. Anyway, I was holding onto a large, dead coral head with my legs hanging into a deep, wide crevice. I was facing the shallow part of the reef so I could watch a swarm of yellow and white fish descend on the reef like a plague of locusts. I was engulfed in a feeding frenzy of thousands of these small, beautiful fish when I suddenly had an urge to turn around. When I did, I was practically face to face with a 3 – 4 foot white-tip reef shark. It swam right past me, within a few feet, without paying me much attention at all. It was beautiful with its stark gray lines set against the deep blue of the channel. I watched it, fascinated, until it disappeared into the distance.
When I got back to the lodge, I sat on the front porch and watched the fruit bats migrate down from the hills for the night. They are beautiful to watch… from afar. They have a 2 – 3 foot wing span, and every night at dusk, they glide down the hills in search of their favorite fruit tree. Up close, they look like tattered, mutated rats and smell like musky urine and feces. I’ll just admire them from afar. It was a good day… an “I love Fiji” day.