Swimming with Sharks . . .

---

This morning, after breakfast, the backpackers resort where I’m staying offered an outer reef snorkeling trip to see the reef sharks. I eagerly signed up - it was one of the things I most wanted to do on Wayalailai (the island I’m on now).

A group of 8 of us piled into a small motorboat and headed out to sea. It was about a 20 minute ride out to the reef. We jumped into the water and swam alongside the reef. I still can’t get over how clear the water is in Fiji. The visibility is incredible. I swam along the reef taking in the coral and fish and various critters. Then I spotted the first shark! It was headed in the same direction as us, but traveling more quickly.

We reached a sort of opening where the reef makes a circle-like shape with just a few spots that open out to the area around it. I guess this is a spot where the sharks like to hang out because within minutes there were three of them swimming around below us.

It was pretty awesome to watch them. For sharks, they’re not that big, maybe 3 feet long. They just circled around and around the area, sometimes coming higher up to the surface near us but mostly staying down low.

And it wasn’t just sharks around us - there were so many fish! Lots of coral to look at too. And I spotted a sea turtle as well! It was at the far side of the circle from me and I spotted it just as it was swimming away. Later on the boat I found out that only one other person in the group had seen the turtle, so that made the find even more exciting.

But for me, the best sight to see while in the water, were baby sharks! There were two little ones in the water. I was fascinated by them. Mostly they swam right alongside their mother. They blended right in with Mama Shark, other than a lighter coloured stripe on them. It almost looked like the mother shark just had a stripe of lighter colour along her side. Every now and then though, the bigger of the two baby ones out there would swim away from it’s mother to snap at something in the water and then immediately dart back to it’s mothers side. Awesome.

After about half an hour in the water with the sharks, we got back in the boat and headed back to Wayalailai. I only had a little bit of time before I needed to be ready to leave.

It’s just been one night here on Wayalailai for me. Now I’m off to venture further north in the Yasawas.

---