“Really? I thought they were supposed to be white like that,” she
says. It is what scientists call a shifting baseline. If you have never seen
a healthy vibrant reef, you might not recognize a dying one, even as
you swim through it.
Still, much of the strait’s reefs remain intact and otherworldly. We
do a fast-moving drift dive over a reef swarming with small purple and
orange fish, also triggers, groupers, and unicorn fish, some pretty
Morish idols, and a Picasso fish (to see it is to understand the name).
We next dive a spot called Jerry’s Jellies. The soft corals here look
like green bushes, black spiders, yellow mushrooms, and red velvet
cloth lain over rocks and also buttercups in purple, mauve, and violet.
There is a sand field of garden eels waving like prairie grass in the cur-
rent. Bigger fish are also lolling in the current waiting for the small fry
to move from their cover among the brain and lettuce corals. I spot a
parrot fish with a small rainbow-colored fish held in its mouth. As he
spits it back out, I drift into some sharp coral, cutting my hand. At this
depth the blood looks black as it spurts slowly in little ribbons that dis-
sipate in the current. Back onboard the boat, I bleed a bit, hold my
hand above my heart until the bleeding slows, and then bandage it. We
take a break from diving on a beach in Vanua Levu, where we snack on
fresh pineapple and homemade cookies. From here the green slopes of
Taveuni remind me of the big island of Hawaii. A large fruit bat flies
across the open strait, shards of nautilus shell crunch underfoot.
On our last dive I spot some silly-looking eels, blue with yellow
pronged snouts that attract smaller fish. I also spot black-tip reef
sharks cruising along the edge of the reef and two lion fish in a cavern,
their fanlike quills both beautiful and tipped with poison.
Back on Taveuni, I visit the Wairiki Catholic Mission, walking
down a dirt road past crumbling seawalls and a few uprooted coconut
palms to a shallow rocky beach that has eroded away in recent years. A
group of young Fijian kids are playing naked in the water. When they
spot me taking photographs, they come over to pose and shyly tell me
their names and ages.
Four days after I leave Fiji, the protest march that the U.S. ambas-
sador had promoted as an example of democracy takes place in Suva.
A group of armed men leave the march and take Prime Minister
Australia, Florida, and Fiji 139