I checked out of my hostel early on Sunday morning to catch the bus to Port Denarau, where I’d catch a catamaran ferry to my next destination – Barefoot Kuata. Earlier in my year, I spent a week at Barefoot Manta, a resort in Fiji that combines marine conservation projects with their everyday dive tourism. I had enjoyed my short time with Barefoot Manta so much that I decided to go back while I was back in Fiji. They have another resort, Barefoot Kuata, that is doing the same marine conservation projects but is also trying to get their own bull shark dive program started. I decided to spend 3 days with Barefoot Kuata (it’s a very small resort) then spend another 10 days at Barefoot Manta, as I felt my previous 7 days in October was just too short a time. I barely made the catamaran (thanks to a late pickup by the bus) but got onboard no problem and was shortly on my way to Barefoot Kuata. I arrived on the island just around 10 am, filled out all my paperwork and put my bags in my tent before heading over to the dive shop. I met with Thomas, the manager, who is also spearheading the bull shark feeding project. We discussed a rough plan for the next few days which would give me an adequate look at the projects going on at Kuata. I’d spend the afternoon doing an exploratory dive with Thomas at a nearby reef that he had recently learned about. We spent just under an hour on the reef, making a wide circle around the outer perimeter, giving Thomas the chance to make a mental map as well as explore any features the reef may have to make it a possible dive site. When we got back to the dive shop, I caught up with Semi, one of the instructors I met in October, who was temporarily located at Kuata. He gave me a tour of the small island before we headed to dinner. After dinner, a guest was scheduled for a night dive, so I tagged along, eager at the opportunity to see what the house reef looks like as well as to check for any COTS (crown of thorn seastars). It was a great night dive – loads of wacky and weird critters came out, including a reddish brown robust ghost pipefish, one of my favorite creatures. I did notice quite a few COTS throughout the dive, which I brought up with the staff afterwards. They had noticed a bunch as well, so we made plans for the next night to do a COT dive, to try and remove as many as possible. I had a great night of sleep after such a busy day!

I had an early breakfast on Monday morning as I’d be joining Thomas on his early shark feeding dive. Thomas is currently in the process of familiarizing the sharks to being fed at a particular location as well as studying their behavior to get to know the individuals better. He doesn’t take any guests as it’s not developed enough to be a safe dive for multiple people, but he allowed me to tag along so long as I closely followed the rules he set forth and stayed behind the rock wall he had built. Thomas is collaborating with Mike Neumann, from BAD, to safely establish his shark dive and the feeding spot definitely was reminiscent of the feeding arena at Beqa Lagoon. We descended down the mooring line and finned down the sloping wall to the wall, where I kneeled down and waited. Thomas and Napo (one of the divers Thomas is training) swam over the wall to the aluminum bait box, which had been dragged a significant distance from the position they placed it in yesterday. After throwing out any remaining bits of fish they proceeded to cut up the fresh fish heads, storing some in the box and attaching some to the chain outside the box. In addition, they gathered the GoPro that they put overnight at the location, getting photos in 5 second intervals of any visitors to the feeding box. After chumming the water until we were almost in deco-time, we began the ascent back up to the boat where we did our safety stop and surfaced. No sharks came during our 45 minute dive, but Thomas was optimistic – they had been seeing sharks on the GoPro footage the past few days, so they were at least in the area.

Back at the dive shop I checked with the staff to see what the day looked like. They had a shark snorkel going out at 11, which I was invited to join. Everyday the dive shop at Kuata offers a shark snorkel, where they take guests out to a shallow reef where a small piece of bait is placed amongst the coral rubble, which attracts between 3-5 whitetip reef sharks. It’s a great snorkel as it allows guests the chance to swim with sharks and usually the guides give a briefing about sharks on the way to the site. We were in the water for just about an hour before we headed back to the island for lunch. After lunch I tagged along on an open water course training dive for a chance to see more of the house reef. Dinner came quickly (and thank goodness, I was pretty hungry) and afterwards I headed back down to the dive shop to meet with a few of the staff I’d be doing the COT dive with. We got our gear ready, grabbed gaffs and bags, then headed out to the house reef. We set the goal of getting a combined of 50 COTs between the 3 of us. Little did we know just how bad the COT problem was – after 75 minutes in the water, we surfaced with two burlap bags brimming with COTS of all sizes. We called it a night, waiting to measure and bury the COTS for the morning as it was almost 11 PM and we were all knackered.

I headed out with Thomas again on Tuesday morning for the shark feeding dive. Thomas had looked at the footage from the day before and they had a tiger shark visit, which definitely was exciting news! It was the fifth individual tiger shark seen at the feeding box over the past few months, which is impressive. We hopped in the water, all secretly hoping there was a tiger shark waiting for us at the feeding box. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case, but Thomas and Napo got to work with putting the fresh bait out and chumming the water for a while. We had one curious blacktip reef shark come round, but all was pretty quiet. Then, Thomas made the sign for a bull shark – he spotted one just out of my range of view. We all eagerly strained our eyes, hoping the shark would stay around, but it was too shy and left as soon as it realized it had noisy, bubbly company at the feeding box. It was still an encouraging sign – the sharks were coming back around after being gone for the mating season and hopefully they would be back in good numbers in the next few days. Back at the dive shop, I tagged along for another shark snorkel, which was another hour of fun in the water. I love watching guests transform from being nervous and hesitant to snorkel with the sharks as we head out to the reef to confident and amazed at how peaceful the sharks actually are. Its great to give people such positive exposure to a misunderstood species in such a safe way.

After lunch, I took the two full bags of COTS from the night before to be measured and buried. Napo and I went through the bags – we blew our goal of 50 COTS by a lot – ending up with just under 100 COTS between the 3 of us! It was pretty eye-opening: there were more COTS on the house reef then anyone had guessed and it needed more cleaning up! I hung around the dive shop, with tentative plans to go out with Napo to clean the coral tables off the house reef. Similar to Barefoot Manta, Barefoot Kuata has a coral nursery to replant a variety of species of coral on local reefs. We never made it out to the coral tables, as Napo had to fill tanks all afternoon (the dive shop has to fill tanks when the resort isn’t using the desalinator to create freshwater, so sometimes it takes hours to fill just a few tanks). Nonetheless, I spent quality time with the dive staff and the guests, with some time snorkeling off the house reef in between. After dinner, I headed out for one last COT dive with the dive guys. We spent another 75 minutes or so in the water and surfaced with two more burlap bags brimming with COTS. We’d wait to do the counting the next day, as it was late and we were all tired.

Wednesday morning I woke even earlier to get my bags mostly packed, as I’d be catching the ferry around 10:30 to head further north to Barefoot Manta. It had been a fast trip to Kuata, but I felt that I’d done all there was to do and had a good exposure to the conservation projects being conducted at this location. However, I decided to squeeze in one more dive with Thomas that morning and we sped out to the site, moving with a bit of haste to ensure I made it back for the ferry. I was glad I tagged along; we had a bull shark show up early in the dive and hover around for almost the entire time we were in the water! Sure enough, they were coming back and staying around. After another 45 minutes or so we headed back up to the boat and rushed back to the resort, where I quickly dried off, changed clothes, and checked out of my tent (with a solid 20 minutes to spare before heading off to the ferry!) It was just about an hour on the ferry up to Barefoot Manta, where I joined the other guests on the shuttle boat to take us to the island. It felt so good to be back at Barefoot Manta and I was looking forward to seeing all the friends I had made back in October. Sure enough, I was greeted by a host of familiar faces as I stepped off the boat and headed up to reception to get checked in. I threw my things down in my bure, then headed down to the dive shop to catch up with all the staff. It was great to see everyone again and I heard about all the new projects going on at the dive shop. Plus, the mangroves that were just nubby little propagules planted alongside the dive shop had turned into a bed of lush, green leaves! Things had changed, but changed for the better and I was excited to see what the next 10 days had in store. After lunch I jumped in on a boat going out for a fun dive. It’d probably be my only chance for the rest of my trip to do a purely fun dive and grab some photos, so I gladly went out with the guests. We did Fantastic Wall, one of the most popular dive sites, which had not only spectacular fan corals on the wall, but loads of fish and even a few grey reef sharks! To end the evening, after dinner I joined the night snorkel to see how the reef was looking as well as to scan for COTS.

Thursday I was back into the swing of things as if I had never left. After a delicious breakfast, I headed down to the dive shop for the morning meeting, where we’d get the plan for the day. I offered to do a dive off Sunrise Reef to try and nab some COTS, which Dan agreed with. After the meeting I went about watering the happy little bed of mangroves before getting my gear together and heading over to the reef. I spent well over an hour slowly scanning the shallow reef for signs of COTS. Sure enough, in that time I found about 8 large COTS hiding in crevices on the reef top, which I gladly pulled off the coral. I had done a thorough job, but knew there were more COTS hiding on the reef or that I had mistakenly overlooked. Back at the shop, I measured and buried all the COTS, which preoccupied me until just before lunch. After a delicious lunch, I went back to the dive shop where Dan asked me if I wanted to join a boat with guests going out to do 2 reefs – but I’d bring a gaff and burlap bag to do some COT removal. I gladly agreed, got my gear ready and loaded up on the boat. Once everyone was ready, we headed out to a site called Little Wonders, where I swam at the back of the group, scanning for any signs of COTS. It was interesting to see how my ability to find COTS had improved after my 3 weeks in American Samoa looking for and killing COTS. I’d begun to really pick up on signs the COTS leave on the reef (the most distinct is the white/yellow scarring the coral has once it’s been eaten). I only found one on the site – but it was massive! I almost couldn’t fit it into the burlap bag because it had such a wide diameter. Back at the shop I grabbed a fresh tank and hopped back onboard to head to a site called Pinnacles, which are three pinnacles sticking up from the floor, about 75 meters apart. I jumped in the water, eager to find more COTS, but not having paid much attention to the briefing. I immediately saw noticeable scarring and got to looking for the notorious COTS. During this time, Paul had swum off with the guests and I hadn’t noticed which direction he went. Because you can’t quite see the other 2 pinnacles from the first one, I decided to play it safe and spent the whole dive on the first pinnacle, scouring for COTS. At least it was thoroughly examined! I surfaced after about 30 minutes of swimming in circles around the same pinnacle, feeling a bit silly. Back at the dive shop I took all my COT victims up to the burial grounds, where they were measured and put to rest. After the usual afternoon game of volleyball and then dinner, I headed out with the guests doing the night snorkel. This time I equipped myself with a gaff and a burlap bag to try and grab a few COTS. Sure enough, I found about 5 or 6 of the spikey devils on the reef top, which I freedove down to grab off the coral. Slowly but surely I was going to clean the house reef of all these nuisances!

 

After the usual morning meeting, I set to watering the mangroves (my new, self-appointed ritual for the morning), and then got my gear set up for a dive. Dan asked me to help him clean the coral tables at Sunrise Reef, which I gladly agreed to. Barefoot Manta has 4 large coral tables in the sand off the house reef, which need to be regularly scrubbed to keep the algae from smothering the growing coral. We spent upwards of an hour cleaning the grids and corals of algae, plus tidying the tables that had been knocked around during some recent storm activity. For the afternoon I spent almost 2 hours on Sunrise Reef, scanning for more COTS. I found another 10 or so which I bagged and brought back up to the dive shop. I was the first marine conservation volunteer Barefoot Manta had since Christmas, and I was eager to help the shop get back on track with their COT eradication efforts – in just 3 days I’d collected just over 30 COTS! With 2 guests scheduled to do a night snorkel, I had one more chance to collect COTS for the day, which I gladly took. I found a couple more out and about (COTS are nocturnal and come out of the crevices at night to feed, making it easier to spot them, but trickier to gather them because you really have to be careful when you pull them off the reef with limited light).

Saturday morning I had another chance to go out on a dive boat with guests, taking a gaff and bag once again to search for COTS on one of the popular dive sites. Luckily, I didn’t see any the whole dive, which is always encouraging. It’s great to know that COTS aren’t ravishing the dive sites. It does feel weird to come up from a dive with an empty burlap bag, though, and I get worried that maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough! For the afternoon, I’d be planting soft corals with Heather and Lai off Sunrise Beach, which I was looking forward to. I love soft corals and they’re much easier to tie to the concrete base than hard corals. We grabbed all the supplies needed (gloves, zipties, cutters, concrete bases, tooth brushes, and scrub brushes) and headed out to the coral table. Heather swam ahead, finding soft corals on the natural reef that she’d cut small sections off and hand to Laid, who’d tied them to the base, then hand the base to me. I ended up swimming around carrying 10+ bases with small soft corals, which became an interesting balancing act. After all the bases had a coral, we went to the coral table and set to work attaching the bases to the grid, using zipties to keep them securely in place. After we had secured all 15 bases, Lai and Heather headed back to the shop and I stayed under a little while longer to search for COTS on an area of sunrise reef I hadn’t investigated before. I found just 2 or 3, which was good, before heading back to the dive shop. I ended up having a 2 hour dive and was shivering from cold. I quickly measured and buried the COTS before heading over for afternoon volleyball.

After a fantastic (albeit quick) trip to Barefoot Kuata and the first few days at Barefoot Manta, I knew I’d made the right choice to come back. I felt so at home at Barefoot Manta and was stoked to be back helping out with their conservation projects. My first few days were full of fun and I was looking forward to what my next few days had in store!