Beqa Lagoon is the world renowned home of the Shark Dive, and all three dive centres in this area offer phenomenal shark diving experiences. Choose from shark dives at BAD’s The Arena, and Aquatrek’s The Bistro from a choice of hotels in Pacific Harbour, and The Cathedral with Beqa Lagoon Resort.
Have a look on earth view in Google maps, and you’ll see just how big the reef around the lagoon is. Its 144 km of coral reef is formed around the crater of an extinct volcano. There are about 30 odd dive sites found all along the reef, and some in the middle of the lagoon – including a wreck – all within an easy boat trip from the resorts – each of which have their own jetties adjacent the resort.
The Beqa Lagoon dive sites, including Aqua-Trek’s Bistro shark dive can also be dived based on the southern Coral Coast at Waidroka Bay Resort.
You will find everything from carpets of anemones, to clusters of coral heads, walls to wrecks, and a few hundred species of fish from tiger sharks to clown triggers. Many divers come for the unique Shark Dive experience, but you’d be crazy to book for anything less than a week if you want to do justice to the diverse dive sites on offer.
Pacific Harbour is also base camp for many of the country’s most exciting activities, including white-water rafting through a breathtaking gorge, world-class surfing, and idyllic waterfall tours.
Pacific Harbour is the township on the south coast of Viti Levu, about a 2½ hour scenic drive on the Queens Highway from Nadi, and about 30 minutes from Suva. Both AquaTrek and Beqa Adventure Divers operate from Pacific Harbour. The Resorts on Beqa Island in Beqa Lagoon are reached by their own transfer boats – which only run during daylight hours.
Getting There
Nadi is the international airport on Fiji, and Pacific Harbour is about a 2½ hour scenic drive on the Queens Highway along the southern coast of Viti Levu. Though Suva is only about a 30 minute drive away, at the time of writing, the domestic connection does not work out much better than a road transfer from Nadi.
The Beqa Lagoon Resort and the Lalati Resort & Spa are a 30 minute boat ride across the lagoon from Pacific Harbour, and as the Beqa Lagoon reef practically abuts the mainland’s Rovodrau Bay reef, the transfer is pretty smooth. Check with the resorts, the transfer can be included as part of a package but tends not to run ‘after hours’.
Aquatrek Beqa
Aqua-Trek Beqa is a PADI Dive Centre located in the grounds of The Pearl Resort, a hip new waterfront property. Aqua-Trek provides dive services to guests staying at any of the local hotels and resorts on the main island of Viti Levu. Daily dives to Beqa Lagoon are offered as well as a full spectrum of PADI courses from Discover Scuba up to the Divemaster level.
There are more than 20 excellent dive sites within a short boat ride from Pacific Harbour, including Aqua-Trek’s shark dive ‘The Bistro‘, and their 33-foot custom-built dive vessel will carry you to them in comfort and style. Aqua-Sport is one of the fastest vessels in the area. That means less time traveling and more time relaxing and having fun!
Beqa Adventure Divers (‘BAD’)
Beqa Adventure Divers is a PADI Dive resort offering some of the best shark diving the world has to offer. Their modern dive centre, located at Lagoon Resort in Pacific Harbour, fuses Fijian hospitality with world class diving facilities. The incredible shark diving at BAD’s shark dive ‘The Arena‘, and reef and wreck dive sites of Beqa Lagoon are but a short boat ride from their jetty.
Beqa Lagoon Resort
Beqa Lagoon Resort has its own private Shark Dive known as ‘The Cathedral’, a dive that teases you with huge groupers, bait balls of massive Trevally, and the chance of being up close and personal with nine different species of sharks.
Beqa Lagoon Resort is a PADI 5 Star Resort offering everything from entry level Discover Scuba Diving right up to professional courses such as PADI Assistant Instructor. They also offer PADI specialty courses such as Enriched Air Nitrox, so that after a day’s training you’ll be able to take advantage of the Nitrox available on any dive. You can read more about them via the link below.
The shark diving in Beqa Lagoon is among Fiji’s most renowned marine experience. Silvertips, grey reef, whitetip reef, blacktip reef, sicklefin lemons, and tawny nurse sharks, as well as large bull and occasional tiger sharks, come to feed on the fish bait provided at a depth of 25 to 30m on the reef ledge while divers observe from a safe distance. The sites in Beqa are long established and very well managed. Points to note: because of the depth, all divers must be certified, and the shark dives don’t happen every day – but that’s not a problem as there are dozens of other great dive sites available around the Lagoon.
There’s excellent wreck-diving at four purpose-sunk Taiwanese trawlers, each roughly 33m long. The first was sunk in the late-1990s. The wrecks are home to schools of barracuda, pipefish, a giant camouflaging frogfish, stonefish, lionfish, leaf scorpion fish, and moray eels.
Soft coral dives take place at more than 20 sites around Pacific Harbour. Highlights here include large pinnacle clusters, which give divers the impression of walking between buildings, and the rare blue ribbon eel.
