Dive Kadavu

Eagle Rock

Eagle Rock represents all the very best that the Great Astrolabe Reef has to offer - rock pinnacles, fast water passages, abundant and healthy hard corals, and fish life from pelagics and rays to swarms of colourful reef minnows.

Timing your entry into this dive site is key to an eventful and safe scuba ride. Starting from the calm shallows inside the barrier reef, your boat captain will take you out into the narrow Nacomoto Passage entrance, 1 of 5 gaps that punctuate the length of the Great Astrolabe Reef. Through these gaps rush the incoming and outgoing tides that wash Kadavu. It's important that you arrive at or just before an outgoing slack tide, otherwise the large surface swells will tell you that the currents are too strong to brave.

Once in, you dive down to the sunken boulder pinnacle at the mouth of the channel. Often on the surface of this huge boulder at 12 metres, you can shelter on the lee side and watch spotted eagle rays fly past. Few hard corals are resilient enough to resist the currents here, but large beige knobbly leather corals cover the rocks and passage walls. Large red snappers congregate in the mid waters.

Once into the channel proper, the visibility clears and you'll finding yourself drifting through the mouth over a rugged rocky bed. Here, grey reef sharks shoot past, the more adventurous coming closer for a better look.

It's at this point in the dive that the true beauty of the Great Astrolabe can be seen. The coral growth in the outer edge of the reef is phenomenal. It's unlikely that you will have ever seen a more colourful and vibrant assemblage of hard corals than the spectrum on display here. Pale blue branching acrapora, mustard green lettuce leaf corals, violet warty finger corals, pale grey sheet corals, brown table corals, lime bottlebrush corals, many of which will be as large examples of each species as you are likely to have seen before.

As the surf breaks over head, you'll rock backward and forth over the reef, marvelling at the fish life that compliment this site. Bicolour butterflyfish slip through the coral branches on which freckled hawkfish perch themselves, watching the world go by. Napoleon wrasse pull up for an inquisitive look at this strange bubble-blowing newcomer in their town. Bright yellow sunset wrasse flit by, adding yet more colour to the seemingly endless palette.

A superbly varied Kadavu dive site with so many features to hold your attention that you're sure to be starting your ascent long before you are ready to leave. All barrier reef dives should be like this one.

Eagle Rock Reef Basics: Passage and fringing reef
Depth: 5 - 30m
Visibility: 15 - 30m
Currents: Can be very strong
Surface conditions: Can be choppy
Water temperature: 24 - 30°C
Experience level: Intermediate - advanced
Number of dive sites: 1
Diving season: All year round
Distance: South coast, 8 km east from Vunisea
Access: Kadavu dive resorts

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