Wakaya Island Liveaboard Diving

Liveaboard Diving in Wakaya Island

What to expect on a Wakaya Island Liveaboard

Liveaboards to Wakaya island may visit the private island area as part of a multi-stop Fiji dive itinerary. It is a privately owned island by David Gilmour, who bought the island in 1973. It's situated in between Koro Island and Gau Island. The island covers an area of eight square kilometres on which 22 kilometres of road was built, an airstrip, a marina, jetty, village, a freshwater reservoir, a church, gym and school. He has also developed an exclusive resort on the island: the Wakaya Club with 10 luxury bungalows, a large private villa and 4 private beaches. On Wakaya Island live about 300-600 people. It is protected by a coral reef and boasts azure lagoons, majestic cliffs and powder white sand beaches.

Wakaya Island Underwater

Fiji liveaboard cruises explore the reefs around Wakaya Island, which are varied in depth, topography and marine life. On the one hand, at Blue Ridge, underwater photographers can eat their hearts out with all the macro wonders they have ever read about. While on the other hand at Gem Stone and Wakaya Pass all big fish lovers will be delighted. Golden Rock is the place to be for those who wish to dance with manta rays while they are cleaned by cleaner fish at this cleaning station.

Dive Sites of Wakaya Island

Blue Ridge - This is a wall dive where you can start at 10 meters depth and drop down to 30 meters to a slope down into the abyss of the Koro Sea. The wall is covered with many hard and soft corals and you can find many macro wonders. The wall is packed with leaf fish, ribbon eels, fire gobies and dartfish. But don't forget to keep scanning the blue, because you can often be surprised by schools of barracuda, white tips and hammerhead sharks.

Gem Stone - This is a wall dive with swim throughs, located on the outside of Wakaya Passage. You'll see many beautiful hard and soft corals with manta rays visiting along with hammerhead sharks and white tips. There are many light fish here which makes this dive site a great location to do a night dive and enjoy a great lightshow performed by the many light fish.

Golden Rock - This dive site is a cleaning station for manta rays. It's a bommie covered with hard and soft corals, cleaner shrimp, blue ribbon eels, lionfish and ofcourse a huge number of cleaner fish. A cleaning station is a specific section of reef that is home to a number of cleaner fish who literally clean large marine animals such as sharks and rays. They eat the parasites,dead skin, bacteria and mucus off their body surface and gills and from the inside of their mouth. As the manta rays approach, they reduce their speed and hover over the cleaning station almost motionless or they swim around the reef with their mouths slightly open.

Wakaya Pass - is a real treat of a spectacular dive for those who love big fish. The dive starts at a sandy bottom and after a short swim results into a wall dive. You can look down to 43 meters. You can see ribbon eels, white tips, nurse sharks, hammerhead sharks, manta rays, marble rays, turtles, eagle rays and barracudas.

Top tips for divers

As this dive area is packed with all the big fish keep in mind to not scare them away by not wanting to come too close to them, not making any sudden moves, keeping good buoyancy and keeping an eye on your air supply.

Getting to Wakaya Island

Fiji has an international airport in Viti Levu called Nadi International Airport where you can take a domestic flight to Wakaya Island which takes 40 minutes with Air Wakaya.

Air Wakaya transfer service is also available from Nausori Airport. The flight to Wakaya Island takes about 15 minutes.

If choosing a Fiji liveaboard cruise however, then they will usually depart from Suva and visit Wakaya during their cruise itinerary.