Marine Life To Take Your Breath Away
The fish life at Namena is plentiful and extremely diverse, including large predatorsf – white tip reef sharks, jacks and double-lined mackerels.
There are high and very diverse pelagic populations in this area. At the pass, we observed schools of scalloped and great hammerhead sharks, plenty grey reef sharks and white-tip reef sharks, many dogtooth tuna and Spanish mackerel, extremely large schools of big eye trevally, blue jacks and schools of barracudas.
Namena also provides a healthy grouper population. On a dive in the pass of the outer barrier reef we would on average see at least ten groupers. We observed different size classes of groupers, even the bigger individuals that aren’t normally observed when spear fishing is practiced in the area. The shallow inside barrier reef has a high diversity of small reef fish. The fringing reef of the island is also high in diversity in smaller reef fish. During observational dives on the bommies and pinnacles of the western barrier reef we were covered in beautiful clouds of Anthias.
The efforts to preserve intact fish populations at Namena are paying off, providing spectacular underwater scenes of large and multiple schools of fish. Even without having explored all of Fiji’s reefs, it is clear that Namena and its reef system are worth protecting.
The Namena Marine Reserve is home to more than 1,000 species of invertebrates, 400 known corals, 445 documented marine plants and over 1,100 fish species
Namena is a migratory pathway for cetaceans; you may encounter species such as bottlenose and spinner dolphins, or pilot, minke, sperm, and humpback whales.
Four of the world’s seven sea turtle species can be found in Fiji, and both green and hawksbill sea turtles regularly nest on Namena’s beaches.