by Paddy Ryan

photo's by Norman Quinn

 Fiji is different. With so
many small islands the
current systems are
complex. Throw in the
influence of several major
rivers and upwellings from
the Tonga trench and you
have a recipe for
spectacular underwater
ecology.
F1i is arguably the soft
coral capital of the world.
In parts of the Beqa lagoon
soft corals and seafans
predominate. Pick the right
day when the ployps are out
f'eeding and it can be an
overwhelming sight.
Thal's not (o say thal
the hard corals are not
equally brilliant in their
own right. Corals in the
Koro Sea and around the
offshore island of Vatulele
are as good as any in the
world. Dense schools of
f'airy basslets hang off the
drop-off', making forays
into the plankton for a
quick feed. A few metres
further out, schools ofjacks
cruise up and down, and at
the range of vision, likely
as not, there will be a giant
school of barracuda.
Hard corals tend to be
restricted to the top 20
metres. They share their
tissues with tiny algal cells.
These minute plants use the
sunlight to make fbod that
is shared by the coral. No
sunlight, no coral. Evcn
giant clams have tapped
into this wonderJul fiee
energy source. Tiny
crystalline lenses in their
mantle concentrate the
sunlight for their algal
partners.
Search the coral carefully
lbr the smaller denizens.
Christmas tree worms are
immediately obvious with
their showy feeding spirals
but other beasties will not be
so blatant. Sharing the same
Porites coral colony are tiny
hermit crabs. These live in
tubes in the coral, filtering
plankton from the water with
their fine antennae. Deep in
the branching coral are tiny
gobies, crabs and shrimps.
You don't really need to
swim anywhere to enjoy a
Fijian coral reef. Everything
you could wish for is within a
ten-metre radius of you. The
problem is to find it.
Down on the sand a tiny
goby sits at the entrance to its
burrow. Alongside, an
antenna draped over the fish,
is a shrimp. These two live in
a commensal relationship.
The shrimp builds the burrow
fbr the goby, with its superior
eyesight the goby acts as
sentinel for them both.
Threaten them by swimming
too near and they disappear at
high speed into the burrow.
Many sea cucumbers, sea
We'll prepare you for the unexpected.
urchins or starfish have little
shrimps living on them. Mon - Fri 8.30am to 5pm, Sat - 8.30am to noon.
2lThomson Street, Privale Mail Bag, Suva, Fiji. Ph: (679) 301603
Featherstars. also known as Fax: (679) 300304.
crinoids, are positively littered and
with freeloaders. They are Main Street Nadi
Ph: (679) 703110. Fax: (679) 703877
unwilling hosts to fish,
Fif i Magic, April/May 1997 5

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