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The South Pacific nation of Vanuatu has had a very rough time of late. Devasted by a series of cyclones and more recently by a massive earthquake, the country also suffered the loss of its national airline. These events have heavily impacted the nation’s tourism industry, especially its diving. However, on a recent trip to Vanuatu I was more interested to see how these natural disasters have impacted the dives sites off Port Vila?

Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu, was the first overseas dive destination I ever visited, way back in 1989. Over two days of diving I explored lovely coral reefs and a scuttled ship, and was very impressed by the sites I dived, seeing pretty corals and an abundance of fishes and invertebrates.

I had hoped to return to explore more of the dive sites around Port Vila, but that didn’t happen until I organised to take a photography group trip there in May 2024. We were all looking forward to this trip, but two weeks before departure Air Vanuatu collapsed and we couldn’t go. We rescheduled the trip for May 2025. Then in December 2024, Port Vila was devasted by a massive earthquake that destroyed and damaged many buildings throughout the city, including the motel we were booked to stay in.

It was starting to feel like this trip was cursed, so it was a great relief when we finally arrived in Port Vila in May. The drive from the airport to our motel was eye opening, with many gutted buildings, piles of rubble and buildings with cracks. The cleanup and rebuilding after the quake looks like it will take many years. Fortunately, our new motel, the Ramada, was designed to withstand earthquakes and had no visible damage.

For the next five days we planned to dive a wide variety of dive sites with Big Blue Vanuatu, owned and operated by Joshua Ernst. I was keen to revisit sites I had dived before to see how they had withstood the cyclones and earthquake and also visit many new sites.

There are over 20 dive sites to explore around Port Vila in the immense Mele Bay, with them grouped as the northern sites and the southern sites. Speaking to Joshua he explained that few of the sites show damage from the earthquake, but many of the southern sites had damage from the cyclones, with broken hard corals.

Big Blue Vanuatu are located on the waterfront overlooking the harbour, and it was great to see that the harbour waters are still clear with corals and reef fish under the jetty. With nine in our group, we were split onto two dive boats and well looked after by our local crew and dive guides – David, Tom, Cathy and Shannon. Each day we did a double dive in the morning, then came back for lunch, before heading out for an afternoon dive.

‍IMAGE BELOW - KONANDA WRECK

Southern Dive Sites

The southern sites we explored close to the harbour had the worse cyclone damage and visibility, due to dredging in the harbour. Iririka Cove, used to have lovely coral gardens, but most of the hard coral was smashed by the cyclone. It is still a good spot for fish and invertebrates, and we saw tobies, angelfish, tangs, nudies, rockcods and even a sea snake.

Yankee Juliette is an interesting site with sand, rocky reefs and parts of a plane wreck. In the 10m visibility we saw crocodilefish, octopus, garden eels, parrotfish, anemonefish, pipefish and the plane wings. We missed the stingrays and seahorses that are often seen at this site.

The Konanda was a 45m long island trader that was scuttled as a dive site in 1987. When I dived it in 1989 it was an amazing dive with lots of resident fish in clear water. The wreck is still great fun to explore, but with only 6m visibility, due to the dredging, it was not a good wide-angle subject. We had hoped to dive several other wrecks in the harbour area, like the Star of Russia and the Tasman Seaplane, but with the poor visibility we decided to give them a miss.

The further we got from the harbour the better the visibility and corals. Konanda Reef has coral gardens with small bommies, gutters and ledges to explore, and with 15m visibility. We saw prolific fish life, including pipefish, giant morays, fusiliers, parrotfish, goatfish, wrasse and blennies. A feature of all the reefs we dived were the pygmy angelfish, including lemonpeel, pearlscale, bicolor, keyhole, coral beauty and midnight angelfish.

Twin Bommies was a repeat spot for me, and while the corals were not a good as my last visit, the fish life was excellent. This site is dominated by two large bommies that are riddled with ledges and crevices swarming with soldierfish, squirrelfish, cardinalfish, sweepers and many other species. At this site were also found snappers, sweetlips, fusiliers, lionfish, parrotfish, rabbitfish, rockcods, pufferfish and a sleeping whitetip reef shark.

Pillar 25 was a great spot for small fish and invertebrates, including a leaf scorpionfish. With many of these reefs having a limestone base, we did see a few cracks at this site that were possibly caused by the earthquake.

Kate’s Corner was another wonderful spot for nudies and small reef fish. However, the highlight was seeing a dugong on the surface only 30m from the boat before our dive. Dugongs are often seen in this area, and the week before our trip, one had done somersaults in front of some very lucky divers.

IMAGE BELOW - MATING NUDIBRANCHS

Big Blue Vanuatu’s premier dive site is the Cathedral, which sits at the south-western tip of Mele Bay facing the open ocean. We did two dives at this remarkable site, enjoying 30m visibility as we explored this enormous cave that cuts into the reef wall. The walls of this cave are carved with many small ledges and lined with sponges and pretty hydrocorals. While it would be a great spot for wide-angle photography, I went with macro as the site also has a great variety of reef fish and invertebrates.

Exploring the Cathedral, we found rare Naia pipefish and possum wrasse, species I had never seen before, plus a good variety of nudies, shrimps, crabs and pygmy angelfish. We also found an Oceania fantail ray, a green turtle and lovely hard corals decorating the walls outside the cave.

‍IMAGE BELOW - POSSUM WRASSE

Northern Dive Sites

The northern end of Mele Bay is more sheltered and most of the dive sites in this area were not impacted by the cyclone or the earthquake. With these sites a little further away they are usually done as a double dive in the morning.

Kathleen Reef was the first dive site we explored in the area, and it was so nice that we came back for a second look. This ridge reef rises from 30m to 12m, and is covered in lovely hard and soft corals. With 15m visibility we marvelled at the corals and the fishes, which included schools of trevally, barracuda, rabbitfish, fusiliers and snappers. Smaller reef fish were also abundant including angelfish, wrasse, damsels, butterflyfish, goatfish and anemonefish. We also enjoyed spending some time with two broadclub cuttlefish as they changed colour and texture.

One special fish I hoped to see in this part of Mele Bay was the rare Watanabe angelfish. Growing to 15cm long, this medium sized angelfish is found in a few spots in the Indo-Pacific, however, is rarely sighted. They are a member of the swallowtail angelfish clan, which unlike other angelfish they feed on plankton and have different colours for the male and female. I looked for them at several dive sites and fortunately found a male and two females at Kathleen Reef. They are easily overlooked as they zip up and down the reef and in midwater with the damsels and look very similar to a damselfish.

‍IMAGE BELOW - WATANABE ANGELFISH

Westside was another lovely reef covered in beautiful hard corals. The variety and abundance of reef fish at this site was astonishing, so was great for a fish nerd like me. I photographed angelfish, butterflyfish, triggerfish, wrasse, rockcods, morays, hawkfish, blennies, pigfish and many more. Nearby Anchor Reef was also blessed with wonderful corals and fishes, but showed more cyclone damage with a patch of smashed staghorn corals. The corals and fishes in this area were just as good as I remembered them to be.

Overall, most of the damage we saw on the reefs we explored was due to cyclone damage and it will fortunately regrow over time. Our photography group had a great time in Port Vila, shooting a wide variety of subjects and even getting involved in the annual sea slug census.

When planning your next dive holiday, don’t avoid Port Vila as the city rebuilds. Port Vila is open for business and needs divers to support the local economy and the wonderful and friendly Ni-Vanuatu people.