29-04-2025
The big blue: Finding happiness deep in the Pacific
Growing up in Fiji, a nation spanning hundreds of Pacific islands, means growing up with the call of the ocean in your blood — even when you're far from the sea. Free diver Neelam Ratan spent her childhood on a sugarcane farm, swimming in rivers, but her first experience of snorkelling was transformative. 'I was 14 years old and I went with a couple of my friends,' she recalls. 'It was so beautiful. It was perfect. It was like coming home.' Surfers know Fiji for world-class waves such as Cloudbreak, but there's magic below the surface, too – from watching cleaner fish grooming giant manta rays to the thrill of scuba diving with bull sharks.
Marine conservationist Jone Waitati spent seven years teaching diving in the cold, dark lakes, rivers and quarries around Frankfurt, Germany. When he returned home and dove into the ocean, he wept. 'It was so beautiful, such vibrant colours, I was crying underwater,' he says. 'All these creatures like dolphins, manta rays, whales — you can't see these things on land.'
On a single breath of air….
Ratan, whose ancestors arrived in Fiji from India five generations ago, spent six years travelling the Pacific on a sailboat, scuba diving and modelling for her husband, an underwater photographer. Gradually, she realised that the noise of the bubbles from her tank disturbed marine life. 'The animals actually came closer to me and reacted better to my presence underwater if I didn't have a tank, if I didn't make any noise,' she says.
