Nivelosa Hekau is Niue’s first home-trained Padi Divemaster. Photo / Supplied
Introducing Nivelosa Hekau; believed to be the first Niuean woman to complete all of her scuba diving training on the island, reaching the level of Padi Divemaster, writes Terry Ward.
Each year, between roughly July and September, visitors descend on the 260sq km atoll of Niue for close-up encounters with humpback whales – gasping at the sight of their breaches from the terrace at the island’s only hotel, Scenic Matavai Resort, and entering the water to snorkel with them, too.
But until a few years ago, Niuean native Nivelosa Hekau admits she considered the cetaceans that come here every year from Antarctica to mate, calve and frolic – sometimes quite noisily, with their loud blows and fluking – somewhat of a nuisance.
Despite knowing that tourists arrived excitedly each year to see the whales during their migration, “I’d always just disregarded them,” says the 19-year-old. Growing up in Niue’s compact capital, Alofi, she says, the sounds of the whales would sometimes even annoy her when they kept her up at night.
All that began to change in 2021 when Hekau, with her twin sister, Nava, both 14 years old at the time, first got to try scuba diving.
One of seven children (Hekau, whose nickname is Nive, likes to say she’s the second-oldest of the five girls and two boys in her family, since her twin sister beat her Earthside by four minutes), the teenager was no stranger to Niue’s crystal-clear waters, known for their abundant hard corals and prolific fish life.
From the age of 8, she and her twin learned to hunt for reef fish like surgeon fish and Achilles tangs on Niue’s reef while spearfishing with their father, who worked as a school teacher. They’d swim out from the wharf in Alofi, and Hekau recalls how quickly the water grew dizzyingly deep. How daunting it all felt at first.
“I remember everything just being out of my control, out of reach. I remember being quite scared. I just wanted to go home,” she says.
But she soon grew more comfortable.
“I guess the confidence came from me being near my dad and my sister at the time. And then, over time, I just became quite confident in the water,” she remembers.
The fish they speared, crops like taro, cassava and bananas from land the family owned and pigeon, bats and coconut crabs they hunted around Niue were the main sources of food for her family, says Nive. And the time together in the ocean supported them in other ways, too.
“It was some form of activity, family bonding time, and just pretty much pleasure out on the water together as well,” she says.
In 2021, says Hekau, when she and her twin sister were 14 years old, they were selected among a group of high school students known for their ease in the ocean to take part in a discovery course for scuba diving supported by local non-profit organisation NOW (Niue Ocean Wide).
It was the twins’ first time going out on a boat from their island.
“I remember being quite excited at actually breathing under the water. And I was comfortable because I was doing it alongside my twin,” says Hekau.
She was used to freediving, so wearing the scuba diving gear at first felt constricting. Once she was underwater at the dive site dubbed Coral Nursery, she says, it took some time to get used to the feeling of her air bubbles washing across her face. But soon Hekau was in the flow.
“I remember seeing how alive everything was. Seeing all the fish up close was a game-changer,” she says.
In 2022, the twins got another opportunity to experience their island and its waters in a new-to-them way when charity organisation, Daughters of the Deep, which seeks to empower women with a passion for the ocean to pursue careers in the marine industry, selected them with a few others to take part in the first “Whale Guide Initiative”.
The goal of the programme was to get Niuean girls comfortable with a mask and snorkel as well as teach them about the humpback whales and the kind of citizen science research they could participate in on the island says, Roxy Damseaux, Niue’s ambassador for Daughters of the Deep, who heads up the whale programme as well as others.
After that, it was into the water to snorkel for Hekau’s first time seeing the leviathans in their element.
“It was actually a bit scary because they’re these big creatures out in the water,” she says, remembering her first lucky encounter with a mother and its calf. When she got home later that day, it dawned on Hekau what she had experienced.
“I thought, ‘Holy Moly’ I actually just did that. Just seeing it from a different perspective really made me realise, wow, actually, I am very fortunate enough to have this on my shores,” she says. Still, she hadn’t considered that being in the water with marine life could be more than a hobby.
During the Whale Guide Initiative, Damseaux introduced her and the other participants to ocean-related career paths they could potentially pursue in the future, and Hekau says it was like a small seed was planted in her head.
“I realised I didn’t have to sit in a lab doing research, I could actually do fieldwork … I think there was another door that opened up for me. It made me realise that, oh, wow, there’s actually more to things than what a lot of people here say,” she says.
The following year, in 2023, Hekau took another discover scuba course with Daughters of the Deep and Damseaux. And during her senior year in high school in 2024, NOW and Niue Blue dive shop sponsored her to complete her Padi (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) Open Water Diver certification.
Hekau was also awarded the island’s prestigious Niue High School Dux Scholarship her senior year of high school. But instead of heading off to university straight away, she opted to take a gap year.
When Niue Blue offered her a paid internship to work at the dive shop while also completing her Padi Divemaster course, she leapt at it. Her sister, who’d had a baby, was no longer diving with her. And Hekau says it was challenging to continue the course without her.
“I’ve always done stuff alongside my twin sister. I’ve always had that moral support with me. So for me to actually do this on my own, I think that was the biggest challenge,” she says.
When she received the email with her certification as a Padi Divemaster earlier this year, Hekau says she had the biggest smile on her face.
“This is what it feels like to actually accomplish something big,” she says.
She’s thought to be the first Niuean woman ever to have completed her Padi Divemaster course entirely in the island’s waters. “I’ve never been diving anywhere else,” she says.
For now, Hekau is working part time for Niue Blue and hoping to start university in New Zealand later this year. She plans to pursue a bachelor of science in marine conservation, biology or marine science.
Daughters of the Deep continues to offer ocean opportunities to Niue’s young women.
To girls like her who might be wondering what the wide world of the ocean or dry land holds for them, Hekau has this to say: “Don’t be afraid to take the challenge, experiencing everything new. Because eventually every lesson along the way, everything you learned along the way, will become like a lesson for you in the future.”
And as for those whales that once kept her from getting a decent night’s sleep?
“Now I understand why people pay so much just to come and swim with them,” she says.