Blog: Angelfish

Mucking about in Papua New Guinea - trying to load some photos

Milne Bay province is situated between the Coral Sea and the Solomon Sea and includes the Eastern and Western d’Entrecasteaux regions. It includes a series islands, which are remote, mountainous (some volcanic), densely covered in lush, green forest, largely shrouded in low cloud and brooding (I fully expected King Kong to pop out from behind one of the island peaks at each new spot). The area is well known for its concentration of “small stuff�. Fans of “big stuff� should consider Kavieng further north – although Paul, the Chief Engineer on the Paradise Sport told me that even here over-fishing has reduced the sightings of interesting sharks and large pelagics. Kimbe is another area further North which is worth exploring (and which we will no doubt return to another time.)

The climate in this part of PNG is not the same as the rest of the country. November to January has most consistent weather, March to June is the least windy, but in the east rain storms can be heavy and unpredictable. We went between mid March and early April. This is the end of the season for the Mike Ball boat, which was travelling up to Kimbe for a couple of months immediately and then on to Kavieng for a further season.

During our ten day trip, the weather was fair – average air temperature of 30° (Celsius) and water temperature was similar, except on one occasion when it plummeted to 26°c (somebody told me this is 78°Fahrenheit to save you working this out). There were occasional tropical rain “showers� – that is torrential downpours that completely obliterated views of the neighbouring islands about 2 miles away. Visibility underwater was equally variable, being anything between 10m and 25m.

The underwater topology was spectacular. The reefs are unpolluted, remote and therefore not over-dived comprising: classic tropical reefs – bommies, walls, pinnacles, cascading coral gardens, hard coral sculptures, soft corals, giant barrel sponges, sometimes dramatic formations, but muck diving sites were usually flat and sandy – the underwater equivalent of a Zen garden (and you know how interesting they are at first sight). We had a few drift dives but largely the conditions were very calm – except on one occasion at the end of a relatively quiet dive, when the current was so strong it forced the decompression bar (usually at 5m) to the surface, with half a dozen us hanging on it like flags and trying to haul ourselves back in. That wasn’t much of a safety stop.

Fishlife – pigmy sea horses ( so small and well camouflaged that we can’t now find them on the photos), hairy ghost pipe fish, giant clams, mantis shrimps, saw a couple of crown of thorns starfish, a wide range nudibranchs, some small sharks (including woebegone shark), octopus, cuttlefish, lionfish, crocodile fish. We were regularly threatened with a hammerhead shark, but it never turned up whilst we were looking for “it�. We also had four dives at a manta cleaning station and only one turned up on the last “sit in�. So, no big stuff on this occasion.

Wrecks – the main attraction is a B17 “Blackjack� at 50m at Boga Boga village (an alternative for those not wishing to dive deep is the wall at the same site, which is a very pretty dive). The wreck dive is organised so that those who wish to undertake deco- or no-deco dives can go in separate groups. Access is via a line to facilitate a fast descent as the descent and bottom time for the deco dive is only 10 minutes. The wreck is largely intact with guns in place but it is not advisable to penetrate the wreck as it is quite small and there are many chances to get caught up.

Another wreck is a B38 “Lightning� at 27m – again largely intact but not much coral encrustation. The nearby reef is a breathtakingly beautiful coral landscape.

Muck diving – as I said the underwater equivalent to a Zen garden. At times incredibly boring (gravel watching, mud bathing and largely shallow – got a max depth of 4.5m on one occasion). Sometimes would we be delighted to find some tiny but unusual creatures – such as the leaf fish – that looks like a dried up old leaf flapping around, or a tiny but perfectly formed snail burying itself in the mud. Care must be taken not to fin too hard as it is very easy to kick up the sea bed and then nobody sees anything. We all had mixed feelings about these dives, sometimes they were fascinating and sometimes I wondered whether I really wanted to spend an hour watching gravel.

The boat was probably the best live-aboard we have been on (and we’ve had a few strange experiences with live-aboards). We booked a premium cabin and enjoyed plenty of space and a palatial ensuite bathroom. The standard cabins with twin beds were fine but the smallest cabins were truly bijoux and with a shared head (well shared between two cabins). The service was excellent with linen changed every couple of days, chocolates left on our pillows. The food was wonderful with a good range and certainly plenty to go round. The dive deck was spacious with a large camera table, fresh water shower, head, clean towels, rinse buckets – everything you expect. Entry was sometimes directly from the boat and sometimes from an inflatable. On drift dives they were very skilled at spotting us and coming to collect us – we were equipped with safety sausages but didn’t need to deploy them. The dive staff/guides excellent, very safety conscious, they knew how to find the tiny creatures and were happy to point these out, but were not obtrusive when we didn’t need them. We largely dived on our own in our buddy pairs.

The sites are quite remote and it was recommended that we all have emergency evacuation insurance that would permit our transportation to the recompression chamber in Port Moresby in the event of an accident. If you didn’t come equipped with this, you could sign up for it on the boat.

We were very lucky to visit some of the island villages and meet local people. As there are about 800 languages through PNG standard English is taught, but people also speak
Tok Pisin (the original pidgin English). The villages are very poor but the people are reasonably well fed and happy to see you. In the towns – well Port Moresby has a very poor reputation and as western tourists we appear to be very wealthy and are a target for some serious crime. Of course not everybody has a bad experience but there have been shootings and kidnappings.

We flew to Cairns and from there to Port Moresby then Alotau, but I think there is a flight from Singapore to Port Moresby. Many of the guests from the US took over 40 hours travelling time to get to PNG. We stayed for a few days in Cairns on either side of the trip (we were just behind the cyclone that hit Queensland and flattened Innisfail about 100 miles down the coast).

Resources

The Mike Ball live-aboards are in great demand and you might have to book about a year in advance – see www.mikeball.com. .

We also found “Dive Sites of Papua New Guinea� by Bob Halstead a very useful guide to the sites we were visiting.

PS - since our visit in March 2006, Mike Ball has subsequently sold the Paradise Sport. We still recommend the diving in PNG.

by angelfish on 14:17 on 28th May 2007