Jez Tryner — PNG
Regular FiNS contributor Jez Tryner is off on his travels again. This time he is travelling around PNG where he will be dropping in to see what it currently has to offer.
Part 1: Finally, we’re here! We’ve always wanted to come to Papua New Guinea. Upon arrival we were greeted by our host — owner of Loloata Resort, Dik Knight, who gave us the low-down on the resort and the diving to come.
Loloata is a self-contained resort situated on its own island with comfortable bungalows on stilts that rest above the ocean at high tide, which makes for astounding scenery, and the wondrous experience of falling asleep to the sound of the lapping waves under your hut.
Dik has also imported some local wildlife — wallabies, tree monkeys and cus cus are but a few of the cuties wandering around the resort. If you don’t know what any of these creatures are, don’t worry, neither did we until we got here. Trust me, they are cute!
One of the things I was most keen to see underwater here is the infamous Rhinopias, the Lacy scorpionfish. The dive guide took us straight to not one but two different colours of the scorpionfish! I was ecstatic. They just sat there on the wall begging to be photographed!
Moving on we encountered some beautiful purple fire gobies, the rarely seen cousin of the red fire goby, followed by a leaf scorpionfish, various nudibranchs and a huge, amazingly tame school of sweetlips sitting on the top of a bommie.
Not bad for a first dive, and we still have the whole week left!
Part 2: After a great time with Dik Knight and the guys at Loloata, we jumped on a plane in the middle of the night and headed north over the mountains, and landed an hour later in Madang.
We are now staying at the Jais Aben resort, diving with Lesley and Tim Rowlands at Aquaventures PNG.
Built along the edges of the shore of a naturally made lagoon created by submerged fringing reefs, the beautiful resort of Jais Aben — which means “a place to rest” — blends into its natural surroundings with apparent ease. Situated among the coconut trees, the wooden huts along the water’s edge afford splendid vistas of the islands and reefs of the lagoon.
Aquaventures PNG is a small and super friendly outfit that knows this place inside out. When we arrived we couldn’t wait for the morning dive and jumped straight in on their excellent house reef — literally only ten metres from the dive shop door! We dropped down and straight into a large school of razor fish pretending to be corals (fooling no one), and the largest nudibranch I have ever seen. I’m not lying!
Most of the diving is done on or around the fringing reefs of the “lagoon”. The underwater reef that creates this amazing phenomenon has breaks along its length that creates sections of superb wall/ drift diving in the channels where masses of schooling fish gather in the incoming currents and swirl around divers in their search for food. At one point we were so encompassed by barracuda we couldn’t see anything beyond them.
But this is not all, the whole area is littered with wrecks including the famous B25 bomber that sits at 20 metres and has macro critters literally crawling around it. Pygmy seahorses, ghost pipefish and a reported 400 different types of nudis are all there for your viewing pleasure.
Anyhow — must dash, more diving to do, catch you later!
Part 3: Following our week at the exotic Jais Aben resort and Aquaventures PNG in Madang, we decided to move to another area of PNG entirely — New Ireland.
Four quick puddle jump flights later, we were coming in to land over Kavieng. Having already seen the colour of the water from the plane, we were very excited about diving in New Ireland.
We were met by the resort manager, a friendly Ozzie named Peter, who gave us all the stats about our destination. After a five minute car ride and 30 minute boat ride, we were at the beautiful tropical island of Lissenung.
Lissenung Island Resort is set up on its own tiny island off the mainland of New Ireland. Beautiful local style bungalows are spread around the island, equally spaced to allow the maximum of privacy and comfort.
Peter offered us an afternoon dive and even though the weather wasn’t co-operating, we gladly accepted. We dived at Albatross channel, which is supposed to be one of the premier sites here — and having dived it, I have to agree.
Dropping in on the channel formed by two adjacent islands, we were lucky to encounter the incoming tide and the schools of fish and sharks that came with it. Grey reef sharks circled off the wall among scattered schools of sweetlips and snapper. A huge school of large black fin barracuda drifted in on the current and hung at the entrance to the channel. Schools of batfish, jacks and snappers followed.
This was one great dive and we hope to do it again at least twice more this week. Oh, and did I mention visibility was over 40 metres?
Until later.
Part 4: Yesterday we travelled about 20 minutes by boat from the peaceful island resort of Lissenung to the more traditional-style accommodation of Nusa island retreat.
Styled as a surf camp, it welcomes divers and surfers with open arms and a fully stocked bar. Personal service, super friendly Ozzie surfer clientele — not to mention being situated in a beautiful calm lagoon — gives this place a fantastically easy going, laid back atmosphere.
Arriving in the afternoon we were met by Cara, one half of the South African couple who own Scuba Ventures Kavieng, our diving hosts for the week. She sat us down, gave us a beer and asked us where we wanted to go. I could definitely get used to this.
We had heard good things about the world famous Der Yang wreck. First thing that morning we headed out on the company’s super fast speedboat over the calm waters of the lagoon to visit the wreck. At the bottom, 30 metres off the edge of a fringing reef, we finally found a wreck in good visibility. Actually, make that astounding visibility!
Descending the mooring line, we saw the whole wreck laid out, its huge school of resident barracuda and equally large school of jacks swirling around the superstructure. They didn’t seem much in the mood for a photo call though, so as time was a factor we got on with exploring the wreck itself. It’s a wide-angle photographer’s dream — encrusted with masses of soft corals and surrounded by red whip corals, all in clear water.
We plan to go back tomorrow and dive on Nitrox. Can’t wait!
Part 5: After our stay at the amazingly social Nusa island retreat and the superb diving that Scuba Ventures Kavieng offered us, we’ve done yet another quick puddle jump, courtesy of our friends at Air Niugini, and landed in Kimbe Bay in New Britain.
Hosting us this week is the very professional and long-established Walindi Plantation Resort. We checked into our beautiful beachside room and met dive manager Jon in the bar for the low down on what we could expect this week. Realising we had met before, he mentioned something about sharks the next day but I didn’t pay too much attention, maybe I should have done!
Nothing could have prepared me for this morning’s dive. Talk about adrenalin pumping! It was absolutely fantastic! Here’s how it goes. The inventive guys at Walindi do a shark bait dive (not feeding but baiting), and it’s excellent. Rather than feeding the sharks and creating a frenzy, the clever guys at Walindi have filled a large, “too big to bite” plastic container with holes in it. It contains all the tasty bits of the fish we all love — you know, the guts and slimy bits!
The result is that the sharks just cruise around you in a totally non-threatening way, trying to work out where that delicious smell is coming from! This enables you to get up close and personal with the ocean’s top predator.
I say non-threatening, but when it comes down to it, it is still a large shark (well, actually, lots of large sharks) and they are everywhere. It’s hard not to feel overwhelmed. There are also many schools of fish attracted to the smell, such as barracudas, jacks and loads of snappers.
Not a bad start for our stay here. I wonder what they’ll do next to beat that?