At first the barracuda were at the top of the food chain. They were pointing into the current waiting for some small fish to get swept passed into their jaws.
I was under them trying to get a backlit photo.
Then came the danger time. The barracuda – about a thousand of them – started to form a protective circle. They were no longer at to the top of the food chain. There were sharks below.
The barracuda form a circle so that together they get a 360-degree view. If two thousand fish-eye lenses are watching for a shark to attack, the whole group gets the advantage of an earlier warning.
They were so elegant. They were mesmerising.
Again came the danger time. This time for me. No; not the shark. Sharks are too smart to attack two metres of bubble-blowing creature. That presents unknown danger to them. (If only they knew how vulnerable we divers really are!)
No; the danger was being so preoccupied in this deep-blue display of nature that the current might take me either away or down or that I might be concentrating so much on taking pictures that I would forget to check my depth gauge and spend too long, too deep for safety, or worse rise too quickly allowing dangerous nitrogen to bubble in the blood. It is like bubbles in a softdrink bottle forming when the lid is taken off releasing the pressure. Little bubbles can stop blood flowing to precious parts of the lungs, brain and joints and can cause tiny blood vessels to burst.
The water is 30 degrees and as clear as a swimming pool. Hard coral, barrel corals, fan corals, nudibranchs, tiny fish and big fish make up an exquisite diverse garden. Papua New Guinea is a diver’s snorkellers delight. Just get out of Port Moresby and the whole country is a delight. Given the war against terrorism has made everywhere else so much less safe and that PNG is so close, PNG should be higher on Australians’ travel agenda.
You do not have to be a diver. Many people go to the diving resorts to laze around in the tropics far from everything without paying a fortune. Then there’s the Highlands and Sepik River with a huge diversity of culture, costumes and languages.
Here are some possibilities.
Walindi resort near Kimbe on New Britain. Here I watched dive guide Martin Giru pull a coral-eating crown of thorns starfish off the reef wall in about 10 metres of water. He swam about 50 metres from the wall where the water was perhaps 700 metres deep and then he dropped it to its doom in pressure 70 times that on the surface.
Walindi caters for a maximum of 24 guests in bungalows between the beach and the rainforest. Excellent seafood. Regarded as one of the best places for underwater photography in the world and the best for giant soft corals. Researchers from James Cook University were working on how anemone fish colonise a reef.
(Address: Kimbe Bay, West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. Phone: 675-9835441. e-mail: info@Walindi.com)
The Sepik Spirit. The Sepik River and its tributaries form a transport network into the heart of New Guinea. The 30m boat is well-appointed and a fast runabout takes you from it into remote villages. Nearly everyone is in traditional dress made from local plants, though the occasional second-hand T-shirt gets through. The carvings are the highlight. The carvings are ceremonial, decorative, to scare spirits and bring good hunting luck. But most importantly they are about the only source of cash for people in the middle and upper Sepik.
The Sepik Spirit takes only 18 passengers. From the deck you can watch locals fish, trade and even cook and eat meals in their canoes or watching dozens of species of aquatic birds.
(Contact details: PO Box Mt Hagen PNG or http://www.pngtours.com. The same contact details for Ambua Lodge at Tari in the Highlands – the best place for birds of paradise, orchids and the traditional dress of the Huli men and wig men.)
Kavieng, New Ireland. Rainforest trees usually grow straight and tall to get to the light. But where the rainforest meets the sea, the trees grow out to catch the light. In one of these trees Alun (correct) Beck has built an extraordinary house – the Tree House. He does nature tours into the rainforest and diving. (info@treehouse.com.pg). The diving off Kavieng on the northern tip of New Ireland picks up the best of the Pacific and Bismarck seas. The big fish trawl the currents.
Tufi. Tufi resort is on the north coast of the mainland, in PNG’s fjiordland (tufidive@datec.net.pg Phone: 675 3201484). Yes PNG has fjords (as well as the snow covered Mouth Wilhelm at 4509m.) The Fjords make for great swimming and canoeing and again good diving. All of the dive sites mentioned have good wreck diving – Allied warships and Japanese zeroes are the most common.
Then there is the Kokoda Track. I prefer “track” because one might unconsciously write “trial”. I haven’t done it because all accounts I have heard say all you see is mud, leeches, mist and your own boots. It was not built as a tourist track to access pretty sites. But if family and historic reason beckon go for it.
Milne Bay (right on the eastern tip) has some beautiful remote islands with any number of people fishing and trading from outrigger canoes and villagers will show you their skull caves. Take fish-hooks to trade.
Too many Australians ignore our closest neighbour, yet is has so much to offer. The Japanese and Americans are not so silly.
Crispin Hull used his own frequent flier points to get to PNG and paid for his own diving.