Last week, our friends Dan & Sian went to Enuk Island, kitted out with an old sheet, some paint and paint brushes and their creative caps firmly on their heads. The plan was to make a sign to say Thank-you to the school that had donated the chairs and desks, Cairns West High. Here are some happy snaps: 

The kids are taking this very serious, and are very
careful in drawing and painting. 

Every kid places his or her hand print on the sheet.
Luckily, it was water-based paint!!

Me, too! Me, too! I want to put my hand print on, too! 

Thank you Cairns West High!

What a work of art! Well done, Enuk kids, and thank you,
Cairns West High! 

After some pretty shitty diving conditions over the weekend and on Monday, the weather finally started to improve yesterday. A large stingray, a devil ray and a school of big-eye jacks as well as the usual array of sharks at Peter's Patch was a good start to yesterday's dive day. The second dive at Matrix was a nice drift dive, with a bunch of titan triggerfish, a large crocodile fish and some smaller stuff. 

Last but not least, the group stopped at the "Stubborn Hellion", a B25 plane wreck for a quick look. As the plane lies in only 12m of water, we do this as a residual air dive, i.e. keep 70 bar in your tank on dive 2 and use it here. After about 20 minutes, you've seen it all anyway, and there isn't much else around to look at. 

Today, the sun is out, hurray, and the Der Yang shipwreck and a Catalina floatplane are on the menu for the morning dives, with our special Mandarinfish dive to follow this afternoon. 

Tiny, but oh so colourful fish!

A bunch of very happy divers returned from Albatross & Kavin II yesterday! With the current still coming in for the first dive, Albatross was the obvious choice. A blue-spotted stingray, several white tip and grey reef sharks, as well as a big school of batfish and some Spanish mackerel kept the divers entertained. Unfortunately, the current changed towards the end of the dive and after an hour surface interval, the second chosen spot Danny's Bommie was so murky that vis had dropped to only 15m. Not good enough, so the divers went over to Kavin II instead. The trusty Pygmy seahorse still sits on his fan in 17m of water, but no photographers in this group, so after a quick look, they went on along the wall. Photographers can't seem to be torn away from the Pygmy, missing everything else around them. They would have missed the turtle and a school of 7 bumphead parrot fish!! That's not a big number for a school of those parrot fish, but apparently what they lacked in numbers, they made up for in size. Sandy reckons they were HUGE!! 

Bumphead parrot fish at Sipadan. Photo courtesy of our good friends Stella
and Yogi Freund, who came across this large school during their WWF Coral
Triangle Photo Expedition in 2009/2010. Check out their amazing journey on
http://blogs.panda.org/coral_triangle/about/. You can also see more of the
brilliant photos that Yogi takes on  http://www.jurgenfreund.com/ 

More photos from our donation run: 

Enuk Island Community School now has new desks
and chairs, thanks to our friends Andrew Bowes and
his wife, who were the instigators in all this! 

These three nurses are so happy that all they have to
do now to sit a patient up in bed is to pump the back-
rest up by food. No more bending over, good-bye back-
aches!! Thanks to our friends at the Calvary Hospital
in Cairns!

Uncle Pete (Peter McEwan) and the boys, busy off-loading
the beds at Kavieng hospital. Uncle Pete is the president
of the Kavieng Rotary Club.

Diving? How does that go again?

I can't remember the last time I went diving, but it has been a long time since I've been out on the boat. Our friends Mandy & Steve visited and talked me into joining them on Thursday. I'm glad they were so persuasive, it was a great morning out.

We went to Albatross Passage, as the current was coming in and with full moon just three days prior, it should be running quite strong, so bringing lots of fish action with them. We were not disappointed! In fact, the first dive was so good that we decided to do the second dive at Albatross, also. Unfortunately, during our one-hour surface interval, the rain came and it got quite dark down there at times. However, the current was still running strong, so the water was a bit clearer than on the first dive.



Top of the reef at Albatross Passage, and this is only
the small stuff.



Visibility wasn't that great, and I'm not a very good
photographer, so this photo shows only part of a big
school of Barraducas.

This was a decent size Grey Reef Shark, and he/she
seemed to be interested in checking us out as much
as we wanted to see him/her closer.



This is what I love about Albatross: You have big stuff on
one side, and then, when you are bored with that (yeah,
right, as if...), you have a beautifully covered wall on the
other side.



Good-bye Shrek

I have some really sad news. On Saturday, 21 January 2011 at 6pm, our cute, crazy, funny and sweet parrot Shrek passed away. It came totally out of left-field. On Friday, he was fine, screeching and flying around the island, but he didn’t come home that night. That’s a bit unusual, normally he is in “his” tree at the back of the kitchen at around 6pm. But, he has stayed out before, so we thought he is probably catching up with one of his girlfriends, it being Friday night and all.

Saturday morning comes and goes, still no sign or noise of Shrek, and we are starting to get worried. At 3pm, the girls found him in “his” tree, apparently asleep. Nozaki got him down and realised straight away that something was wrong. She wrapped him in a towel, which he normally hates, but didn’t have the strength to complain about this time. That was not a good sign!! At 5pm, he started wheezing, at 6pm he was dead. I think he might have picked up a parasite from one of the wild animals that live on the island.

We still can't get believe that he is gone. Every time I walk between the office and the kitchen, I wait for him to screech, do his wolf whistle or say "Hey Shrekkie!!". He was a unique little fella...

As our friend Hutch wrote on our Facebook page, "Flying higher than ever before Shrek, you may be gone but not forgotten!"

Where on earth did that month just go?

I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted any stories, photos or just silly comments. There has been plenty to report, a few photos to share, so lets get to it. 
A dive at my favourite dive site, The Bottleshop, produced some great shots. 

Scorpionfish 

How cute is this little Blennie? They
always look like they are smiling! 

While our friends Imi and Christopher Bartlett were here, Dietmar and I took the opportunity to join them on the dive boat one Sunday. Danny's Bommie was as great as always, as was Kavin II, even without Pygmy Seahorse. Christopher had given me some camera hints, which I was keen to try out. The first photos at Danny's Bommie were still "practice photos", but at Kaving, I was slowly getting the hang of it, .... at least I think so.... feel free to disagree. 

Orangutan Crab - what a hairy little bugger!

For want of knowing the proper name, I've called this
species "Green Crab".

Dietmar Smartypants just tells me this crab lives in the Halimeda algae, so it could be a Halimeda Crab. Of course, after looking this up on the internet, Mr Smartypants is right.

Speaking of not knowing what is what down there, have a look at this weirdo below. Christopher and I took stacks of photos, but mine didn't turn out very well, and as far as I know, neither did Christopher's. It's really hard to photograph something like this in blue water, especially when there is other stuff floating around. That doesn't make identifying this creature any easier, and no, it's not a fishing hook/floater! 

Jellyfish? It was approx. 20cm long from tail till the bent
where it then comes down to the two eyes, or whatever
they were. 

If anyone out there has any ideas as to what this could be, I'd love to hear from you! 

The divers just came back from Ral Island, a dive Dietmar and I were meant to join. Unfortunately, duty called, but according to the divers, they saw a mimic octopus! Yeah, right, and pigs might fly one day. You are just saying that to make us jealous, it's probably another one of those diver stories. No, no, we have pictures!! Great, thanks for telling me, I wanted to come along, remember?!?!?!?! 

Well, I've just informed them that we are going back to Ral tomorrow, whether they like it or not. I want to see Mimi, the mimic octopus! Luckily, the guests are also keen to see her again, so Ral it is tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll get some decent photos, and hopefully, Mimi is still there..... 

Mahonia Na Dari

It's been a while since I last wrote, so lots to tell this time. I've been away for 10 days, travelling in PNG and dear me, the internet in most places is terrible. I didn't know just how spoiled we are with our satellite broadband internet and that I can even answer e-mails from our bedroom with our WiFi. Hence, whilst away, I only answered the most important e-mails and at one stage, I even had to engage Dietmar as my secretary, telling people I would get back to them as soon as I had figured out why I could receive e-mails without problems, but couldn't send anything. Seeing Dietmar, Missy, Chivas, Shrek, Nozaki and the staff wasn't the only reason I am happy to be home again!

My first stop on the trip was Walindi, or rather Mahonia Na Dari, which means "Guardian of the Sea" in Tokples (talk place = the language spoken in that particular area of Kimbe Bay in New Britain, the Talasea Peninsula).
Mahonia believes that one of the best hopes for preserving Papua New Guinea's marine biodiversity is to build a grassroots constituency for conservation.  Mahonia supports community-based conservation and resource management in Kimbe Bay and the Islands Region of PNG.  Their highly successful marine education program has already proven to be a powerful tool in building this support by increasing environmental awareness and inspiring local action to protect coral reefs. One of the main components of their marine education and awareness program is the Marine Environment Education Program, MEEP in short.

The reason for my visit at Mahonia was to talk to Lorna Romaso, who is the Education Officer at Mahonia. I've known Lorna for a while and she even came to visit us once at Lissenung with a group of students from one of the local high schools. Unfortunately, funding for the New Ireland schools dried up, so not much has been done since 2006. At Mahonia, however, Lorna is still in full swing, educating teachers, youth ambassadors and school students alike. She has a wealth of information that I wanted to tap into as we would like to learn from Mahonia Na Dari and start to run small versions of their MEEP here in New Ireland. I knew what I would like to achieve, but I didn't know how to get started and Lorna has provided some great ideas. Thank you Lorna!!

Thanks also goes to Cecilie and Max Benjamin from Walindi Plantation Resort, who accommodated me free of charge for the 4 nights I was there. Cecilie is the Chair of Mahonia and took some time out of her busy day to accompany me on my visit to the education centre and to answer lots of my questions.

The next stop was in Port Moresby to attend the National Tourism Conference. I stayed with our good friends Sandy and Ian Rosen, and Sandy and I got lots of girlie time in. We went shopping, we lunched, we visited the beauty shop and then we shopped some more.

The conference was very informative and a great opportunity for networking. I met some very interesting people and caught up with some of my friends.

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