Lemus and Ral Islands

What, I hear you say, Two posts in as many days? What can I say, I'm on a roll, okay?! Plus, the stuff we saw at Lemus and Ral Islands today is too good not to share. Conny unfortunately did not follow up with her incredible find of the mimic octopus from yesterday, but not for lack of trying. Peni had so wanted to see it, I don't think he saw much else, so focused was he on the octopus. Alas, no cigar. Still, lots of other stuff to see...

Robust Gostpipefish, this one is the female. Her partner was also there,
but they were obviously having domestics, as one was on that side
of the coral, the other around the corner. 

Baramundi Cold, posing nicely for me!

Chomodorididae Glossodoris atromarginata

Another decorator crab. I find these little buggers so
very ingenious! I mean, how clever to stick bits of coral,
rubble, grass etc. on your head and body so you blend in?

Another one for my "weird animals I've never seen before"
category. This one might also be a jelly fish, but again,
if anyone out there has any ideas, please let me know! 

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..... 

House Reef 24 October

Sunday morning, and neither Dietmar nor I felt like working. No surprises there, so we geared up and hopped in for a quick dive on our house reef. Well, I did a quick dive of 33 minutes, Dietmar finally emerged from the water after 90 minutes! 

The visibility was pretty awful, as the tide was going out and flushing all the dirt from the mangroves along. Not many of our photos turned out, there was just too much stuff in the water. For those of you that have dived here, the little bommie on the corner, the one with the gorgonian fan, is the temporary home of a moray eel. Not a big one, and unfortunately, the photos I took are just too poor to publish. 



Slightly better is this shot of a purple anemone



Dietmar found this little beauty, have a look at how small he is. That's Dietmar's pointy finger in the second picture. 



Juvenile Flounder



It's only slightly larger than the first link
of Dietmar's pointy finger





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.

,

25 September, PADI Project Aware Clean-up Day

Yesterday was PADI Project Aware Clean-up Day, and since we tend to keep our island tidy at all times, we helped the Enuk Island Community with the cleaning of their island. Current guests Nicola, Megan, Elly & Uschi all volunteerd to dive and clean the channel between the two islands that make up Enuk Island.

Many thanks go to Steve Wannell from Scubapro-Uwatec for donating mask & snorkel sets, to the guys & girls from Dive Adventures and to Hutch from Surf Travel Company for donating other prizes such as pencils, books, water colours, balls and stacks more.

Here are some photos from a fun morning:

The kids are off to collect the rubbish

Rubbish from the other side of the island arrives
by dugout canoe

 

Time for sorting and separating!

 

The dive team arrives back at the collection point
from cleaning the channel



 

While we wait for the kids to return with the rubbish,
Dietmar takes a picture of this great school project:
Re-forestation of mangrove trees just outside the school!

 

The prize table, with the kids waiting for the weighing
to begin to find out who has collected the most



First of the mark for measuring her collection is little
Jenny (in front, pulling her blue/white striped top UP)



One, two, three, many!  While Dietmar and the head
teacher work out who has won in which category......

 

... the kids line up for bisquits......

 

.... and ice-cold cordial



The piles are getting smaller and smaller each year!
It seems that our efforts are paying off, which is
fantastic news!



Group photo after a fun-filled and successful morning





















 















15 September, Lissenung Beach

We have had three seahorses living just off the beach for some time now. At first, there were only two little ones and we first spotted them approx. the same time as we saw the juvenile Brown Sweetlip. These two have grown a fair bit, and now there is a third one, this one much smaller than the other two. Our reef is a real fish nursery, or kindergarden. So many juveniles, it's awesome! It goes to show that our looking after the reef is really paying of. It also shows that more protected reef areas are needed.

Common Seahorse Hippocampus taeniopterus ??

Albatross Passage 7 September 2010

Cat & Dan, the dive managers at Walindi Plantation Resort, are visiting us at the moment, and Dietmar went out diving with them yesterday. We have had a fair bit of rain, which is very unusual at this time of the year, so the visibility was not very good. This doesn't bother Dietmar, who loves to stick his head into the reef anyway, looking for small stuff, and yesterday, he was not disappointed.

Ovulide Shell on soft coral

This little Ovulide shell looks so much like its host coral that it is hard to spot. Dietmar has e-mailed his friend Dr. Felix Lorenz, top expert in Ovulides and Cowries, and according to him, it's a Diminovula stigma (Cate, 1978).








Leafy Scorpionfish



This Leafy  Scorpionfish lives at Danny's Bommie, next  to Albatross Passage. We used to have one of those weird-looking fish there, but hadn't seen it for a while. Peni spotted this one about 2 weeks ago, and was very chuffed with himself.

One can be forgiven for not realising that this is an animal. The decorator crabs are really very clever. They blend into their surroundings by sticking stuff on their shells that looks just like the habitat they live in. I once saw a little piece of seagrass walking at Ral Island, which was a decorator crab trying to pretend to be part of a patch of greenery. Ingenious!!

 

Decorator Crab - looks like something from another planet?