The island of New Guinea, the second largest in the world after Greenland, is located just south of the equator and to the northeast of the continent of Australia.

The South Coast of New Britain, Papua New Guinea
Text and photos by: Don Silcock www.indopacificimages.com   

The island of New Guinea, the second largest in the world after Greenland, is located just south of the equator and to the northeast of the continent of Australia. It is a remote and mysterious place, believed to have been populated for 45,000 years by the Papuan Melanesian people, roughly the same time as the Aboriginal people have lived in Australia.

Alan Raabe

The island is divided into two parts - the western part is the Indonesian province now known as West Papua, but was formerly Irian Jaya, while the eastern part forms the core of the independent country of Papua New Guinea (PNG).

The Papuan Melanesian people are an intriguing and diverse ethnic group and comprise of nearly a thousand distinct tribal cultures and different languages. One of these tribes, the Dani was only discovered less than 50 years ago in 1938 when the US explorer Richard Archibold flew over the remote Baliem Valley in West Papua and saw their compounds and sweet potato fields. The Dani had lived in complete isolation from all outsiders for over 10,000 years and today are West Papua’s most famous ethnic group - their numbers have grown to around 70,000 and Wamenda, the main town in the Baliem Valley, receives several hundred visitors a month who come to see these unique people.

Scuba diving is well established in many locations in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and becoming so in the Raja Ampat area of West Papua. The Milne Bay area at the southeastern tip of the main island and Kimbe Bay in the centre of the island of New Britain are probably the two most popular diving locations in PNG.

Milne Bay is best dived from a liveaboard and offers a tremendous variety of diving from the weird & wonderful critters found muck diving at Dinah’s Beach to the superb corals at Deacon’s Reef and manta rays at the cleaning station just off the beach at Gonu Gonu Bara Bara Island. The area is served by three liveaboards all of whom have a good, and thoroughly deserved, reputation – Chertan (www.chertan.com), Golden Dawn (www.mvgoldendawn.com) and Telita (www.telitacruises.com)

In Kimbe Bay it is possible to do both resort based diving from Walindi Plantation (www.walindi.com) and liveaboard diving with either Febrina (www.febrina.com) or StarDancer (www.peterhughes.com/star/Star_dancerindex.shtml) both of which operate in conjunction with Walindi Plantation.

New Britain, the largest of the islands in PNG, covers an area of 35,500 square kilometres – roughly half the size of Tasmania, but while diving on the north coast of the island has been well established for many years the south coast of the island has remained basically unexplored.

Alan Raabe the owner & skipper of Febrina, and now co-owner of Star Dancer, has periodically explored the south coast during the 20 years that he has lived & worked in PNG. During a  trip in 2005 on StarDancer in Kimbe Bay I learned about the south coast and decided to go back to New Britain the following January to join one of the first commercial trips to that area. 

Rabaul
Our trip commenced in Rabaul, the capital of East New Britain, which was reached on a two-hour flight from the capital of PNG, Port Moresby. One of the great things about diving PNG from Australia is that it is possible to leave Sydney in the morning, arrive in Port Moresby in mid afternoon, transfer onto your domestic flight and be on the liveaboard that night. Although I have to say the transfer in Moresby is never without it’s worries….

From Rabaul it is an overnight journey to the south via the St Georges Channel that separates the islands of New Britain & New Ireland. The currents in this area are very strong and treacherous but Alan Raabe is an experienced skipper and we slept peacefully in our bunks while he piloted the boat to our destination and the first day’s diving.

Over the next 10 days we dived at a variety of locations in the Lindenhaven and Waterfall Bay areas and saw WWII wrecks, reefs in pristine condition and a great variety of critters, reef and pelagic fish. What makes this area special is a fairly unique combination of circumstances.

First of all, just a few miles offshore the seabed starts to drop off into the very deep waters of the Solomon’s Trench and the strong coastal currents mix with the nutrient-rich upwellings of cool water from the trench to produce an optimum blending mechanism that helps to feed the ecosystem and nourish the reefs. 

Secondly the south coast of New Britain is one of the wettest places on earth, which means that in the rainy season the numerous rivers provide another rich source of nutrients.

Thirdly the south coast is a very remote and sparsely populated location and there is only one unpaved logging road that penetrates the dense mountainous rainforest that separates the north coast from the south. Basically the only access to the area is by sea, which means that the reefs are virtually untouched and in some areas can only be described as pristine!

Another interesting facet of the south coast is that it’s wet & dry seasons are the reverse of the north coast - when it is raining on the north it is dry on the south and vice versa! The reason for this is that the northwest trade winds, which bring in the low pressure troughs and resultant heavy rain on the north coast do not make it over the mountainous spine of the island. Similarly the southeast trade winds that bring heavy rain to the south coast are isolated from the north coast by the mountains.

The result of all this is some incredible diving that combines most of the weird & wonderful critters normally only found in Milne Bay with superb reefs and pelagic action usually associated with the Witu Islands.  

Virgin territory
The south coast really is almost virgin territory and dive sites are still being identified, which can lead to some disappointing exploratory dives, but once a good site has been located regular access needs to be secured. This means negotiating with the head of the local village, known locally as the “big fella”, to dive in his territory. I was impressed by Alan Raabe’s approach to this, as it was clear that he has a genuine interest in improving the lot of the village. A lesser person would take the easy route, so common in PNG, and grease the palm of the big fella to secure diving access – but Alan appears determined to avoid this.

His view is that properly managed there should be three beneficial effects of opening up diving on the south coast.

Firstly there is the direct payment, proportional to the number of divers who use the site, made to a community account opened up in the village’s name - not the big fella’s. Secondly the villages have an opportunity to trade both with the boat for fresh vegetables and with the diving tourists for locally produced artefacts including carvings. Finally there is the net positive effect of introducing a new dynamic of tourism, albeit on a small scale initially, to an area that has previously been largely closed to foreigners.

Once regular access is secured a permanent mooring buoy is installed to minimize future environmental impact of boats bringing divers to the sites.

When I look back at the trip there were several high points that stood out: 

West Entrance at Lindenhaven
Lindenhaven is a small village in the Gasmata area and as its name suggests the dive site is on the west entrance to the village. The corals and fish life were both prolific & pristine and are fed by the very strong currents that course through the entrance.

This was probably one of the best reef dives I have ever done and I can still remember the burst of adrenalin as we descended on the reef from the dive tender. There was a time when most reefs would have been as rich as this and I felt truly privileged to be there!

The strength of the currents mean that it can only really be dived around slack water but it was the site I enjoyed most of all the ones we did in the 10 days on the south coast.

What made the site completely memorable was the end of the dive when we surfaced and found ourselves surrounded by about 20 local kids, some as young as 5 or 6, in their canoes. They were all highly excited by what we were doing and it was very clear they had never seen anything like it before!

The Blue Hole
The Blue Hole is the source of the Isis River in Waterfall Bay and to dive it means a two-hour trip up the river taking everything you need with you. The trip is spectacular because you go deep into the rainforest that covers New Britain and pass through small villages perched on the riverbanks. The locals appeared fascinated by our presence and gathered to watch us pass through on our way upstream.

The further you go up the Isis River the harder it is to reach its source because the river becomes choked with thick reeds that block the cooling water inlets to our boat’s outboard engines. The only way through is with the help of the local villagers who literally have to dive down and cut a path through with their machetes. It’s quite a site to see village boys as young as 10 or 12 swimming against the fast running river with a huge machete held between their teeth and then diving down to cut the reeds!

It is not possible to motor all the way to the Blue Hole, the closest you can get is about 250m to it and then it is time to carry your dive gear and cameras through the jungle and wade through the river until suddenly the source of the Isis River appears around the corner. This part of the journey was made much easier by the appearance from nowhere of a large number of village children with huge smiles who were very eager to assist us.

The dive itself is rather surreal – imagine quite cool blue water in a deep pool that seems to go down forever and where the main features are large tree trunks that have fallen in over the years. In fact the bottom is at 48m and what you get for going there is a look at a small fissure with fresh water gushing out like a fire hose!

A truly adventurous day! 

Grey reef sharks 
On several dives we saw numerous grey reef sharks coming up from the deep in response to our special shark attracting device (a half full water bottle rubbed vigorously between two hands….) and aggressively buzzing us.

They are significant creatures and although always wary they seem in complete control and appear to try and tempt you deeper as we strived for that perfect photograph. There was never a point where our excitement turned to fear, but then again there was no food in the water that would have overcome their natural caution.

I always reassure myself that we must look pretty intimidating to these medium size sharks as we are about the same size, or bigger, than they are and make a lot of noise. We also don’t emit the kind of signals that attract them unless we use tricks like the water bottle, so why would they come close?

Well that’s my story anyway….. 

Mitsubishi seaplane 
Lying on its back in 15m of water, with one pontoon sticking up into the water and the other broken in the silt, its bomb doors open to expose the two live bombs still in their mountings this WW2 Japanese seaplane is a great dive located in a river close to one of the villages. Some fairly intense negotiations were required on the day we visited because it appeared the “big fella” of the village was determined to extract additional payments from us. The situation was eventually resolved by Alan Raabe & his crew and we were allowed to explore the wreck.

Visibility was not that great due to all the sediment on the wreck but on the day we dived it we could see the full extent of the wreck and the bombs were like magnets that drew us closer.