October Dive Along

BLUE LAKE DIVE ALONG OCT 5&6TH

Two of Dive Addicts' most excellent dive instructors Amy Smith and Cliff Campbell will be offering a dive along at Blue Lake this coming Friday and Saturday October 5&6th. If anyone is interested in doing a night diving certification Friday night while they are out there, please get in touch with them at Dive Addicts to schedule.

They would love some company, so please give them a call at (801) 572-5111

Cocos Island Trip Update

For 10 days in August, thirteen Dive Addicts experienced diving nirvana found at a remote island in the pacific ocean 300 miles off the shore of Costa Rica. Cocos Island is a Costa Rican national park and has gained a reputation of being one of the best locations in the world for viewing large marine animals as well as encountering hundreds of sharks. Cocos did not disappoint.

The Dive Addicts trip started with a short flight to San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica. Our group spent one night in the beautiful Alta Hotel surrounded by lush Costa Rican jungle. The next day we boarded the Okeanos Aggressor and began our voyage towards the bountiful Cocos Island. Our thirty-two hour crossing included many sighting of dolphins, one whale sighting and lots of sea-sickness pills for some passengers. After the long voyage the appearance Cocos Island over the horizon was breath taking. With dozens of majestic waterfalls and dense jungles, staring at Cocos Island is like viewing a real life Jurassic Park, an island from the past frozen in time. Below the surface the excitement continued. Each dive consisted of an average of 45 minutes of awe-filled wonder. The hardest part about the diving was knowing which way to look and not letting the regulator float out of your mouth when you were struck with jaw-dropping amazement. There was never a dull moment. Hammerhead sharks numbering in the thousands would circle above or make a close pass in an attempt to be cleaned; white tip sharks either resting or hunting were visible everywhere; countless marbled rays would swim through schools of hundreds of thousands of jacks while ten foot long eels with heads as big as basketballs would emerge from their caverns and swim across the reef; Manta and Eagle Rays would make gliding appearances while 6 foot long tuna would dart through schools of smaller fish in search of a meal; Large turtles would lazily pass by and Amber Jacks the size of a diver would curiously approach; and just to ice the cake, Whale Sharks made many cameo appearances to check out the scene. The most amazing fact though, is that this description is not a compilation of everything seen throughout the week, instead it is a description of a single
typical dive at Cocos.

The amenities aboard the Aggressor were fantastic. The rooms were comfortable, the food was delicious and plentiful and the company aboard was unforgettable. But the best part was obviously the diving. Needless to say, this was another Dive Addicts trip of a lifetime.

Papua New Guinea 2

Send in the Clowns
On most dives, we were treated to a variety of clown fish, including Clowns, False Clowns, Tomato Clowns, as well as several other kinds that I am unfamiliar with. This particular picture is of a pair of False Clowns taken at Witu Islands. By the way, this was shot with a Canon EOS 1DS housed in a Subal housing with a macro port using a Canon 100mm macro lense.

MUCK DIVING WAS A BLAST
This picture of a Blue Ribbon Eel was taken on a much dive at night in Kimbe Bay. The eel was about the size of my thumb, and I would have gotten a little closer to it, but it was very shy. As I would move in closer, it would back down it's whole. Very colorful and interesting to watch!

TUNACATES GALORE
On almost every dive in both Witu islands and Fathers, the sea mounts were covered with a colorful collection of these tunicates. They are about 3-4 inches long, and are absolutely beautiful!



Friendly visitors
On several of the dives, we would surface to find our boat surounded by visitors from the local villages. Adults, teenagers, and sometimes very small children would paddle miles out to sea, to meet our boat and trade for rice, soap, candy and other staples.

Papua New Guinea
There is only one word that can describe the underwater environment of PNG - WOW! The diving there is absolutely amazing! You have never ever seen reefs in such pristine condition and so full of fish! But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.

First of all, as I have previously mentioned, when we got to Narita Airport in Tokyo, we were informed that Air Nuigini had lost the lease on their planes and that they were trying to locate a plane that they could "borrow" so that they could take us on to Port Moresby. This took about 24 hours, and they ended up borrowing a plane from Macau Airlines. (I know, half of you have never heard of it!) It's a small area originally settled by the Portuguese in China. That worked out fine, except that it was not supposed to fly over that big of stretch of water, so it had to wind it's way over every little island to get to PNG. Of course we arrived very late, and missed our connection in Port Moresby going on to Hoskins, and ended up having to spend the night in a little dive resort just outside of Port Moresby. Actually "spending the night" is a bit of a stretch, as we had to get up at 2:30 AM and get on the road back to the airport to catch a round about flight via Rabual to Hoskins. To make a long story short, 55 hours after leaving SLC we finally arrived at the Walindi Resort in Kimbe Bay PNG. Since the airlines gave the resort some bad information about what time we were arriving, they were not ready for us, and the boat captain had decided that this might be an ideal time to tear the engine apart and do an overhaul. This turned out to be a very bad idea, because they were unable to get the thing put back together in a timely fashion, so we sat around the resort most of the day, waiting for the boat to be in one piece.

Once the boat was supposedly repaired, we boarded, got assigned our rooms, and got under way. Boy were we excited, after almost 62 hours, we were finally steaming out of port headed towards the world's best diving, when all of a sudden, the boat engine broke down and we were left adrift in the ocean. This didn't seem like such a big deal to me, since we had two engines, but what the captain hadn't told us was that we only had one operational engine when we left port. Anyway, they radioed for another large boat to come out and get us, and tow us a short distance to a safe harbor just an hour away, and we dropped anchor. Of course by this time, there was almost mutiny on the bounty going on, with everyone wondering what kind of nut case was captaining our boat. The skipper, an Australian guy who was almost suicidal by this point, was just beside himself, but we figured, what the heck, we are floating in the water in PNG, and it's time to go diving. We geared up, jumped in the water, and did our first dive as a night dive. I can honestly say, that pretty much all problems were forgotten within minutes of jumping in the water. I have never in my life seen a more diverse and prolific underwater seascape. Everywhere you turned, there was some weird new creature that you had never seen before. It was simply amazing.

Once back on the boat, we were treated to the cooking of the boat's new Kiwi chef, who created interesting concoctions with odd assortments of ingredients. Apparently, grocery shopping in PNG is not like at home, and you need to be prepared for whatever the Grocery Gods throw at you! The food throughout the week was very plentiful and always an interesting combination of continental/PNG and Asian dishes. The only thing that got a little tiresome was the Mango ice cream, which we had 8 nights in a row!

The next day, the Walindi resorts sent small skiffs out to take us diving while they were fixing the engine on the big boat, and the diving was simply incredible. By the end of that day, the big boat was operating under it's own steam and we took off for the far reaches of Kimbe Bay. We did two days of muck diving in a volcanic crater in Kimbe Bay, that produced some of the most amazing creatures on earth. The muck diving was done in rubble patches that at first glance seemed like very unlikely spot, but were home to some very unique creatures, including 3 different species of lion fish, at least 15 different nudibranchs (one almost 18 inches long), cuttle fish, squid, octopus, mantis shrimp, flounder, mandarin fish, scorpion fish, robust ghost pipe fish (this is a very bizre one!), leaf fish, boxer shrimp, bulldozer shrimp, pipe fish, sea horses and the list goes on and on. I could have been happy if we had spent the entire trip doing nothing by muck diving!

We next moved the boat to the Witu islands. We met a retired Aussie cocoa palm plantation manager, who came to this very isolated outpost in 1965 and has never left. He was quite a character. Apparently, we need to stop and pay homage to him in order to appease the local villagers so that we could dive in that area. He is a local legend and had some wild stories to share. He also took several Dive Addicts on a tour of the local villages, and virtually everyone who went thought it was well worth the time. Many of the guests, had brought candy, small gifts and school supplies for the children, and they were the hit of the village. (See the picture of Mike Robinson playing the pied piper with the village kids training him and his candy bag!)

The diving in the Witu islands was quite different from Kimbe Bay, and had all sorts of small interesting creatures. (see the pictures attached). One other highlight of the Witu islands were the visits of the natives in outrigger canoes. They came every day bearing papayas, various roots, local greens, and seashells wanting to barter for a bag of rice, bars of soap and candy for the kids. This made for some very touching scenes. It is hard to believe that these people live in such primitive conditions and in such a carefree existence. Making the trip all this way, would have been worthwhile if only to see these people in their outriggers.

We next moved on to Father's Reef, where we had more pelagic encounters. Lots of sharks, mostly gray reef and silvertip, with an occasional white tip, were common on most dives here. We also saw some small Napoleon Wrasse, huge schools of jacks, and other predator types in abundance. Of course the small stuff for which PNG is most famous were to be found everywhere. Most of the diving in this area was on sea mounts or "bommies or knobs" as the Aussies say. Because you are in open ocean the currents could be quite strong on some of these sea mounts, until you made your way around the leeward side. It made the diving interesting to say the least.

The group on this trip was quite diversified, with several very experienced divers, several intermediate divers and a couple of beginners. The dive masters did a superb job of keeping everyone happy, and I'm pretty sure everyone got their fill of diving, with the exception of Mike Robinson who was still whining about getting in another dive after we got back to port, and were cooling our heels at the resort! All in all, we had the opportunity to do 36 dives, and I would say that most people did the better part of that! The last night dive was especially memorable with divers in the water for 71 minutes and rushing form one amazing site to the next. It's really fun to see people get so worked up about little creatures that your average diver would pass right over.

Sometimes, when things don't go quite the way you had planned on a dive trip, patience can wear thin, but this group of 16 Dive Addicts hung in there, and were rewarded with some of the most spectacular underwater experiences imaginable. I'm sure this is one destination that we will put on our "return to list".