In May 2010 I spent four days in South Australia photographing the annual Giant Australian Cuttlefish aggregation near Whyalla. It was a truly unique & memorable experience and thumbnails from trip can be seen below and the full gallery is available on this link Giant Cuttlefish

In August 2010 I spent two weeks in Timor Leste (East Timor) diving with Dive Timor Lorosae on the coastal sites to the east & west of the capital Dili, which is on the north coast of the island.

I had some great dives and thumbnails from trip can be seen below and the full gallery is available on this link Coastal Sites

In November 2010 I spent two weeks at Tofo in Mozambique diving with Diversity Scuba on the offshore sites famous for their manta rays and whale sharks.

My first time in southern Africa, but not the last for sure! Thumbnails from trip can be seen below and the full gallery is available on this link Mozambique Image Gallery

In January 2011 I spent a week in Amed in the north-east of Bali close to the more famous Tulamben Bay and the Liberty Wreck. One of the highlights of the week was several dives on the Japanese Wreck. Here are some images from the trip or take a look at the full gallery

Map of Timor Leste (East Timor)

A quick look at the map provides the first clue… Timor Leste is located just below the remote islands of Alor and Wetar  – the most easterly of the chain of islands called the Lesser Sundas, which form the southern boundary of the huge Indonesian archipelago – and the Ombai Strait between them is one of the main exit points for the Indonesian Throughflow as it surges south towards the Indian Ocean.

What that means is the north coast of Timor Leste is touched by one of the richest nutrient flows on the planet and there just has to some good diving in this remote location!

I did a two week trip to Timor Leste just over a year ago to dive the coastal sites in the capital Dili itself, and to the east and west of Dili.

In Dili I dived Tasi Tolo, Dili Rock and the Pertamina Jetty a couple of times each, while to the east I dived Secret Garden, K41, Bob’s Rock, One Tree and Dirt Track – again at least twice at each spot. To the west I did a few dives at Maubara and tried to dive Bubble Beach but it was all fenced off.

Superb bommie at Maubara, west of Dili in Timor Leste

Timor Leste is an interesting place with a traumatic recent history that sinks in all the more when you are there and diving the coastal sites involved daily road trips which I was initially dreading, but came to really enjoy them because of the scenic coast road.

I really enjoyed the majority of the dives and it really did wet my appetite to go back and do some boat based diving, because if the shore dives are good there must be some pretty special offshore sites!

Did not get the chance to dive Atauro or Jaco Island because no boat was available, but maybe next time….

I finally got round to updating my site with several location pages for Timor Leste, starting with this one on the country itself: LINK – just follow the links at the bottom of each page for the rest, or use the Locations tab on the menu bar.

If you want to skip the history lesson…. here is the LINK to the scuba diving overview page and just follow the links at the bottom of each page from there.

B17 Black Jack Wreck in PNG

The wreck of the Black Jack B17 bomber sits serenely in 50m of clear blue water just off from the village of Boga Boga, on the tip of Cape Vogel on Collingwood Bay. Almost completely intact, the wreck is an amazing site to behold as you descend the steep slope from the fringing reef and the huge plane looks like it belongs on a Hollywood film set!

Little wonder that many who have dived it consider the Black Jack wreck to be of the best aircraft wrecks in Papua New Guinea.

Discovered in 1986 by Australians Rod Pearce, Bruce Johnson and David Pennefather during a dedicated expedition organized by Pennefather after being told by the villagers of Boga Boga that a plane had crashed near the reef during WWII.

They had no idea that the wreck was a huge B17 and believed the wreck was probably an Australian Beaufort A9 that had been reported crash landing in the area of Collingwood Bay.

The discovery of Black Jack is a great story in itself, but the subsequent one about how the original pilot Ralph De Loach was tracked down in Marina del Ray in California and then brought all the way back to Boga Boga village is an even better one!

Download the full X-Ray magazine article on the B17 Black Jack wreck on this LINK

Or go to the detailed  B17 Black Jack location page on the LINK

The full B17 Black Jack image gallery of underwater pictures taken on the wreck are on this LINK

Kimbe Bay's Mitsubishi Zero Wreck

As the story is told around the bar at Walindi, the day the wreck of the Zero fighter was found was soon after a small plane had crashed on take-off from Hoskins Airport at Kimbe Bay.

So when local villager William Nui saw the wreck laying on the sandy sea floor he thought he had found the wreckage of the recent crash.

He had no way of knowing that what he had found was the wreck of a WWII Japanese fighter plane that had remain undisturbed for nearly 60 years!

That the wreck was actually spotted in the first place is an interesting story in itself, because William was free-diving for sea cucumbers at the time when noticed what seemed to be a large shadow on the sea bed.

Like many people in PNG, William is very superstitious and as he got closer he thought that he was looking at a ghost lying face-up with its arms outstretched, soaking up the sun.

Terrified he shot to the surface and to the relative safety of his canoe, eventually summoning up enough courage to go back down to take a closer look – realizing when he did that it was the wreck of a plane rather than some demon of the deep.

Read the full story of the Zero wreck, its history and how to dive and photograph it – plus a full image gallery on this LINK

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Local fishermen on Tofo beach

The tiny fishing boat seemed hardly capable of even carrying its crew of three, never-mind their nets and catch, as they rowed furiously back through the surf to the safety of Tofo beach.

The southern end of the beach is where the boats are dragged up on the sand after they return from their trips to the offshore reefs, and all the activity drew me there as I looked for some last photo-opportunities to round out my trip.

An early morning walk when traveling is often the best time to feel the pulse of a location, and it’s certainly a great way to end two weeks diving in Southern Mozambique with the area’s famous mega fauna.

Cliches about freshly caught fish for the local market were on the tip of my tongue and the last thing I was expecting to see was a vignette in to the ugly underbelly of the seemingly insatiable Chinese demand for shark fins.

Shark finning....

In the boat, underneath the piled up fishing nets was a barely alive but fully mature mobula ray, which was quickly pulled out on to the beach and slaughtered in front of me as I struggled to capture the scene.

Then I realized that one of the fishermen had a shark fin in a plastic bag and that the victim had obviously been thrown over the side after being parted from its prized appendage.

It was a totally shocking scene and one that was made even worse by the realization that similar events had probably taken place everyday that I had been in Tofo had I actually looked for them.

While it is very easy to self-righteously tell the Tofo fishermen that they should not do such things, the fact is that my stomach was full from a pleasant breakfast at my guesthouse while the fishermen need to earn money to do the same for themselves and their families.

With very few employment options available, fishing is a logical and reasonably sustainable way  to do that, however the lure of easy money is understandable and local Chinese “businessmen” have established a lucrative trade in shark fins.

Fetching up to US$700 a kg in Hong Kong, shark fins are procured locally at a fraction of that from the local fishermen who think they are doing well from the deal…

Not only is the trade severely impacting the local shark population, the methods used by the the fishermen create significant damage to the greater marine population – such as the mobula ray.

The Chinese have moved into Africa on a grand scale as they seek control of the resources and raw materials the second biggest economy in the world needs to keep growing. The merits of their investments in the continent are beyond the scope of this post, but there is no doubt that some of the activities of Chinese entrepreneurs who set up businesses are beyond the pale!

Andrea Marshall & Simon Pierce of the Marine Mega Fauna Foundation in Tofo are trying to establish a Marine Park in the critical 200 km Tofo corridor that will achieve the dual objectives of protecting the area’s mega fauna while allowing the local population to benefit – not just the hotel & dive shop owners…

Let’s hope they are successful…

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Tofo – Death on the Beach Image Gallery

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