Greetings from The Solomon islands

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TonRin

Registered
Messages
35
Reaction score
41
Location
Australia
# of dives
25 - 49
Hi everyone,
New member here and reasonably new diver as well. My wife and I got our OW in Feb and then our AOW in June. We now have about 25 dives done and we are lucky to live in a pretty spectacular part of the world for diving. From WW2 wrecks a plenty to some wall dives that would blow your socks off, we have it all. Some sites we have dived so far are Leru Cut, Toa Maru wreck, Mbonege 1 wreck, Grand Central Station, Douglas Dauntless Bomber wreck (as seen in the 50min documentary ' Lost warriors of the South Pacific'. Well worth a watch! Dave Cooke in this video is our instructor.), Mirror pond, Mbigo Mbigo, Shark point, Devils Highway and Barracuda Point to mention a few.
I look forward to reading your posts and sharing some pics and videos of our dives.

Cheers
Tony
 
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Sounds great. The Solomons seem way off the beaten path; what do you think of living there topside?

Its a great place to live. It can be expensive and a bit dirty but it is what you make of it. Plenty of excellent dive sites, a decent golf course, cold beer and people are friendly. I spent 10 years in Papua New Guinea before here which is a lot more agressive but still an impressive place.

Cheers
Tony
 
Welcome o ScubaBoard! We're all jealous you've got such great dives just out your backdoor!
 
I spent 10 years in Papua New Guinea before here which is a lot more agressive but still an impressive place.

I hope you'll post more about your impressions of the two places. Scuba Board has an international membership, but I think it's 'weighted' by numbers toward the U.S. and surrounding region (e.g.: Canada). And while Fiji is held to be the 'soft coral capital of the world,' Indonesia comes up as perhaps the best all-around warm water coral reef and diverse life dive destination. PNG and the Solomons aren't politically part of Indonesia, but they're close enough to consider in that region (the Coral Triangle).

But you'll see on the forum that Raja Ampat and Komodo take the lion's share of attention and 'mindshare' in posts talking about the region. The Philippines get attention for being a little less far flung and a bit cheaper trip, and Lembeh for muck diving, but R.A. and Komodo seem to be favorites.

But when I've read through threads where people who've been to some of these places compare...I've seen PNG held up as edging out R.A. in the opinion of some (but more expensive with a less tourist oriented economy). And the nearby Solomon Islands get even less attention than PNG (well, some years back someone posted a link to an article talking about the annual body count from salt-water crocodile attacks in the Solomons...). What I found on Wikipedia on the Solomons sounded...very rustic.

But these are all 2nd hand impressions from reading reports by other people. I'd like to hear more of your impressions. How was PNG a lot more aggressive?
 
PNG people are a lot more tribalistic than Solomon's. The Solomon people are very laid back (sometimes too much) and are happy to just hang around and watch the days go buy. Here in the Solomon's you will see women and children walking the streets, sometimes alone and even at night. In PNG that would never happen. Hell, I wouldn't even walk too many streets at night there. I was in a pretty rough city, Lae which is the industrial hub of PNG and has a road directly linking the highlands (which is where most of the trouble comes from). Don't get me wrong, 90% of people are awesome in PNG.. The other 10% which is a significant number are very ordinary people and who will have no issues cutting your throat for a dollar!

As for diving in PNG, I haven't done any but I have some good friends who do a lot now out of Lae and if I get to go back (luckily my works head office is in Lae) then I will definatley give it a go.

We have a dive site here called Grand Central Station which is the 4th highest fish count in the world on a single tank dive at 279. The top 3 are in Indonesia. There are some very impressive wall dives here and lot's of coral and fish. I guess it's the wrecks that are the difference. The abundance of WW2 wrecks that start from 1M and go down to 120M are plenty. The USS Atlanta lies at 120m just 5km from my office here in Honiara. It's dived once a year by a group of die hard idio... people! It is very expensive here in the Solomon's though and sometimes is not easy to move around (flights cancelled, bad weather, tribal disputes over runways.. I kid you not!) but right now, no covid so no lock downs, no restrictions 9other than coming and going from the country) and we can dive every weekend if we want too. Mbonege is about 10km up the road and is a Japanese wreck about 20m off shore that's a dive from 1m to about 30m. There is a resident 3m croc there that shows up occasionally. We don't dive when he's home.

My wife is a Filipino so I am sure once the world gets back to normal, we will head there for some diving.. Her house is 50m from the ocean.

Enough ranting.
Cheers
 

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I should have renamed the pictures sorry..
1. Douglas Dauntless dive bomber - 12.5m in Rendova Lagoon. As seen in the documentry 'Lost Warriors of the South Pacific'
2. 30deg at 30m.. Lycra stinger suits all that is needed down here.
3. Anemone on the side of the Toa Maru wreck - 25m down and theres no torches shining on it. Thats how it looks. It was an overcast day as well.
4. Skull Island - Warrior chief skulls from the time of head hunting here. Fascinating place to visit.

If you guys want more pics of places here, let me know..

Cheers
 
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