Looking for somewhere new to dive?

Not just another new dive site or an area that has been discovered, this is a whole new dive destination. Earlier this year I was the luckiest fella who got to lead a trip for Conservation International with Gerry Allen, Mark Erdmann and a whole bunch of other marine life experts. This trip was to survey the reefs on southern Irian Jaya way further south of the Raja Ampat. We had already surveyed the northern islands around Teluk Cendrawasih. Coral experts were blown away in Teluk Cendrawasih with the biodiversity of hard corals, they found many unknown species, though for recreational diving and general fish biomass it was not all that hot! What we found on the south though was a totally different ball game. Gerry & Mark came across 13 new species of fish. As Gerry flooded his camera on the first dive of the trip, and guess what... never had a back up either, as you'd imagine he never managed to get any images at all. Needless to say they are hanging out to get back there to photograph these new fish species and look for more early next year. Me, I only managed to get a few critter and topside shots, this was a trip where I wished had a real camera as the underwater scenery was just incredible. Even more... the fish biomass was the highest ever recorded in Asia. The only guys who never really got buzzed were the hard coral experts, well you can't please everyone! Even though we found gorgeous hard coral gardens, the species diversity was fairly low, one theory is that the fresh water vents (I found a site with a few great underwater vents) were killing off the coral spores early in their life when they are on the surface -- sounds feasible hey! Anyway needless to say I am now hanging out to get back there and have arranged for a boat to be there from November onwards where we will be taking every trip round this new destination.

Rather then clogging the blog so to speak, you can see my basic gallery of images from this area at http://www.diving4images.com/fakfak_gallery.html. These are a few of photo’s that I took with my little Sony T1, great camera for macro that fits in ya pocket!

See ya there…

Graham

http://www.diving4images.com

wow. very nice images. Nice variety of nudis and pygmies.