The MV Bilikiki is back from another great trip with an amazing group led by Ben Jackson from Equator Diving in the UK, thanks for spending your holidays with us!
We did our first dives in the Russell Islands at the always amazing Leru Cut and Mirror Pond. The weather was perfect and after we enjoyed a great day diving the local canoes came out to the boat for a veggie market.
We continued our way to Marovo Lagoon where it was impossible not to enjoy our dives at Kicha (with grey reef sharks, schools of barracudas, bumphead parrotfish and silvertip sharks) or the amazing Wickham Island with all its soft corals and critters (pygmy seahorses, cockatoo waspfish, robust ghost pipefish, demon stingers and many others). We had a fantastic time at Mbulo Island diving its caves, canyons and amazing coral gardens. In between these dives we visited villages to admire and buy all the beautiful carvings the local artists displayed for us.
On our way back, Mary Island was vibrating with life with its massive schools of big eye jacks and barracudas. Joining the show this week were some blacktip and grey reef sharks, clown triggerfish and a couple of huge dogtooth tuna. In the Florida Islands, the conditions were perfect for us to dive with at least 10 manta rays, all feeding in formation and passing over the divers.
We were very happy to share with our guests the special critters we are lucky to have in the Solomon Islands. For this trip that included: disco clams, ornate ghost pipefish, 9 kinds of anemone fish, hairy squat lobsters, peacock mantis shrimps, ribbon eels, crazy nudibranchs and some really lovely signal gobies. And we couldn't avoid going back to the fascinating WW2 wrecks on the Guadalcanal coast, the wrecks were amazing and we spotted seahorses there too.
Thank you very much to all the guests for being such a great group! We hope we will see you all again soon (Equator Diving are back with us in 2020!).
And as always thanks to our incredible crew for the wonderful job they do every single day.
Best Fishes,
Fernando and Pato
Above photo by Ladonna Idell
Above Photo by Ben Jackson
Above photo and manta ray photo by Norman Vexler