May 7-18, 2019
Bilikiki has returned from her second great 11 day trip under the leadership of fish guru Paul Humann. Lots of familiar faces were onboard as we had many repeat guests including five lucky enough to stay on from our previous trip, we had some "newcomers" to the delights of the Solomon Islands too.
Everyone was thrilled by the immense diversity of reefs and marine life, from cuts and caves to walls and shallow coral gardens, with the odd ship or plane wreck sprinkled in between - guaranteed great dives for all! Due to untypical weather conditions on a few days we also explored some new or rarely visited dive sites - and what a welcomed surprise when we were joined by numerous eagle rays and plenty of sharks on some spots. The cuttlefish were out in abundance and we observed several females laying their eggs, either in the coral or even out in the open on an abandoned rope! The critters also did not disappoint and we found signal gobies, different nudibranchs, flatworms, pregnant pipefish, devil stinger and pygmy seahorse to name a few. Big smiles all around!
The wood carvers in Marovo were happy to welcome us again, as were the villagers of Karumolun in the Russells for their traditional performance of singing and dancing.
One of our last dives took us to Devil's Highway and after our fast drift across the reef plate we almost bumped into four manta rays. Two of them returned for a closer look at our excited guests!
We would like to thank Paul Humann and his guests for joining us on these last two trips, we had a great time and hope to see you all back soon.
And finally, of course a big thanks to the fabulous Bilikiki crew for all their hard work!
Thank you and best fishes
Tina & Oli