November 26-December 6, 2019 Manager’s Blog
For this trip we were joined by a great group of people all intent on doing some awesome diving and having a good time. The weather, diving and company made that very easy!!
It is not just the usual highlights that make people love diving the Solomons, it is the things it is sometimes easy to take for granted. While I certainly had a lot of “highlight” moments, like swirling barracudas, halemeda ghost pipefish and tons of barbabanti sea horses on one fan, it is sometimes the quieter moments that really make the trip. For me some of those included schools of pyramid butterfly fish on mildly currenty corners, four lion fish swimming around in formation (I know they are a scourge in the Caribbean but are native to the South Pacific and really just about the most spectacular fish in the sea when you really look at them), drifting along lush coral gardens taking in all the colours and shapes - you could not sculpt such a visually interesting place, lying at the bottom of Leru Cut looking at the light beams coming down and then just drifting along a sheer, bottomless looking wall in near perfect viz - there is a beautiful floaty feel to it and a surreal, “I should be falling but I am not” sense of space. They are not always the things people take photos of or mention after a dive but often they are the best moments!
The village visit to Karumolun was also a great experience and we got to give out some NASA T-shirts kindly donated by William Kelly who had been on earlier in the year. It was really nice to see Chief Raymond and everyone in the village doing so well and putting on such a wonderful show - the panpipes were a big hit this trip too.
Thanks to everyone who joined us this trip - it was a lot of fun and I got to learn some new young person words! Thanks to Matt Smith and Cameron McFarlene for some well ooft photos! Hope to see you all back soon.
And finally a big thanks to Pato, Fernando, all the crew and all the office guys for making this such a great trip and for all their hard work over the year!
Cheers
Sam
 

Top Photo and below underwater photos by Matt Smith (Matty Smith Photo)