September 16-26, 2017 

During this 10 night trip we had mostly amazing weather, great dive conditions and flat seas for our crossings. We also had a great crowd onboard led by Cathy Church, it all added up to a fantastic trip!

With the sun shining brightly we had stunning dives at sites such as Leru Cut and Mbulo Caves, the light rays streaming through these sites was like something out of a religious painting! The coral gardens at Mbulo Canyons, Kicha, Kisan and Lologan were too beautiful for words with an amazing array of colourful coral and tropical fish. At Maravagi Bay divers were treated to a real show by 13 mobular rays swimming slowly in formation  right past everyone. After that it was difficult to concentrate on the numourous macro subjects at the dive site but we saw headsheild slugs, nudibranchs, angry panda anemone fish, razorfish, juvenile batfish and cuttlefish. Not to be out done by the mobular rays at least 5 different mantas turned up at the Devils Highway to entertain the divers for over an hour too! 

We had some amazing cuttlefish action on this trip with lots of activity at Karanjou, males were fighting over females while the females laid eggs in the surrounding corals. Other dive sites saw a variety of marine life including banana nudibranchs laying eggs, numerous robust ghost pipefish, a few differently coloured spearing mantis shrimps, octopus, pygmy seahorses, crocodile fish and various beautiful tropical fishes. 

We were joined by Cathy Church for her second straight trip, she helped everyone onboard improve their photo skills by giving short lectures and personal photographic advice. On the last night Cathy put together a slideshow of everyone’s top shots and the results were stunning. Well done everyone!

A big thank you to Tina, Oli and all of the hardworking Bilikiki crew for looking after us and showing us around the Solomon Islands. I can not wait to be back!

Cheers,

 Kellie Oldfield