Finally, Eastern Fields: Golden Dawn Part II

After six days steaming up and down the coast of Papua New Guinea just south of Port Moresby, the capital, we headed out for the Eastern Fields, a 98 nautical mile ride southwest, which would take almost 12 hours. Arriving to the fields is almost anti-climactic, with nothing more than white-cap breaking waves on the horizon and what looks like an oil slick of translucent emerald green shimmering almost like neon, announcing shallower worlds of coral below. While the waters and their contents were worth the wait, the journey has taken its toll on Jacquie, and she continues to struggle fighting her head cold and battling the ill-effects of an unreasonably rough sea. At times, half the boat has been taken ill, and the all-night journey produced many groggy travelers on the morning of our arrival.

Within 15 minutes of arrival, we waste no time and get into the wet. Days of murky visibility and green, brackish water gave way to the deep blue of Coral Sea beauty. While the visibility could be better (currently at about 75 feet) it is stupendous in comparison to what we have dealt with, and the hoots and squeals of delight, along with fist-pumping and large smiles barely obscured by our regulators reflect the mood of finding nice open waters. Finally we found the BIG BLUE!

Big smiles as we find BLUE waters in the Eastern Fields!

Reef fish abound

Lots of barracuda too - they would swim right to you and envelope you!

We saw some great big tuna as well - schools of a couple dozen or so

The fish life abounds here, with schools of numerous species, many I have never seen: hammerhead shark, large (400 pound!) dogtooth tuna, huge (300 pound!) potato cod, rhinopius or lacey lionfish, flashlight fish (that emit bioluminescence at night) and sea-snakes were all part of the cast of marine animals we came across. In addition there were uncounted numbers of corals, sponges and small life like reef-fish and nudibranch.

Of course the biggest impact to our visit was the cyclone. The captain of the boat and many others we met with many years of experience in Papua New Guinea, said this was the earliest such weather seen in at least 20 years. Normally we should have found sun, dormant (or “doldrum”) waters and amazing visibility below. While this was not the case, we still feel lucky to have visited a very remote marine eco-system. We made the best of it, and have actually considered creating a new PADI certification (named for our new small club): Cyclone Divers!

You can see Cyclone Guba (white swirl) in the top right - we were on its south-western edge. Too close!

Not all the days were bad, and we had one or two nice days in the Eastern Fields

Although remote, one draw for us to such places is to see large pelagic sea-life, especially sharks. Unfortunately, sharks were in short supply. The reason: shark finning operations that came through the are 3 years ago, decimating the shark population. One such vessel was caught by Australian authorities just south of the area, and confiscated 240 tonnes of shark fins. That’s just the FINS. No doubt untold thousands of sharks were destroyed to meet the demand for shark-fin soup – a delicacy that has no taste. The fins are after all merely cartilage – it is prized merely for some mythical properties of potentcy prized by Asian (mainly Chinese) markets. So – if you ever see shark-fin on the menu of a restaurant you are at, please walk out and let them know it’s a horrible, destructive practice.

On the whole, the dive experience was good, but due to the weather and rough seas, we were limited overall. It still amazes me to see the things we can see while taking a peak into the undersea world. It is also humbling and sad to know the devastation we can wreak so easily. I'll be back here someday, without doubt, and hope the waters will be as vibrant with life as they are now, and possibly rebounding with more big life.