Lunch was some sort of Thai noodle soup, along with pizzas: pepperoni, sausage and cheese. After lunch we moved to another site - "Killibob's Knob." What a nice dive site. Tons of fish, tiny nudebranchs, great reef and sharks - silvertips, grey reef and a few whitetips. We had seen whitetips all over Cocos - I kind of think of them as the bad guy's sidekicks in "Roger Rabbit" - The Weasels. Up to no good, think they're tough, but not too bright. The rats of the shark world. We also saw "George", a huge (five foot) barracuda that lives there. He comes up to the boats to be fed chicken and other food.

Read quite a bit in the afternoon - I started "A Constant Gardener" by John Le Carre. Gary got the datalink to work - sort of. Unfortunately the connection times out before we can open any e-mails, so I don't think this will be usable. We tied up with the Star Dancer again - one of our divemasters, Digger, is "bent" (suffering from decompression sickness) and can't dive for another month and a half, and Elsie has a reoccurrence of malaria and isn't feeling up to doing every dive, so we now have Josie from Star Dancer to replace Digger for the rest of our cruise.

Dinner was outstanding - minestrone soup, pork cutlets, sauteed sweet potato slices, with "Death By Chocolate' for dessert: individual chocolate cakes with chocolate mousse, vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. Andrew admitted that his goal in life is to make everyone look like him - he's a big boy. Tried to look at the stars, but it had turned cloudy. The moon was partly hidden by clouds, but the volcano with the misty cloud layer and reflected moonlight looked like a matte painting from a movie.

Wednesday, May 1, 2002 - Papua New Guinea
The engines started around 5:45 and we moved to our first dive site, another one called "The Arches." It was sunny on one side of the boat and pouring rain on the other - very bizarre. Suited up and Elsie noticed I had a lot of water in my BCD (the thing that holds the tank and provides buoyancy) so I emptied it. The dive site is a large bommie with a smaller one with some nice swimthroughs about a hundred feet away. It's hard to find it, so a cable has been set to go from one bommie to the other at around 75-80 feet to guide the divers. When I reached the line and went to add a little air to my BCD, I realized the hose was detached, hence my BCD was full of water. I swam back up to the boat just as Gary was coming down. Brit Mark had stayed on the boat because he was having trouble clearing his ears. He immediately got two tie-wraps from his kit, fixed my BCD and off I went again.

This time I found Gary on the way back up - his camera batteries were dead. I decided not to cross to The Arches but stayed on the main bommie. Several divers were surrounding a sea fan containing a pygmy seahorse. Unfortunately, the crowd was too deep for me to get a look at it - it's tiny. The top of the reef was very nice. Josie found a flatworm swimming, and a nice blennie in his hole. Nelson pointed out an octopus hiding in a hole. He came out a little bit and promptly changed colors, pretending he wasn't really there.

We rested for a while and did a second dive there. This time I sprinted down to look at the pygmy seahorse before the "Photography Fish" descended. Pygmy Seahorses are extremely hard to see, even if you know one is there. They are only about 2 centimeters long and look exactly like the gorgonian corals on which they live. The picture below shows the scale - those are fingertips in the bottom of the frame on the right. I found out that after I left, Max came down to video the seahorse and broke off part of the coral - the part with the seahorse on it - and it fell down into the depths.

The rest of dive I spent cruising the wall and a bit of the reeftop before I got cold and went back up. I did a half an hour of tanning and read a bit - I gave up on "A Constant Gardener" and picked up "On the Road to Mars" by Eric Idle (of Monty Python fame).

Our third dive was at "Leslie's Knob" - wonderful! Great wall and a super reef on top. I found a rather nice looking stonefish (well, nice as far as stonefish go), a lovely big lionfish and a cluster of mating nudibranchs. I found one tiny, tiny nudibranch about the length of a fingernail, but he was in a crevasse and I couldn't entice him out. On the hang I spotted two sharks far below us at the bottom of the reef.

Lunch was rice, noodles, chicken, salad, ginger beef and minestrone soup. After lunch we spotted some spinner dolphins - there were dozens of them on the surface, so Elsie took me and Gary out in the skiff and we jumped in to snorkel with them. There were 25-30 of them in the water with us although they didn't want to get very close.

When we got back to the boat we moved to "Norman's Reef" - lovely fish scenes, schools of cuda and jacks, blennies and a big school of batfish that swam up and schooled with me for a while.

I got cold and went back up after 45 minutes. I read and napped in the afternoon - I'm not too sure about this book. I'm not really into it, I feel as though I am "just visiting." Gary and Mark did the night dive and found a beautiful cuttlefish - one of the strangest critters you'll ever see. They hover in the water and can change color and textures to avoid detection.

Dinner was beef stroganoff or ratatouille in pastry bowls with mashed and carrots and some kind of soup that was very good. Dessert was a "pavlova" - an Aussie meringue type of thing. I went to bed right afterwards.

Thursday, May 2, 2002 - Papua New Guinea
Engines started at 5:45 and we moved to "Elaine's Reef." Beautiful dive - great walls and incredible small stuff on top. There were schools of cuda, jacks, a couple of grey reef sharks, and huge bumphead parrotfish. I found some tiny nudibranchs no bigger than a fingernail, and shrimp and a nudibranch on the bottom of a pillow starfish. After we got back, Nelson showed us some sargasso weed he found floating an clumps near the boat. He put it in a bowl of water and there were a dozen or so tiny little frogfish hidden in the leaves.

We did our second dive at Elaine's as well. They took the frogfish down the the reef top but as soon as they released them they swam up to the surface again. Mick was video taping a beautiful sea turtle that was getting quite tired of the paparazzi in her face. We moved to "Jackie's Knob" for our third dive. Big, lovely bommie, with schooling batfish, several interesting nudibranchs, white ones that seem to spin a type of coccoon.

Lunch was chicken/corn soup, chicken curry, saffron rice, bean salad, green salad. In the afternoon we moved towards shore and achored near a small island. The villagers all flocked out in their dug-outs and settled around the boat.

We did a muck dive - with current. Saw some pipefish, nudibranchs, but it was pretty murky and more strenuous than I would have expected. Mark got some nice shots of "Christmas Tree Worms" - they are worms that live in holes on the reefs and put up feathery appendages that look like trees. When touched, they disappear back into their holes. I watched the sunset on the bow with Charlie, Julie, Mick, Andrew and Brit Mark.

Gary did the night dive and saw some interesting things including a poisonous cone shell out hunting, a bizarre anemone that looks like Medusa and a juvenile sea pen. The current had picked up quite a bit, but he managed to find his way back to the boat. George was not so fortunate - he got blown out into the channel and had to have the skiff come pick him up.

Dinner was teriyaki chicken, coconut rice, stir fried veggies and individual deep dish apple pies for dessert. With ice cream. Wow - I was stuffed.