In early March, my adult daughter and I flew to Port Moresby to board the Golden Dawn which was bound to the Eastern Fields and onward to the Australian reefs of Boot and Ashmore. She and I had been there 3 years earlier and a shorter itinerary limited our diving opportunities to the inner part of the Eastern Fields.

Well, weather intervened and a cyclonic weather pattern made our trip out into the open water a high risk endeavor. After discussing options with us, the owner and captain, Craig DeWitt, sent us down the coast to the Milne Bay diving area. This did carve a couple of days of diving out of our two week trip and the diving along the southern coast is not that great. The trip out to the Eastern Fields is a bit risky and open waters does threaten these itineraries. I highly recommend on planning for a 14 day trip so that the boat can make adjustments and secure a good chunk of diving no matter what the weather.

The diving in Milne Bay ranged from spectacular to mundane at times. Banana Bommie is rated as one of the top 100 dive sites in the world and in was great. We dove several other dive sites like that where fish density was as high as I ever seen. These sites compared very favorably with the dive sites around the Raja Ampat area which is considered the gold standard in dive quality. The one missing ingredient: lots of purple and pink soft corals. We saw some, but not a lot.

Critter diving was also very good. The dive sites at Dinah’s Beach are one part coral pinnacle and one part critters. And the critters are very much in abundance. Maybe a notch below Lembeh, but only a small notch. And, you will never see another diver the entire day. On the way home, we stopped at a passage where Craig thought that the critter diving might be good and we hit the jack pot. It may well have been the best hour of dive photography that I have ever experienced. My daughter found a new critter about once every 90 seconds, and I hammered my strobes. Amazing. I might have been the first one to ever dive this site.

The Golden Dawn and the owner, Craig DeWitt, are pretty much inseparable. The boat is a bit small, especially compared to Indonesian boat that are bigger and more comfortable at times. But Craig is amazingly excited about the reefs and the secrets that they give up on each new trip. No one knows any more about this part of the underwater world than Craig. He is a class act and his recent marriage to Cam has softened him up a bit too. There is no one in the dive industry that I respect more than him.

The service is good but does lack some attention to detail. The attention to detail and pampering that you get in Indonesia are sometimes lacking. No hot towels when you come up from a dive. No hot chocolate, but you do get an great afternoon bakery creation every day. The crew is competent, but not attentive at times.

The food was good, especially our dinners. Breakfasts were very good as well, but lacked variety. His new wife, Cam, seems to add a nice “woman’s touch” and we liked we she brought to the boat. The dinners were very good, especially when we caught a Spanish mackerel and had baked fresh fish on several days.

So, who would like this boat? If luxury and detail are important to you, you should go to one of the nice boats in Indonesia like the Damai or Arenui. If you don’t mind doing some things for yourself, Craig and his boat, the Golden Dawn, are a great place to go. I had the misfortune of learning several days into the trip and a long time friend and neighbor had died suddenly back at home. So that raised the question—if I had one last dive trip to take where would I go back to? Milne Bay would get a lot of thought, especially if that were the intended spot that didn’t require 500 mile round trip of sailing to get to. Several of the dives were amongst the best I have ever done. For those of us who love the ocean, spending a final dive trip with Craig would be my final choice.

We were here with our family of five for a week. Many people come here for 3 or 4 days which is fine, but there is plenty to see and do in a week. I would suggest 2 or 3 days of diving together with lots of other rainforest activities. Getting there is a bit of an adventure in a small plane from San Jose that has to go up over the mountains. The air currents have fun and my children were white when we got there.

The lodge is reached after a 20 minute boat ride from the airstrip to dock. It's a good walk up the hill to get there. This is a place that requires a bit of fitness. The central lodge is where you eat and gather. It was very nice and had a beautiful view of the ocean to the west. The food was from a menu for dinner and buffet for breakfast. Very good lodge food, but not fantastic. Everyone was happy, but we didn't leave thinking food was the outstanding feature of the trip.

The resort has a small beach that is a bit of a hike down to the ocean. It was OK, but the pool was a lot better. Monkeys would also come to the pool and visit us which was pretty cool. You are definitely in the rainforest.

We went to the rainforest twice--once by boat and once by horse. Those were incredible days. We saw so many monkeys and other animals of the tropics. It was outstanding. On several occassions, we saw the great scarlet maccaws which was a trip highlight. We even saw them right at the lodge at one point. Very memorable.

The diving is primarily around the island of Cano which is about an hour boat ride away from the resort. Most of the people that go there are snorkelers but the staff really likes to go in with divers because it is more fun for them. The diving is pretty wild. There some very strong thermoclines, the strongest that I have ever experienced. The water was upper 70s above about 50 feet and 70 below the thermocline. You can actually see the layer in the water. Visibility was average, probably about 50 to 70 feet.

The dive landscape is primarily is boulders with algae, not much coral to be seen. But lots of bigger fish. We saw a big school of barracuda, trevaly and jacks. Saw several mantas and a mobulla ray which I had not seen before. We also saw LOTS of eels. Maybe a dozen on one dive.

The Bajo del Diablo is a stone pinnacle that rises to within 30 feet of the surface. This dive site was great, similar to some of the dive sites in the Galapagos Islands. We dove here twice and the second time we saw about 25 white tips which were very active. It was almost a little intimidating because there were so many of them.

The dive operation was small but very capable. They were well prepared for helping divers who were novice to more experienced. Because most went snorkeling, we had a divemaster for two of us and he was great at finding things of interest for us.

The Jean Michel Cousteau Resort is a well known eco resort on Fiji's second major island of Vanua Levu. It is near the small city of Savusavu which is not really a tourist town, but fun to visit nonetheless.

I think that this is the best place on the planet for diving parent who have young children through teens who might be learning to dive. I got certified when I was here with my family a year prior and have now accumulated about 700 dives so the hobby stuck. They have nannies to take care of your children (up to 12 I think), so every morning after breakfast, they get swept away and spend the next 10 or 12 hours with a Fijian nanny while you get to be a couple.

My then 8 year old son said it was the best vacation ever because they only gave him food that he loved. Simple view of life. He also got to go out into the ocean on a bubble marker which to him was like diving. He got certified 3 years later when he was 11, so it had a profound impact on him too. My oldest daughter who was then 15 got certified along with me and has now been on over a dozen liveaboards, so their formula for hooking divers is amazing. She came home wanting to be a marine biologist which didn't happen, but her love for the ocean has never left her.

Every night the resort would have a resident marine biologist give a talk on what they saw during the dives of the day, so there was very strong focus on diving.

The resort really caters to people learning how to dive or have family learning how to dive. The divemasters were all very good at persuading the snorkelers to become divers and regular divers to become advanced divers which I did in my return to the resort this time.

They had two very nice boats that held about a dozen folks each. Very comfortable and pleasant.

The resort went diving in three locations: inside the reef, outside, and Namena. The outside reefs were anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes away. One special dive was Dreamhouse which was a nice pinnacle at about 90 minutes. We saw a hammerhead there and sometimes they saw tiger sharks which we did not see. All of these dives were classic wall dives and some had swim throughs down at about 100 feet. We saw mantas and an eagle ray or two on most dives.

The food was fantastic with incredible variety. We had a combination of buffets and single entres. A lot of fish and chicken with an occasional piece of beef. Deserts were a stand out as well.

The inner reef dives were also good with some nice pinnacles and a good variety of hard and soft corals, but they were affected by the sediment of runoff so they were OK.

The twice a week trips to Namena were the highlight for divers. They were about a two hour boat ride away and thus left early in the afternoon and returned at about 5PM. Chimneys were my favorite dive site although most patrons who had been there multiple times like Grand Central Station (I was not able to go there until 5 years later on the Nai'a Liveaboard boat--it is very good.

Fiji has a lot of seasonal weather patterns. April is the end of summer and we had some pretty nasty storms but rarely missed some diving. This area can get hit by some pretty strong tropical storms in February and March. Water temperature was in the low 80s but drops pretty rapidly as you get into May and June.

We also went on a few night dives and they were very good as well.

We stayed here twice and my wife cried both times when we left because she liked it so much. She does not dive, but had plenty of activities and enjoyed her time sans small children. The Fijian people are loving and kind and have a great heritage. We got to visit a native chief's home and shared in a kava ceremony which was quite unique as well.

The Nai'a was an unusual trip for me in that I went alone. Being a lone traveler was a bit different because you don't have that go to person on the boat or underwater. It tends to amplify the importance of the details.

First, getting there is great. It is the easiest place to get to of the far away spots outside of the Caribbean. An overnight from LA and you are in Nadi and a 1 hour drive and you are ready for the boat. I stayed one night at a Nadi hotel to catch my breath and ended up meeting half of my future boat mates.

The boat is most luxurious that I have been on, even compared to the Indonesian boats which are bigger, but in a more casual way. The owners make sure that you feel like royalty when you step on board. When the boat was first built, the owners created a deal where each return visit would get a slightly larger discount. They were more successful that they had hoped and ended up with a lot of very regular repeat visitors. I was one of only 2 or 3 out of 18 that had not been on the boat before.

The food is the best you can get on a liveaboard dive boat. They have chefs come in and design a 2 week menu that rotates for each night. White table clothes and fine place settings. Meals are a big focus of the week.

The water temps in Fiji vary quite a bit through the year. I was there in early November and the water was a bit cool, especially towards the end of the week after 20 or so dives. If you go in our summer, the water can be very cold while Feb and March are very warm. Be prepared.

We divided up into two groups for the week and the dive operation was very hands off once they were comfortable with your skills. I passed their muster and was left to kind of do my own thing with my camera. Because I didn't have a dive buddy, I was almost too alone at times. The good thing was that water visibility was always very high and we could see a long ways. We were also left to dive as long as our air and computers would take care of us.

The camera facilities were more limited than what is now current standard. I would not be surprised if they have updated their UW photography benches. Equipment has gotten a lot mroe common and bulky over the past few years.

The diving is very good from start to end. The Namena marine reserve has a half dozen world class sites. I dove there from the Cousteau Resort a few years earlier, but it was a long ways removed from the hotel and boat only went there twice a week, wind willing.

Chimneys is a pair of volcanic pinnacles which are really nice with schools of fish from the bottom at about 100 feet all the way to the surface. All of the reef tops in Fiji are full of colorful hard coral garden and the Chimneys were beautiful. Kansas is another amazing dive with fields of beige soft coral flowing in the current to make it look like, well Kansas. North Save-A-Tack is also an incredible dive in the right conditions. Schools of fish and a handful of sharks were everywhere.

Nigali Passage has to be one of the best dive sites in the world. Very similar to Ulong Island in Palau. It is a mile long channel between two bodies of water and at the right current conditions it fills with the entire food chain from the eaten to the eaters. A dozen sharks, 50 or so big groupers , and schools of bait for the big guys. They set up like a wall of feeders and you just watch the action happen. It is almost worth the trip for that dive alone.

Also spectacular is E6 which is a bit pinnacle out in the blue. While some divers said that this site has been hurt by El Nino is the late 1990s, it seemed pretty amazing to me.

Fiji did lack the huge variety of places like Solomons and Indonesia to the immediate west. We did not see the exotic creatures that one sees there.

One other side note, I did befriend an elderly woman diver who had logged 12,000 dives in her career and she was retiring after she left the boat. She was most famous for being the blonde on Sea Hunter who always needed to be rescued by Beau Bridges. She had many stories to tell about the creation of the dive industry over the 1980s and 1990s. For an avid diver, her stories were great. And she still kept up with the group!