Dive Review of
Star Dancer in
Papua New Guinea/Rabaul

California, Florida, North Carolina, Washington, Bonaire, Cozumel, Fiji,
Indonesia (Irian Jaya, Sulawesi), Jamaica

Dive Conditions

[Unspecified]  

[None]  

Overall Rating

We boarded the Star Dancer in Rabaul for the 8 day Rabaul to Rabaul
itinerary.  Rabaul is on the north-eastern tip of New Britain and is a few
hours flight from Port Moresby. This was our first live aboard - we had
been saving the trip for when we felt our 14 year old son was old enough to
enjoy the trip.  This was the year.  Our first dive was on the Atun boat
wreck.  This was a fishing boat that was intentionally sunk for divers. 
The boat was a good dive and large enough that it was possible to spread
out enough on the boat to avoid other divers.  The next dive was at The
Valley.  There were numerous sea fans and sea whips.  Several divers
spotted a shark in the distance which they were convinced was a bull shark.
 The last dive of the day was a muck dive at a site called Alan’s Place. 
But, before the dive, there was a little excitement as one of the locals
had been out spearfishing and had been pulled out to sea by the undertow. 
One of the crew took off in the tender boat to look for the lost fisherman
and the Star Dancer chugged around looking for him.  It was a bit tense - I
selfishly feared seeing a body bobbing up and down in the water.  But word
came back that the fisherman had been pulled out by the undertow but
managed to get to land and walked back to town. During the dive that night,
we saw many shrimp/goby pairs, coris wrasse, crinoid shrimp, and a number
of nudibranchs.  Our dive at Middle Reef was exciting because of a blue
ring octopus that was waiting for us on the mooring.  By the 4th day of
diving, they started chumming for sharks - some of the divers were
disappointed because we hadn’t really seen any big fish.  But the chumming
didn’t attract any sharks nor did we see any for the remainder of the trip.
 One of the best dives of the trip was a muck dive – Linguan.  We saw many
pipefish, an anemone that went on and on without end filled with a wide
variety of anemone fish, crabs, shrimp - and I mean huge anemone, sea
whips.   A contender for the best dive of the trip was the jetty in Rabaul.
There were cockatoo wasp fish, lion fish, a boiling mass of catfish,
flounder, and frog fish.  A moray eel swam up into one of the dive guide’s
(Josie’s) BC and swam out the arm hole.  She panicked and flailed around
but to her credit, she didn’t bolt to the surface.  While we were under the
jetty, there were more and more local kids freediving from the surface and
yanking at our equipment. It was good natured but a bit annoying.
     Accomodations on the Star Dancer were excellent and the food, though a
bit plain, was good. However, overall, we were disappointed by the
itinerary that we picked.  We traveled from Rabaul west to the north-west
tip of New Britain and back.  The diving (compared to other locations in
PNG) was a bit disappointing. I think the Rabaul to Walindi trip would have
been better diving.  I was also a bit disappointed because of a
preconceived expectation that there would be camaraderie amongst the divers
but this just didn’t develop. Instead, there was a group of 5 buddies who
had been in a dive club together and had also dived with the Captain and 
other senior crew. As a result there was kind of a clique thing going and
it was sort of like being stuck on a boat with mean girls - if you know
what I mean.
     Ironically, the saving grace of this leg of our dive journey in PNG
was the land attractions.  During the last couple days of the trip, the
volcano, Tavurvur, was pumping plumes of ash every half hour or so.  The
view was spectacular as the heavy ash could be seen to be sifting out of
the plume to earth as strong winds carried away long continuous streams of
steam.   We also went on a land tour of Rabaul that included a visit to
Admiral Yamamoto’s bunker and tunnels built (with slave labor) for living
quarters for soldiers and to accommodate barges brought in to supply the
Japanese during WWII.  We toured an observation point for the volcano where
there was a hot spring pouring into the bay.  On the trip to and from, the
truck we were in became stuck several times in the deep ash from the recent
volcanic activity.   

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