Dive Review of
Telita in
Papua New Guinea/Milne Bay, Kimbe Bay

Indonesia, Thailand, Hawaii, CA, Cozumel, Curacao, Bonaire, Little Cayman

Dive Conditions

None  

large camera worktable, rinse bucket on dive deck, 110/220 charging station  

Overall Rating

We were originally scheduled for 10 days on the Telita on a repositioning
cruise from Alotau in Milne Bay to Tufi. We had so much fun on the boat
that we ended up canceling our further land plans and staying on for
another 10 day repositioning cruise from Tufi to Walindi in Kimbe Bay. The
new owner/captain of Telita, Paul Baker, is very friendly and customer
service oriented. His main concern is to make sure that his guests have the
best possible dive trip. We had horrible weather for the first 10 days of
the trip, including a cyclone in the Solomon Sea that caused rough
conditions in Milne Bay so Paul completely revised his plans and
concentrated on taking us to dive sites that were more protected. The boat
is very comfortable with 5 ensuite guest cabins. The bathrooms are quite
large for a liveaboard with plenty of hot water and even seats in the
downstairs cabin showers so that you can sit down and take a shower while
the boat is moving (something we really appreciated in the rough seas we
encountered). The boat has passive stabilizers that are lowered when at
anchor and they help minimize boat rocking. The food was not gourmet, but
it was tasty and filling with plenty of meat (fresh fish if we'd caught any
that day), veges, fresh fruit and wine with dinner. Lunches were always
prepared meals, not cold sandwiches. Afternoon tea brought an assortment of
treats including freshly baked scones, carrot cake, caramel peanut butter
bars and yummy brownies. The dive deck is large and easy to move around in
with two hot showers and a really good swim-up ladder. Depending on the
current most of the dives either started from the boat and ended with a
pickup in the zodiac, or vice versa. Nitrox is available and all of the
boat's mechanical systems were well-maintained. Except for a few muck sites
in Milne Bay, most of the diving was on bommies that were a mile or more
off shore. Our trip included lots of exploratory dives and Paul really
enjoys trying new sites. Even on his established itineraries, he always
tries to do at least one or two exploratory dives. Some sites had really
great coral and/or gorgeous walls, others showed a large amount of damage
from coral bleaching episodes, especially in Milne Bay which had a really
bad bleaching about 5 years ago. In spite of Milne's reputation for
muck-diving, we found the "critter" count to be rather low
compared to the diving we've done in Indonesia. However, PNG has an
abundance of fish large and small. Because the population of PNG is
relatively small and the Asian fishing fleets have not yet fished it out,
you get to see a complete ecosystem instead of seeing only smaller fish and
nothing large. We had at least 1-2 sharks on most dives, sometimes up to
10, mainly grey reefs with the occasional white tip, black tip and
silvertip. We also saw grouper, snapper, mackeral, barracuda, dog tuna,
napoleon wrasses, bumpheads, turtles and rays (eagle, manta and stingray)
making it a really good destination for those who like the big stuff.  

Questions?
Send an email to the author of this report

What others have to say about Undercurrent
And get immediate access to ALL 106 dive reviews of Papua New Guinea
and all other dive destinations immediately!