Golden Dawn
The Golden Dawn trip to the Eastern Fields of Papua New Guinea was one of my bucket list destinations. I went there with my oldest daughter and we had a great trip. Getting there is actually pretty easy with a non-stop flight from tokyo which flies directly to Port Moresby where the boat leaves for the Eastern Fields.
The boat is small and staffing is adequate but pretty spartan. We had 12 passengers on board and a staff of about six. The rooms upstairs are just a smidge larger than those downstairs, but not much. The common area was also small, but did have good facility for my large camera. I understand that the boat has been significantly upgraded since our trip, so hopefully I will have a chance to go back and see it upgraded.
The food was middle of the road and kind of like a picnic. When you are 100 miles out to see, you can't go to a store to fill up your stocks of food.
Craig, the owner, is a bit of sea cowboy. He enjoys every dive as much as you do and on many dives leaves you on your own. More senior divers liked Craig and those who were used to more personal oversight found him a bit stand offish. We had one other dive master on the boat and we split in two small groups with Craig with one and the other divemaster for the other group. The diving is challenging with several sites having pretty significant currents. You should be self confident and in good shape. We often found ourselves alone with a dive buddy. Fortunately the visibility was well over 100 feet, so it was pretty easy to see where you are.
By far the best dive site of the trip is Carl's Ultimate which may just be the best dive site in the world. A pinnacle about the size of a football field, the coral, fish and visibility all come together for a spectacular dive experience. The clouds of anthias are just spectacular. We also saw swirls of barracudas and clouds of banner fish that I have not seen anywhere else.
Most of the diving was either pinnacles or passageways in our out of the atoll system. We would drop off at the outer edge of the opening and let the current (sometimes pretty strong) would carry us in. We would pretty much choose our depth because the reef went almost to the surface and went down to the bottom of the ocean.
We primarily saw very pretty reefscapes, some of the prettiest in the world with soft corals and enormous fans. We saw turtles on most dives as well. We saw a dozen or so sharks during our time there and Craig said that he often sees more.
We did not see mantas which is unusual. We did see a few sharks, but not a lot.
When back near shore we did a dive with a school of flashlight fish that come out of a wreck. Everyone sets down with no lights and the fish just start to pour out. Nothing like it anywhere in the world that I know of.
