The Milne Bay area is a Macro Photographers dream with an unbelievable number of critters, many of which have always turned out to be new secies.
In hundreds of dives I still haven't recorded every species and I'm sure that even with another few hundred dives and another few thousand images there would still be more to find.
Its funny, I always get just as much 'kick' out of finding some Coleman's shrimps Periclimenes colemani on their host fire urchin Asthenosoma ijimai as I did when I first discovered them in 1974. I always spend too much time at the 20metre plus depth taking more images and trying to improve, that I run out of bottom time and swear that that is the last time, but it never is.
( photo: Neville Coleman)
In certain areas a serious photographer sets up their camera for what they expect to see, always allowing some compromise for the unexpected. I had been diving Milne bay for 28 years and I knew that by far the most productive method of producing excellent images for that area was Macro Photography.
To this extent ( as I hadn't yet switched over to digital equipment) I dived with 3 camera systems. (1) a Nikonos 111 with 28mm lens, 1:2 close up tube and a single, overhead strobe (2) a Nikonos 111 with 28mm lens, 1:1 close up tube with twin strobes mounted at a 45* angle, which I carried around my neck.
Using my 1:1 Macro system to photograph a small nudibranch (12 mm) crawling along the edge of an upturned piece of rubble. This system has allowed me to photograph species under extraordinary difficulties and hazardous conditions, because I can shoot the entire roll using only one hand and I never needed to focus. It takes brilliant little shots. ( photo: Jorina van der Westhuizen)
My main camera system was a Nikon F4 camera with 105mm macro lens, housed in a Nexus housing with twin Nikonos 105 strobes mounted on a short arm system of my own design which covered every position I would ever need to shoot in.
Of course lugging around 3 individual camera systems for most of my diving career was to put it mildly 'a drag' but it dive give me the ability to capture any creature I encountered from a size of 1.5 metres ( in clear water) down to 3mm in 'soup'. It also allowed me the luxury of producing around 100 images per dive. Which before digital arrived was certainly a boon.
I had waited two years to get the chance to be at Samauri again, and at last, there it was!
I looked down at the derelict old jetty, loose timbers vibrating in the screaming current that whirled in visual eddies through the duckboard and streamed away on the tide. Peering into the clear water I could make out patchy broken corals littered with discarded junk from another era. Old 44-gallon drums, corroded water tanks, pipes, fibro sheets, fallen pylons and debris everywhere, all sloping down to a sandy channel bottom. It certainly didn't look too inviting, especially in view of the strong current.
Current lessons
Some of the many dive sites in Milne Bay are prone to strong currents. Some can only be dived on the top of the tide ( slack water) yet they tem with criters that makes every dive worthwhile. Still vivid in my mind was the fiasco of the day before. Drifting back from behind the reef to the heavily weighted safety stop drop line, one minute I was at the three metre level and the next a current surge swirled through and I was flapping on the surface struggling to hang on and inch my way along the knotted drop line to the duckboard. Luckily the crew was vigilant and pulled the rope in to relieve me of my cameras. I'd forgotten over the ensuing two years just how useless a diver can become in strong current.
The current didn't appear to be that strong on the reef below because we were behind it. I had no problem pulling myself against it along the bottom using my dive knife. The anchoring site was fixed into the reef at around eight metres. It would have been possible to make a 3 min safety stop at the anchor line and then drift back to the drop line and swing up to the steps.
My mistake on that day was in not considering all the possibilities due to my last 200 dives being in areas where safety stops were made on the bottom, or on the drop line at 'still' water dive sites.
Perhaps it wasn't such a big deal missing one safety stop in over 12,000 dives, but in my survival system each dive is a challenge to do one's best, and the sea and its many moods should never be taken for granted as it does not suffer fools lightly.
Worldwiders
I was once again on the live-aboard MV Chertan, this time in the company of 11 other divers from Germany, USA, Britain and Australia, a smorgasbord of international intrigue. All highly motivated underwater photographers with an array of film, digital and video cameras. Some camera systems were quite large and seemed quite unwieldy to me but everybody appeared to use their equipment very well underwater.
Certainly, the digital experts with their shots all downloaded and into their laptops before I had a chance to change film, continually amazed me.
Faulkner's coral Tubastrea faulkneri makes a brilliant macro subject and I can never resist taking more shots, even though I have hundreds of images of it. The best and easiest colonies are to be found beneath jetties on the pylons where they have shade and lots of current to bring in the rich plankton upon which they feed. ( photo: Neville Coleman)
Their ability to do five or more dives a day and night and get all their hundreds of images into the system all programmed and put into the correct sections was beyond my capacity. I was flat chat doing four dives a day with three camera systems and changing six films. Not everybody was into macro to begin with but by the time the trip finished even the few not so interested were taking close-ups and checking the books.
Subjects
Capturing close-up images of critters is not the most difficult thing to do. The real skill in macro photography is being able to find the various critters in the first place. To this extent in Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea nobody has found as many individual discoveries and new species than Maleta Luke, MV Chertan's cook and chief critter finder. With her unique head-down, feet-up diving technique and the worst moth-eaten mouldy old leaky dive mask imaginable this unassuming Milne Bay lady with the 'million dollar' eyes and cheeky smile is the best in the Milne Bay business.
A small juvenile Flamboyant cuttlefish Metasepia pfefferi 'walks' along on the sandy bottom at 20 metres. Some that Maleta found were only 15mm in size.
( photo: Neville Coleman)
Yes! Of course MV Chertan's photographic clientele amaze everybody the world over with their fantastic video footage and brilliant images of incredible macro life and, of course, each gets the credit for their images. Yet, for over 10 years those results would have been a whole lot less if it wasn't for the enthusiasm and ability of Rob Van der Loos able-bodied dive buddy. She will be really 'pissed' at me for saying so and I may never get another 'cookie' but that's okay, I'm allowed, because there are few in the world who can equal my discoveries and none would ever begrudge her my admiration.
While I am at it I would like to thank all the boat crews, deckhands, and dive guides everywhere, for without their day to day professionalism the dive travel industry would be of lesser measure.
Derelict jetty dive
Well, current or current, I couldn't wait another three hours to get in the water at slack tide; after all, I could hide behind the pylon stumps and at least get some idea of the site.
Less than enthusiastic I kitted up, Clark the deckhand handed my cameras down and I went straight to the bottom three metres under the boat. It was nothing like the surface current assumed to be and although running, it was workable.
The Many Host Goby Pleurosicya mossambica ( as it name suggests) can be found on many hosts. This male has chosen a coralline algae host to occupy and look after the eggs deposited in his territory by a visiting female. ( photo: Neville Coleman)
My plan was to angle down the slope against the current to the channel bottom, check out the deeper water, then work back up to the shallows behind the jetty. Keeping in the lee of coral outcrops and debris the first bit of old fibro I turned had a lamellarid which was new to me and two nudibranchs I had never seen before. All of a sudden, the current seemed a lot less. An old blackened timber riddled with teredo 'shipworm' appeared further down the slope. The underside was flat with patches of encrusting bryozoans, sponges and ascidians. At first glance, there didn't seem to be any mobile invertebrates at all. However, I examined each bit closely with a torch and found a sea spider, two flatworms and two brilliant brown nudibranchs buried in the brown sponge. What was really amazing was that the colour and pattern on the body of the nudibranchs was exactly the same as the sponge. Without the torch I would never have seen them.
Already the dive was a success and I had only just begun. The bottom at 18 metres at the edge of the slope was loose rubble, sponges, rocks, algae and ascidian clumps covered in hydroids, bryozoans, compound ascidians and small solitary corals. Most of this habitat was washed into the gutter by the currents sweeping across the wide sandy expanse of the channel floor.
Typical colour pattern exhibited by the Imperial shrimp Periclimenes imperator when associated with the Spanish Dancer nudibranch Hexabranchus sanguineus. ( photo: Neville Coleman)
Typical colour pattern of male (left) and female Imperial shrimps Periclimenes imperator when associated with sea cucumbers ( as these two are) sea stars and pleurobranchs. When I first found this difference in 1976 I was convinced that they were a new species. However, Dr. Sandy Bruce ( who had studied both the specimens and images I had sent him replied that they were both the same species and my ' new species' was only a colour phaze, and that was that! I was shattered because up until then I was of the understanding that each species had an individual colour pattern. ( photo: Jorina van der Westhuizen)
I edged my way out on the sand (by digging my knife into the sand and using it to pull myself along or anchor me when I stopped) and noticed long white hydroids lying down, flattened by the current. Even from three metres away I could see they had bumps on them. My heart missed a beat. I had never seen that species of hydroid before and bumps meant only one thing, nudibranchs! Within seconds, I was there. Putting the two cameras on the bottom I twisted the hydroid over and there were three little scrunched up grey clumps on the stalks. I couldn't quite see which end was which at 20 metres and removing the Nikonos III 1-1 from around my neck took a series of shots of these (new to me) Doto sp. nudibranchs.
Dubbed as the Donut Doto Doto sp. this brilliant Macro species has so far only been found at Milne Bay and ws originally found by Maleta Luke of Alotau, Papua New Guinea. ( photo: Neville Coleman)
The sandy bottom had lots of small solitary corals of at least four species and here and there were clumps of coralline algae, ascidians, soft corals, bryozoans and other hydroids. As I got further out on the sand the current seemed to get stronger so I drifted back a bit towards the slope and found a Milne Bay Godiva Godiva sp. hanging onto the side of a green coralline algae, my second one, ever.
Checking everything, the time went quickly and at 1000 PSI I decided to call it quits in the deep for this dive. Just then another clump of long white hydroids hove into view. I stopped, dumbfounded, these scrunched up clumps had black and orange circles; amazing nudibranchs. I knew exactly what they were as Roger Steene had showed me shots of them years previously. Getting low on air I just grabbed a bit, picked up the cameras and headed up into the shallows to photograph my find.
Conclusion
Eighty-five dives later and with over 80 species of critters I had never seen before photographed, the Milne Bay expedition was over for another year. Between us we had found over 125 species of nudibranchs and 32 flatworms at the dive sites we visited. At least 25 animals are undescribed species, few have ever been published before.
At only 10mm in size this larger female Zebra Stilifer Stilifer zebra on its host Brittle Star Ophiothrix sp. is about as macro as one can get. ( photo: Neville Coleman)
Generally only seen on its spiny soft coral host Dendronephthya sp. this golden form of the Spotted Egg Cowry Pseudosimnia punctata has only been found in Papua new Guinea.
( photo: Neville Coleman)
Only 15mm across the Radar tubeworm Lanice sp. if far more common than divers imagine, and they can be found in a number of habitats. However, with the right background they make a marvelous macro subject
( photo: Neville Coleman)
In 1976 I found my first Compressed Spindle Cowry Phenacovolva coarctata on sea whips. It took another 30 years of studying the family Ovulidae before I could come up with a name for it. I was fascinated by the fact that without any eyes, this mollusc was able to mimic its host's colour and even produced mantle papillae with eight tentacles, exactly the same as its host sea whip's polyps.....bloody amazing! ( photo: Neville Coleman)
New lamellarids, sea spiders, hermit crabs, flatworms, algae and lots of 'stuff', two species of blue-ringed octopus, eight species of cuttlefish and bobtail squids, hermit crab anemone shrimps, six species of sea pens, 150 kinds of stony corals, at least 60 soft corals and gorgonians, lacy scorpionfish, three species of ghost pipefish, seahorses, red-winged pipefish, pygmy seahorses, pygmy pipehorses, razor fish; a never-ending magnificence of critters. Everywhere we went there were startling discoveries. Roger even found brilliant species at the home port dock at Alotau. Certainly, it was the most productive diving I have done for a long time.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to Mr Rob Van der Loos, Cherie, Peo, Maleta and all the crew of MV Chertan for another unforgettable experience in Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea.