Zoë Sheng

Chinese-Canadian - 18-Feb-23 -

This one's not easy but not complicated either: get to the Solomon Islands, book a dive liveaboard that goes to the Marovo Lagoon and you are all set. In fact I find the SIs only have 3 things to really offer me anyway: west diving like the above, Munda (diving) or East Rennell which is a world heritage site but takes even more effort to reach.

So I booked a 10 day cruise and 4 are spent in the Lagoon with the rest around Florida Island etc. We visited one village but as it wasn't near the Lagoon and I figure it may not be what wants to be inscribed, not that I think the culture is that different from one neighboring village to the next these days. Cultural dancing and flower lei were a nice treat nonetheless.

I can thus only focus on the coral sea as the bird life was mainly parakeets or perhaps parrots and swallows. I wouldn't count thay special but who knows what is contained within the small islands and the larger mountains. Setting foot on a random island isn't done and there will always be some locsl suddenly appear from the bush to watch the boat or follow my kayak to barter.

The coral sea is unfortunately very poor these days. Rumor has it the Taiwanese fishing industry has already devastated the marine life for over a decade, now they are gone, replaced by a mainland China logging company...wow! Dead corals are everywhere, large fish are rare to see and your best bet is doing macro shots. Having said that, you do get the occasional octopus, murray eel, crab or if very lucky even a dolphin. I wouldn't bet on it. Diving is medicore and it will cost you quite a bit, with $250 going to national park fees alone. I would also say that while diving on nitrox makes sense on paper you can easily get to see enough with air as most dives are only interesting enough for only 40min anyway and you get to see the same at 15m and 25m. This is very different to diving in New Britain where hour long nitrox dives 4-5 a day is full of encounters and discoveries.

I won't rate this as good or bad for the purpose of being a world heritage site but I think it is not the "niche ecosystem" they make it to be and it looks like all the other areas in the region. Shame though as I was very excited about it beforehand especially because I expected it to be similar to the PNG dive trip.