The Solomon Islands
I find the most inspiring part of diving any coral reef is to cruise along a vertical wall which descends into hidden depths below me, and there was certainly plenty of wall diving in the Solomons. I could cruise along a wall dipping below outcrops of black coral and hanging soft corals, past huge barrel sponges and in and out of small gullies. This left me with a problem - with so many pictures to choose from, what do I put on the web site? Rather than the classic coral wall shots, here are a few of the pictures that are a bit different.
Nearing a point the fish life would grow denser and more active. At one such point at Merry Island the wall flattened into a shelf at about 40 metres. Above us was an enormous spiralling shoal of barracuda. This dive site has quite understandably become known as Barracuda Point.
Making use of dive computers and slowly ascending the wall to the shallows, every dive in the Solomons demonstrated the terrific bio-diversity that coral reefs in this part of the world are famous for. Looking closely I could find countless nudibranchs and other small creatures in amongst the corals. In the shallows at Losielene I saw a minute blue and yellow ribbon eel.
Near the surface there were always some caves to play in whilst making a safety stop. The first cave I dived was The Cut. This dive started as a drift along a steep wall with some nice sea fans and soft corals, we then followed a break in the wall upwards and into the side of the island. Stretching about 100 metres back into the island, the first half of The Cut is a tunnel, but towards the end the roof was open to the jungle above with sunlight twinkling though green foliage silhouetted against the water's surface.
Later we dived Custom Cave, a huge bell shaped opening into the side of an island. Entering the cave we disturbed white tip sharks resting in a crack in the limestone. The frustrated sharks swirled back and forth then darted out of the cave to the open sea. Towards the back of the cave is a slot in the ceiling that opens out onto the island above. Legend has it that the cave was the home of magical fish which village chiefs could persuade to bring death to the chief's enemies - hence the name "custom".
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