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A bag full of goodies
December 2004

As we wait to welcome again our regular Christmas Guests & some new celebrants to Uepi for Christmas 2004 we recall what a bag of goodies the diving has been this year: the little critters, the big fish, the unexpected, the regular underwater friends. In 2004 the reef sharks have been outstanding; swarming around the Welcome Jetty, skimming around the snorkellors, going ballistic on the Points at feeding time. Never have so many nervous divers so easily lost their fear of sharks, come to respect and like these beautiful animals, and depart with great pictures & memories. This year we saw more giant Manta rays than ever & we are hoping that the understanding we gained will enable future divers to see more too. Also this year was the best for Giant Queensland Groper with several hanging about & one big guy getting right in our face plenty of times. For the past year we have had some very colourful Leaf Fish. The smaller critters have been abundant. It is amazing to see the colour adaptation of a particular pair of fish who have dramatically changed their colour scheme to mimic a white, green & yellow halimeda, or a purple sponge. The shrimps have featured too, with my favourite being the 'tail bobbers', a family of constantly dancing, elegantly marked, hyperactive shrimps whose address is an anemone. At night the beautiful spotted hingeback shrimps clamber all around the dive jetty area. We have found a lot of pygmy seahorses and they have received a lot of attention as divers strain to see & photograph them. We have had to limit this exposure, as too much of a good thing is maybe not so good for the sea-horses.

With our guest divers the most noticeable change has been that almost everyone now a days sports a digital UW camera. These have ranged from the basic but very good 5 megapixel styles to the highly desirable top of the range 14 megapixel models. We have noticed many guests enthusiastically taking hundreds, occasionally thousands, of images over a weeks visit. Whats a Gig or two amongst friends?

Right now we are gearing up for a few months of large fish spawning aggregations, the occasional whale sighting, dolphin pods caring for baby dolphins, and all the other goodies in the bag.

If we did not see you in 2004 then we hope we do in 2005! To all the Aussies, Kiwis, Poms, Swiss, Germans, Yanks, Italians, Spanish, Greeks, Slovenians, Czeck, Dutch, South Africans, Fijians, New Guineans, Japanese, Samoans, Indonesians, Indians, Canadians, Brazilians & of course our Solomon Island friends WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS & THE BEST OF NEW YEARS DIVING.

Leana from Grant, Jill & the dive team at Uepi Island Resort.

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We sincerely wish to thank the following people for use of their photographs in our website:

Peter Lange, Peter Pinnock, Oceania Films/Matt Guest, Eric Cheng, Fred Bavendam, Andy Belcher, Manuela Kirschner, Louise Murray, Roberto Rinaldi, Mark Strickland/Oceanic Impressions, Jill Kelly, Grant Kelly, Wes Kelly and Jason Kelly.