Uepi Island Resort - Solomon Islands - News archives

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Escape & Dive the Dream!
July 2004

One of the blessings of living on a remote & beautiful tropical island paradise is the minimal day to day assault by the modern world. With no TV and limited radio news, the day can be spent without the aggressive intrusion of election campaigns, advertising, stock market fluctuations, traffic jams,
barking neighbourhood dogs, jostling for places in the supermarket queue and other peoples noise. As the developed modern world becomes smaller, noisier, more congested and more frantic, at Uepi the world remains the same, peaceful, beautiful and natural. It is hard to imagine the cold temperatures being experienced in Southern Australia as we sit in 26C ambience on the deck at evening, sipping a cold Solbrew. With the problems of Honiara resolved by RAMSI (Regional Assistance Mission Solomon Islands) and the re-establishment of direct air services to New Zealand, the number of visitors to Uepi has increased dramatically as more and more divers Escape & Dive the Dream. The advantage of having what many consider the best home-reef in the world right at the diveshop has been clear as divers who wish to enjoy first class dives with the utmost convenience Dive The Dream.

July & early August produced a varied mix of diving. At times the visibility was exceptional as the stronger incoming tides prevailed. With this came huge schools of fish, sitting in the currents, especially at Uepi Point & Chara Point. The manta rays continued to feed on the concentrations of krill at some sites within the lagoon, but as the krill dispersed it was harder to get close to them. But to compensate a wide variety of sharks were seen. Hammerheads were rare but Silvertips, Leopard sharks & Blacktip Shark (not to be confused with Blacktip Reef Shark) were more prevalent than usual. Dolphins were sighted underwater on several occasions including sightings by snorkellors. Hawksbill turtles occupied most reefs and were unusually inquisitive.

But it was probably the smaller organisms that stole the show, especially the nudibranchs. With over 55 species identified it was nice to add the undescribed "Magical Hypselodoris " to our list. Huge 120mm "Serpent Pteraeolidia" nudibranchs were found on the P38 plane wreck. "Funeral
Jorunna" & "Anna's Chromodoris" were unusually prevalent. A family of beautiful "tail bobber' shrimp have been photographed & filmed regularly; they must be sick to death of divers shining bright lights on them. After a great deal of determined looking, a particularly exquisite ovulid (Allied Cowrie) was found on a Dendronepthya soft coral & the same search found a delicate crab that mimics the coral and lives on it.

For some years, we have dived a cave ourselves on one of the remote barrier reef islands, but have never taken guest divers there. In early August two qualified Cave Divers explored the cave. They returned quite elated having had a challenging dive & will write this cave up for the Cave Divers
Magazine. It was compared it to one of the top 10 caves dives in Mt Gambier.

With good tides and warmer calm weather ahead The Dream will only get better.

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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.