reubencahn
Contributor
I've never made it to Milne Bay but have dove Wewak to Madang and Eastern Fields on the Golden Dawn, Kimbe Bay from Walindi and Kimbe, Fathers Reef and Rabaul from Star Dancer. All are very good, but Eastern Fields is, IMO, the best of them, maybe the best diving I've ever done. Wewak to Madang is really two types of diving. First, there's fairly exposed, high current diving on off shore reefs and Bagabag and Karkar islands. Lots of sharks, tuna, trevally. Beautiful extensive fields of coral. Second, there's Hansa Bay, PNG's answer to Truk with a large number of Japanese merchant ships sunk in water shallower than 100 ft and now covered in hard and soft corals. Kimbe Bay is protected, extraordinary clear water, huge fans. A number of sites (less protected) have lots of sharks. The whole area is very photogenic. Fathers Reef is exposed, high current, good shark action. Rabaul had very good macro. Finally, Eastern Fields is everything other than wrecks. Clear water, incredibly rich reefs, lots of macro, and lots of big stuff, huge dogtooth tuna, trevally, and sharks. If you can take a longer trip, Craig will get you to Ashmore and Boot reefs where the shark action is the best I've seen. Highly recommend Golden Dawn. But Craig is spending much of his time running private charters and piloting yachts for the very rich. So it may take time for him to get back to you, but it's worth the wait.
