CAMERA LESSONS-GOING FOR THE GOLD-KICHA KAVERNS-NATE'S BIRTHDAY PARTY- HANGING GARDENS-THE GREAT PEAVA SMOKE OUT!

PLEASE-THROUGH APR. 23, USE lisachoquette@gmail.com !!!

Hello, Everyone, I want to share with you 2 very important lessons I learned about underwater photography. #1- Your camera will work MUCH better if you put the battery IN the camera- not in the charger. #2. When #1 has occurred, every fish you've been struggling to get near for the past year will swim right up into your face and SMILE! Yes, I do mean SMILE! They did it today. As I began my descent ( not realizing #1, yet) and saw the black tip reef shark swimming lazy cirles over the top of our bommie, and then had the giant trevally swim right up to me and grimace ( don't think jacks can smile)- I knew it was going to be an incredible dive-all because my battery was still in the charger. .

I admit to playing a great deal of hookey my last 2 weeks at home; facing a month out of the water, I am squeezing in all the diving I can. It has occurred to me that we spent our first year building our list of dive sites that would satisfy most divers most of the time in various weather conditions. With a list compiled that should keep anyone pretty happy for at least 2 weeks, we are now, my friends, going for the GOLD- and finding it.

Currents, surge, depth- no matter- if it looks interesting, we try it. Our motto has become-"Plan your dive, dive your plan----and be ready to change it at any second according to our fluctuating currents".

Kicha Kaverns resembles creation in process ( and probably is). Massive chunks of the island were ripped from it's core and deposited on the offshore shelf , often perching crookedly on preceding structures. The resulting sunlit caverns are a favorite napping spot for white tip sharks, huge snappers and multitudes of soldiers and squirrels. Every inch between hosts a multitude of different hard corals and their resident damsels and anthias, crabs and scorpionfish. Bright butterflies wander nibbling on the various corals.

On Nate's birthday, he got to choose the dive site- a point off Kicha we had yet to explore. Descending on the north side of the wall, we were immediately engulfed by schools of blue and gold fusiliers, pyramids and surgeons and a couple of very curious gray reef sharks. We swept around the corner to a series of straight walls, ridges and gigantic overhangs and not to our expected golden soft corals- but to fluffy PINK soft corals.

Hanging Gardens is a repeat- but we have always done it as a 2nd dive. Today we rolled into a ripping current which whipped us to the top of the wall and over we went- down, down, down a wall massive in its sheer ness, glorious in its colors. We swapped the gold soft corals at the shallower depths for soft pinks and snow whites, puntuated with golds and majentas.Here and there a massive barrel sponge provided protection for a cleaning station. A school of jacks raced up over a ridge; a hammerhead cruised by; a manta shadowed the sunlight. I was wondering exactly how much beauty one could reasonably tolerate. Nate rapped his tank and motioned to look up to where the ledges we call the gardens jutted out above us, their fan and whip corals waving gently, and knew I had yet to reach a limit.

The ledges provided their everychanging patterns of color- soft corals of every color backdrops with a changing cast of red squirrels and soldiers, bright purple Queens, the "Golden Girls- female Scalefin anthias, and hidden treasures of pygmy wrasses, marbled shrimp, rippling oysters and the occasional snoozing white tip. Today's safety "dive" ( we never stop)

featured a huge bumphead parrot fish trying for an algae snack and being attacked by a school of Two-Tone wrasses intent on procuring a parasite feast.

After the dive, I asked my candidates to write about the dive- pretend they are writing to one of our divers. And they are so priceless I must share them with you.

I watched them struggling to find the English words to express themselves ( using my Wordfinder Dictionary), and had tears in my eyes as I read the results.

Here is part of Nate's letter to Maggie White ( unedited) ---- "Yesterday was the most thrilling and exciting dive of my life. We called the dive site Hanging Gardens. We started down the walling at about 30 feet covered with soft corals are reflected their colours from the rays of the sunlight. Looking up and horizontally along the walling from 100'-120' was just hard to imagine how beautiful it was. We came to the climax of our dive when reaching the long ledges at about 40+ feet that covered with soft corals of many different colours. that was the very spot that we initiated the name of the divesite HANGING GARDEN. Beneath and along the ledges were thickly covered with soft corals and it's gorgeous. Under the ledges we saw wrasses, dottybacks, soldierfish, angelfish, seasnake, scorpionfish and invertabrates. I wish I could have spent the whole day just exploring the ledges.

Up above the ledges we came to a shallow depth of 15-20 feet and spent the entire remaining time for the safety stop. In that shallow depth, we saw a lot of different kinds of wrasses, triggerfish, surgeonfish and a Humphead parrot fish cleaned by several cleaner wrasses. We popped out of the surface and started talking about the excitement of the dive and the divesite until our boat captain picked us home. I couldn't wait to share with you the memories of this dive and wishing you to come and see the wonders out here. " ( by Nateson Henry)

To Tom Shockley from Viso "Hey, Tom, We just come back from our dive at Male Male dive site call Hanging Gardens...

Hey, Tom, it beautiful thing we see it. A lot of big fish and many thing that I never seen before---and lot of sort coral and hard coral and we are drowning in colour of soft coral and we did good dive. I hope you will come back some time." ( by John "Viso" Timothy)

We just did a very beautiful dive at Male Male at a divesite called Hanging Garden. We dropped in on the plateau and the current swept us to the wall to an amazing spot where the vertical wall is totally covert is colourful soft corals. I could have stopped the dive right there and just look at that beautiful wall- I'm glad that I didn't. Otherwise I would have missed the hammerhead Shark cruising by below me and all the other schooling fish dancing in the blue. As we continued we came to a place where it was easily to see where the site got his name from. ledges over ledges over ledges and from the "roof" soft corals are haging down. It definitely looked like a hanging garden to me". ( by Nicol Schilling- from Germany)

To Adam Ravetch from Dellington Hi! G'day, Adam, We went diving yesterday at Hanging Garden. Hope you remember that dive site when you here with us. Yeah, Adam, we just drop 10 metre after from where we use to enter and we were right at a very stiff wall running vertically down at about 15 metre and was decorated with lots of different coloured soft corels- red, white, purple, orange and so on. It's more beautiful than the Golden Dawn and the End of the World.

Adam, I truly was stuck there, don't know what to look for, as so attracted by the formation and the arrangement of many coloured soft coral. As we going shallow, from the distant we could see the white soft coral hanging all over the ledges of hanging gardens.

You could dive at Hanging Garden now by just looking up those snow mountain and imagine dive at Hanging Gardens.

Big hug from the SDA crews. ( by Dellington Bare)

To Jim Mitchell from Ronald Amos ( to Jim)---"Like Hanging Garden is one of my best dive sites and yesterday afternoon we went there and did diving. And Lisa saw me soft coral and its beautiful. Then we find scorpionfish, white tip shark, big eye trevally and other sports. ---". ( by Ronald Amos)

( To Maggie White from Broom Palmer)

"-----------We are diving Male Male Hanging Gardens and found a lot of beautiful stuff like fan coral, soft and colorful coral, shark, barracuda, jack's and rainbow, etc. They are very interesting. Also we found a cave about 100 ft. deep. Inside this cave we found a blue spotted ray and a school of soldierfish, etc. ---"(by Broom Palmer)

But it has not all been play. We have made good strides in our Divemaster class, progressing slowly and very carefully, aS the vocabulary and syntax are difficult and challenging. But all have passed their first exam, and have much of their water work finished.

Odds and Ends: A meeting of the community health committee outlined plans for the "Great Peava Smokeout" , scheduled for May 3. We will kick off a week of activities and programs aimed to help those who wish to stop smoking with a "Walk-a-thon" from Kio to Peava Ballfield. Am working on rounding up materials and a speaker from Ministry of Health. Should any of you have any materials that might help, ESPECIALLY DVD's, please drop me an E mail.

And as I complete this, I am in Honiara 2 days early. The stopping of our Sunday flights to Honiara resulted in a 4 ½ hour boat trip yesterday (Sat...,

15th), leaving Peava at 4 a.m. headed for a 9:30 flight from Ramata, which, due to a horrendous storm which hit 10 minutes after our arrival, got off the ground at noon. Am using the extra time to catch up with friends, the internet, and just relax. I'm very excited to be on my way to see my daughters and my grandson, Tom, my sister and friends.

Lots of love and hugs to all, Lisa

-- Lisa Choquette SOLOMON DIVE ADVENTURES Peava Village-Marovo Lagoon SOLOMON ISLANDS lisa@solomondiveadventures.com www.solomondiveadventures.com