New Ireland is known for its pelagic fish action, but you need currents to attract big fish. These currents can sometimes be strong and make diving a little difficult, however, our experienced dive staff will look after you and ensure that you will be rewarded with world class diving.
Please keep in mind that nature prevails and that strong currents (and pelagics) cannot be guaranteed to occur daily, or to run the right direction. There are no working tide tables for the Kavieng area, so where normally, the incoming and outgoing tides move in a 6-hour interval, we can have 10 hours of outgoing tide, followed by 3 hours of incoming, followed by another 9 hours of outgoing.
It would also be wrong to come to Kavieng and expect to see just big fish and lots of sharks. There is so much more to see in these waters if one looks beyond the pelagics and keeps an open mind about the diving on offer. After all, Papua New Guinea’s oceans are part of the Coral Triangle and have some of the largest bio-diverse reefs in the world!
Daily boat trips to the outer reefs, drop offs and wrecks with a maximum of three dives per day are offered. We usually start at 8.30am with 2 morning boat dives and return to the island for lunch. In the afternoon, you can either go out for a third boat dive, relax on the island or do a shore dive on our fabulous house reef. For divers staying at Lissenung and booking boat dives in the morning, these shore dives are free of charge. With 350 different species of fish, this is a nice little added bonus! Our house reef is also the spot to do night dives, with another whole bunch of different fish, molluscs and crustaceans coming out to play and feed.
Water temperature in this area ranges from 28 – 30 degrees Celsius (83 – 87F) all year round and underwater visibility from 20 – 40m (60 – 120ft) on most dives.
Due to the fact that we are a dedicated dive resort and thus work around the diving and the best conditions for diving, departure times may be changed to suit our guests’ wishes and/or the conditions. This means that we may depart at 8am in order to catch an incoming current, and hopefully lots of fish, at our chosen dive site for that day.
We use permanent moorings on almost all of our dive sites to avoid damage from anchoring. Our ‘no-touch’ policy should also be followed. The traditional reef owners receive a user fee from us, which is paid per diver per day. A part of these payments go to community projects such as schools, aid posts etc. This fee is not passed on to our guests, unlike the PNG Divers Association “Environment & Safety Fee” of K 20.00 per diver per dive day.
A Memorandum of Understanding between the dive operators and the traditional reef owners has been signed, which includes issues such as fees to be paid, looking after the reef and its inhabitants and much more. The introduction of this MOU has been a great success as we can see a fast improvement at the dive sites where the reef owners have signed the MOU.
Lissenung Island Resort has a very photographer-friendly setup. There is a separate freshwater rinse tank dedicated to camera gear. In your room is a big work space in front of the window, giving you plenty of natural light to work on your camera equipment. A number of power points as well as 24-hour electricity supply ensure that your batteries can be charged at any time. Our staff know how to handle camera equipment and are able to assist you when entering and exiting the water.
The resort’s three dive boats will have you at any of our dive sites within 20 – 30 minutes. The larger dive boat “Andiamo” is a 26ft fiberglass boat with twin 140HP 4-stroke Suzuki outboard engines and can comfortably carry 10 divers, 2 dive guides and the skipper. There are also two smaller dive boats, “Raven” and “Carola”.
“Raven” is a 24ft fiberglass boat with a single 140HP 4-stroke Suzuki outboard engine and can comfortably carry 6 – 8 divers. “Carola” is a 23ft fiberglass boat with a single 115HP outboard engine and we take 4 – 6 divers on this boat. With a canopy, equipment boxes, tank racks and a ladder, these boats are perfectly designed for diving. A DAN oxygen unit for emergency situations is on board all boats and our dive staff are trained in its use.
Our fully serviced dive shop includes two Bauer compressors (2 x 260l/m), 50 aluminum tanks (8, 9 & 11l) and 12 full sets of Scubapro-Uwatec rental equipment. PADI dive courses from Open Water right through to Divemaster are available, as well as a number of specialty courses.
A typical day at Lissenung looks a bit like this:
| 7.00 – 8.30am | Breakfast |
| 8.30am | Boat departs for 2 morning dives |
| approx 1pm | Lunch (this basically happens whenever the boat returns from diving) |
| 2.30-6pm | 3rd boat dive, free shore-diving on the house reefs or time to relax |
| 7.00pm | Dinner |
| 8.30pm | Night Dive |