Milne Bay & the Bismarck Sea
Diving in Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea sits inside the Coral Triangle and shares its biodiversity, but almost none of its crowds. Milne Bay, at the country's eastern tip, is where muck diving was arguably invented — Bob Halstead ran the first liveaboards here in the 1980s — and its black-sand slopes still turn up rhinopias, mimic octopus and ghost pipefish. North of there, Kimbe Bay holds hard-coral seamounts that come shallow enough to snorkel, and the Bismarck Sea is scattered with wartime wrecks. The catch is access: infrastructure is thin, most diving is liveaboard or resort-based, and nothing here is cheap.
Where to dive in Papua New Guinea
What you can see
Know before you go
- Best season
- Diveable year-round. Milne Bay is at its best from roughly November to April; Kimbe Bay tends to be calmest May to October.
- Conditions
- Warm, 27–30°C, with visibility that swings hard between the reef sites and the silty muck slopes. A 3 mm suit is enough. Some sites carry real current.
- Getting there
- Fly to Port Moresby (POM), then domestic to Alotau (GUR) for Milne Bay or Hoskins (HKN) for Kimbe Bay. Liveaboards leave from Alotau; Walindi Plantation Resort serves Kimbe.