Found this rather interesting information while researching for deep diving animals. If you are interested, I did post an article related to this before (read more).
So here is a pictorial depiction of our deep diving neighbours.
Source:LiveScience
Port Moresby, the capital city of Papua New Guinea was treated to a rare phenomeon this morning with a spectular Solar eclipse.
The following was adopted from an article in one of Papua New Guinea’s major news papers
IN July 1997, the national government and Bougainville Copper Ltd received a claim for K10 billion compensation for environmental damage, loss of heritage and livelihood from Panguna landowners.
The media reported it and the government merely shrugged its shoulders.
In private settings many a joke was made about the “preposterous” claim. “Outlandish”, “ridiculous”, and “nonsense” were other words used to describe the claim.
What followed on Dec 27 of that year when the country was still groggy from Boxing Day celebrations and a group of landowners led by Francis Ona stole into the armoury of Panguna and made off with high explosives brought far more shocking expletives to the lips of those concerned.
The Panguna landowners did not present the “preposterous” or “outlandish” claim because they expected it would be paid.
They were demonstrating that the situation had reached an untenable pitch, that it was as ridiculous as the claim being made.
The BCL agreement specifically stated that it would be reviewed every seven years. The agreement was signed in 1974.
The first opportunity for a review fell due in 1981. Sir Julius Chan was prime minister then.
Bougainville regional MP John Momis was in the opposition with Sir Michael Somare.
Noises were made to review the agreement but nobody paid any attention and that opportunity fell through.
The second opportunity fell due around 1987-88. Paias Wingti was prime minister. Momis was still in the opposition.
When it seemed as if the review was not on the books, the K10 billion compensation claim was made and then all hell broke loose – literally, as history will tell.
Lesson: The national government which did not honour its own word committed in an agreement to review that agreement every seven years.
And the rest, as we all now know, is a terrible and painful part of this country’s history.
Yet as we look across the country, complaints emerge time and again from the people about the government reneging on or neglecting its clearly stipulated obligations under heads of agreements for major projects around the country.
On Monday, a very frustrated Hela Governor Anderson Agiru finally pulled out all the stops and threatened to take the national government and LNG developer ExxonMobil to court to stop the LNG project, claiming that the developer and government did not honour their contractual obligations under various agreements.
He said “it has come to a point where we have no trust in the government” and the further observation that “it is a pity Waigani has not leant a single lesson from Bougainville”.
ExxonMobil has been accused of not living up to its obligations on nine instances but we have it from the top man in the project, Peter Graham, that this might not be entirely a accurate picture.
Rather than gloss it over with generalities, it would be good for Graham to take each of the nine points raised and say whether or not it is part of its obligations under the agreement and spell out what it has done so far.
The state has a far longer list. During the Kokopo umbrella benefits sharing agreement negotiations and repeatedly during the licence-based benefits sharing agreement talks ministers went to every group making commitments.
These commitments have now become obligations which the state is required to pay up and which it has not.
In addition, there are existing memoranda of agreement for each oil project that is yet to be honoured.
On top of it all now comes the gas project agreement and all its obligations by the state.
The worst part is that following the construction phase of the agreement, no responsible minister has seen fit to visit the resource area or the resource area people who have been forcing the project to close some operations at certain stages claiming that certain obligations were being ignored out of hand.
This just is not the way to go. We are dealing with frustrated people, the majority of whom are uneducated and who, if given the opportunity, can do unpredictable and totally regrettable things.
It behooves the government and developer to pay very close attention to what the people and their governor are saying right now.
When BomaiCruz was first set up some four years ago, I had it in my mind to use this blog to convey my experiences travelling the world and working with different groups of people. I was supposed to be a log of my experiences.
A little later down the line I was asked by Andrew Thaler (currently, Dr Andrew Thaler) to merge my blog with under the new brand name of Southern Fried Science (SFS). Andrew had two other bloggers, Amy Freitag and David Shiffman blogging for him at SFS, with the inclusion of BomaiCruz, the SFS group grew to be a force in ocean blogging.
Unfortunately for me, I returned to Papua New Guinea (PNG) and took up work in the mountains so I was away from the seas and had nothing to blog about for deep sea science. Things started going down for all of us eventhough I would try to put up a post every now and then just to keep my blog active. I guess it came to a point where I did not want to admit it but the fact was that BomaiCruz was fading away.
Well, so much for that part of history. I have only recently ben offered a position to return to the ocean and as expected I came back screaming and shouting. Hell yeah, I am back and BomaiCruz will certainly be picking up momentum again in the coming weeks.
So sit back, relax, get those subscriptions refreshed and stay tuned for a new wave of BomaiCruz where we discuss Science the PNG way!
Extracts from “Coral Crucible” by Din Silcock – Airlines PNG inflight magazine vol 22, 2012
Surveys by famous marine biologists like Professor Charles Veron and Dr Jerry Allen and respected organisations like The Nature Conservancy, have helped to establish a bewildering array of statistics for the area.
Kimbe Bay s host to around 860 species of reef fish, 400 species of coral and at least 10 species of whales and dolphins.
To put that in a global perspective – in an area roughly the same size as Carlifonia – Papua New Guinea is home to almost five percent of the worlds marine biodiversity.
ust under half of that fish fauna and virtually all of the coral species can be found in Kimbe Bay, which means that the bay should really be considered as a kind of fully stocked marine biological storehouse.
Bounded by the long Williaumez Peninsula to the west and Cape Toroko some 140km to the east, Kimbe Bay is sheltered from the worst of new Britain’s weather.
Along the coastal area of the bay, a 200m shelf runs parallel to the shore for about 5km before dropping down to about 500m and up to 1,000m in the eastern part. On the norhtern outskirts of the bay, as it approaches the Bismarck Sea, the sea floor drops off rapidly to excess of 2,000m.
Across the deep seascape are dramatic sea-mounts and coral pinnacles that rise up towards the surface and rpovide isolated ecosystems for the marine creatures of the bay.
The sea-mounts in particular act as beacons to the bay’s diverse and prolific pelagics and marine mammals – with twelve species of mammals identified to date, including sperm whales, orcas, spinner dolphins and duogong!
The deep waters and generally benign conditions functions as a kind of marine nursery and are fundamental to the incredible biodiversity of Kimbe Bay, but the other significant element is the nutrient-rich currents of the Bismarck Sea that provides the nutrients to sustain the bays residents and visitors.
To the south of the New Britain are the 4,000m-deep basins of the Solomon sea that the Southern Equatorial Current crosses as it makes its way to the Bismarck Archipelago.
As those powerful currents flow along the north coast of New Britain and around the top of the long and narrow Williaumez Peninsula, eddies are produced in the western part of Kimbe Bay that direct the nutrient rich flows into the bay and induce further upwellings from the deep water basins to the north.
In a nutshell, the forces of nature have combined to produce an almost perfect natural environment to create and sustain the coral crucible and the creatures that cohabit with it.
A little over a year ago, five Papua New Guinean scientists together with a boat operator and one extra person perished in the seas of West New Britain. These five were members of the Papua New Guinea (PNG) Institute of Medical Research (PNGIMR) who were on a trip to conduct Malaria Research in the island of Bali.
To this day, no one knows what happened to them, they simply vanished. Search and rescue parties were sent out but a week later called and the case became a police matter after rumours surfaced that these five scientists were taken hostage by pirates. Any progress on the matter has not been reported and the general public (at least the ones concerned) still remain in suspense over what happened.
In the weeks that followed, fishermen from Manus found a partially buried body and after images of the body were broadcasted by the media it was confirmed to be that of the skipper of the dingy ferrying the five scientists. A little after that, the dingy itself was found floating in the waters of East Sepik. (More…)
Having had no luck at all, the last resort was to put up a US$10,000 reward for information leading to the whereabouts of the missing scientists. What transpired after this is still a mystery to everyone in PNG.
What happened to these people? If they were held hostage, why has there been no demands/ransoms? If investigations into the disappearance of these people continued, why is there no reports put out to the public? Why is everyone so quiet about this?
It is really terrifying to see that Papua New Guineans do not care what happened to these people missing at sea. The PNGIMR and relevant authorities have become so silent on the matter, not one report or public statement has been made on the efforts put into searching for the missing people or what their investigations had revealed.
Family members of the missing people are still in doubt and do not have closure on the matter.
Reports have just surfaced of an oil spill in Papua New Guinea where the country’s biggest oil and gas producer (Oil Search) has admitted “sighting a small number of droplets” in the water after loading oil onto a tanker at its Kumul Marine Terminal in the Gulf of Papua.
In its official statement, the company has advised that loading has ceased and they are awaiting the arrival of a diving support boat to inspect the loading line. Sources say the arrival of the support vessel is about a week away and rough weather in the area has prevented preliminary inspection.
While the company claims the spill is less than a barrel, a spill is a spill. Bad weather coupled with the delay in the arrival of the diving vessel, it would be interesting to see just how small this spill is.
Allan Bird, a name synonymous to the East Sepik Provincial seat, much like counterpart Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare is to PNG politics and the only person who actually gives the Grand Chief a run for his money during election time has come out about his views on corruption in PNG. This painfully brutal interview, actually accounts for corruption in PNG and how our leaders keep letting us down.
Click here to watch the interview
So true is Allan Bird’s final remarks that
“these people aren’t here because we’re such a great country to do business in, they’re here because this is a country where you can actually get away with a lot.”
