Dive Review of Loloata in
Papua New Guinea/Port Moresby

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Loloata, Mar, 2007, by Nannette & Bill Van Antwerp, CA, USA ( 2 reports). Report 3475.
No photos available at this time
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity	N/A
Dive Operation		Shore Diving
Snorkeling	N/A
Overall Rating
Value for $$	N/A
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	Loloata Resort on Bootless Bay in Papua New Guinea is located on a small island about 30 minutes by car then 15 minutes by boat from Port Moresby. The resort itself has about 21 rooms, 15 without air conditioning and 6 with. We had a deluxe queen bedroom that was a good 5-minute walk from the main lodge where we had breakfast and dinner. The grounds of the resort were very rustic with several dozen wallabies freely roaming the grounds, and a dozen or so large victoria crowned pigeons. One of the pigeons was nesting and quite aggressive rewarding us with a couple of welcoming pecks but nothing serious. The room we stayed in was very nice, with gorgeous hardwood floors and interesting woven tapestries on the walls. Our room had a large picture window looking out onto the bay and a very nice large porch with two comfortable chairs to sit in and watch the sunrise. The only blemish in the room was the shower, where the enamel had rusted through with large rust spots on the floor. Water was hot and the water pressure was impressive, much better than many US based hotels. Each room had a small daybed that was useful as a charging station and storage facility for camera gear, a small table and a refrigerator stocked with safe drinking water as well as gear for making coffee and tea. Food was quite good, with cereal and toast available at 6 AM and hot breakfast at 7 AM. Lunch was buffet style and dinner included soup, a main course and dessert. Wine and beer were available at reasonable prices but the red wine by the glass was not very appealing; sweet and not very interesting. Overall the accommodations were very good and the staff was friendly and accommodating. The diving in Bootless Bay was very good and quite varied. The dive boat was a 30-foot Reefmaster set up with 24 tank racks. The first dive of the day was done with Aluminum 80s and the second dive was done with Al 65s. We had only 3 divers on the boat so it felt spacious but with 12 divers it could be crowded. No head on the boat, but the ocean was close by. Dive entry was a giant stride off the back, then follow the mooring line to the dive site. All the sites we dove had permanent mooring buoys. After the dive you hand up your camera and fins, and climb what has to be the best dive boat ladder I have seen with broad steps, a platform at the bottom and a nice angle, not straight up. Between the two morning dives there was tea, fruit and cookies. After the second dive we headed back to a hot lunch, dove again at 2 PM and then a night dive for those interested. The dive guides, Francis, Archie and Sibo were helpful and always adept at finding the small critters that we were interested in filming. After our last dive, the dive team washed our gear and carried up to our room where they hung it out on the balcony to dry. Putting our gear together on the first day and putting it back in the bag for the flight to dive on the Febrina were the only times we had to even touch our gear. It was put together on the boat each morning and taken off and rinsed each evening. We dove 3 wrecks and 6 other sites, all relatively close to the lodge since it was often quite windy. We saw both the biggest grouper either of has ever seen at more than 6-ft long and some very tiny pygmy seahorses. Diving conditions were varied as well, some sites had 80-foot visibility but one site we dove was green with 15-foot visibility but lots of small critters. The critter list included pygmy seahorses, a beautiful orange rhinopias, twin spot gobies, large groupers, two very big olive sea snakes, numerous nudibranchs, small red frogfish, pipefish, moray eels, white leaf scorpion fish, porcelain crabs, several types of anemone fish including true clowns, mantis shrimps, some very small (1 inch) octopus, a very large ugly stonefish, several crocodile fish, many lionfish on the wrecks, an interesting red dragonet that remains nameless, lots of tiny shrimps and crabs, particularly at night. At one pinnacle we swam with a large school of sweetlips, and a Napoleon wrasse came to visit and on our last dive we filmed a long nose filefish swimming in the Staghorn coral. Overall, it was a very nice experience in a lovely spot and we would highly recommend both the lodge and the diving.
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	501-1000 dives
Where else diving	Indonesia, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Caribbean, Cocos, Galapagos, Channel Islands, CA
Closest Airport		Getting There
Dive Conditions
Weather	windy, cloudy	Seas	choppy
Water Temp	82-84°F / 28-29°C	Wetsuit Thickness	3
Water Visibility	15-80 Ft/ 5-24 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	yes
Enforced diving restrictions	No decompression diving
Liveaboard?	no	Nitrox Available?	N/A
What I Saw
Sharks	1 or 2	Mantas	None
Dolphins	None	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	None	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish
Large Pelagics
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter		Boat Facilities
Overall rating for UWP's		Shore Facilities
UW Photo Comments	There is no central place for charging batteries and working on cameras near the dive shop and the rooms weren’t set up for it either. We resorted to using the room’s ironing board for a work station. There was no rinse bucket for cameras on the boat, but after each dive one of the dive guides used a fresh water shower to rinse off the cameras. The staff handled the cameras with great care.

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Dive Review of Loloata in Papua New Guinea/Port Moresby

Loloata, Mar, 2007,

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Dive Review of Loloata in
Papua New Guinea/Port Moresby