I have just returned from a fantastic trip to Papua New Guinea, my favourite tropical diving location in the world. As usual with every trip up there I was privileged to experience yet another encounter that makes my logbook the envy of every diver I have ever met.

My dive buddy Richard Arnold and I were on a mission, Richard had spotted a beautiful orange anglerfish on our first dive that day while we were waiting patiently for the rumoured manta encounters that are common in this site. None turned up and our wide angle lenses were useless for photographing anglerfish. So here we were on dive two happily photographing the anglerfish with our macro lenses when all of a sudden I hear Richard yelling (he can scream underwater!), his eyes looked equally wild and he was gesticulating madly at something just near my left shoulder. I just knew it wasn’t going to be small and I was really hoping it wasn’t going to be big, toothy and ugly!

Spinning my head around (yes I can do that underwater!) I found myself face to face with a magnificent Manta. While Richard and I had been intent concentrating on the Anglerfish it had arrived silently and had been holding station right along side of me for some time.  Our macro lenses were useless so we simply knelt there like a pair of worshippers as this ocean giant examined us in minute detail. Its huge black eye roamed from Richard to me as it hung gently finning in the current, the morning sunlight danced over the mantas skin reflecting colours of midnight black and bridal white.

It was at about this point that Richard had in inspiration `shit, I have a little digital camera with a wide angle lens clipped onto my BCD’, that’s why we call him Mitre 12, he has more spares that Mitre 10!

Springing into action he snapped of a few shots and then he had another inspiration, `shit, it’s got a video function’ so he filmed it as well.

So the moral to this story is, if you want to see spectacular small marine life dive with a wide angle lens, if you want to see spectacular big marine life dive with a macro lens.

However, if you must always get the shot, dive with Richard, he’s got it covered; you just have to remind him!

We have many more trips, fun and adventure planned to Papua New Guinea aboard MV Paradise Sport, you really should join us!

Click this link to check out Richard's videohttp://www.dive2000.com/Videos/PNG Manta.wmv (1.4MB - 20secs)