In June 2014 I enjoyed a ten-day Indonesian liveboard trip with Ron Hunter and his Quest Tours group aboard MSY Seahorse.

After Biak Island, our second destination was the Fonokabi Islands and photographically things did not start well. At Warrarebo Slope I took my 60mm lens for what was expected to be a macro dive but the current picked up and the subsequent drift dive was hopeless for macro photography. The visibility was not great either the next day and our dives at False Crack and Pakreki Wall were both disappointing, generally devoid of anything other than small fish life. The next dive at Bromisi Slope was delayed while we waited for the strong current to abate. By the time it did the light was fading making wide angle photography less easy. The next day I amused myself by press-ganging Emma Ward, one of our Quest Tours group, into modelling a ginclearfilm t-shirt. At last an easy shot! After so many dives with little in the way of sizeable marine subjects I resolved to stick to macro photography for the time being. The omens for improvement were not good as the next proposed dive site was not “diveable”. Nor was the next. So instead we chose to dive along an “un-dived” slope which we named Beautiful Slope and where we saw a pair of Batfish and a small Hawksbill Turtle.