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Diving Papua New Guinea: Four Regions, Four Kinds of Dive
Papua New Guinea lies inside the Coral Triangle, the reef region it shares with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Timor-Leste and the Solomon Islands. Its dive areas lie far apart, on coasts and islands that no road connects, so a dive trip is built around one or two bases, each reached by air from Port Moresby. The diving is arranged ahead with an operator, because little runs on its own for a visitor who arrives unannounced. Each region has its own kind of diving, and the choice of base decides what a trip sees most of.
Updated 2026-10-05
Kimbe Bay: seamounts off New Britain
Kimbe Bay is a wide bay on the north coast of New Britain, in West New Britain Province. Its signature dives are seamounts and pinnacles that rise from deep water to near the surface, their tops and flanks covered in hard and soft corals, sea fans and sponges. On the steeper sides divers look out into the blue for reef sharks and schools of barracuda and jacks, which appear on some dives and not on others. Fringing reefs line the shore as well, and the bay is dived from day boats that go out from bases on the coast.
Milne Bay: muck diving at the eastern tip
Milne Bay opens at the south-eastern tip of the mainland, with Alotau, the provincial town, on its northern shore. Among divers it is known above all for muck diving: dives over slopes of sand, silt and rubble, where the attraction is small, well-camouflaged life — frogfish, ghost pipefish, mantis shrimps, nudibranchs — found with a guide who knows where to look. The same coast has coral reefs too, and the islands of the province further offshore are dived from liveaboards.
Tufi: the fjords of Cape Nelson
Tufi lies on Cape Nelson in Oro Province, where steep-sided, forested inlets known as the Tufi fjords reach deep into the land. The diving runs from inside the fjords, where sheltered water and sandy slopes suit the same small-life diving as Milne Bay, out to the reefs and walls off the cape, which face the open sea.
Kavieng: tidal passes off New Ireland
Kavieng is the town at the northern tip of New Ireland, with small islands scattered off its shore. Its signature dives are the passes between those islands, narrow channels where the tide runs hard between the sheltered water inside the islands and the open sea. Divers come for what the current brings — reef sharks, schools of barracuda and trevally, at times larger open-water fish — though none of them turns up on every dive. Pass dives are timed to the tide by guides who know each channel, and inside the islands there are gentler reefs.
Flights, spare days and dive insurance
Every region is reached by a domestic flight from Port Moresby — Kimbe Bay through Hoskins, Milne Bay through Alotau, while Tufi and Kavieng have airfields of their own — and a second dive area means a second flight, since getting around Papua New Guinea between regions is done by air. Flights are often delayed or cancelled, so a dive trip keeps spare days at both ends, above all before the flight home; the gap a diver's training asks for between the last dive and flying falls into the same days. Before booking, the dive bag is weighed against the baggage allowance of the domestic flight, which can be smaller than the international one. Medical facilities are very basic and serious cases are flown to Australia by air ambulance, so divers carry insurance that covers both diving and medical evacuation from Papua New Guinea.