Papua New Guinea aboard the Star Dancer

This scorpion fish was found under the Samurai pier.

This mantis shrimp is among the most bizarre looking creatures I have ever seen. Its about 4 inches long, and spends much of it's time in a burrow waiting for some potential food to swim by.

This Thin Yellow Ghost Pipefish, was pointed out to me by fellow diver and photographer Sara Porter Graham and was spotted by her husband John.

This golden trumpetfish was about 18 inches long and is the first golden one I have ever photographed.

Clownfish can be difficult to photograph because they move around so much. I just caught these two in a nice position.

This lacey green scorpionfish was posing patiently on a nice coral head.

I was able to photograph this Ornate Ghost Pipefish and the yellow one above on the very last dive in PNG.

These Crescent-Tail Big Eyes were hanging out under a coral shelf.

This Empire Shrimp was barely a half a centimeter long, and riding on the back of a Nudibranch.

This turtle posed perfectly for me on this coral formation, but it did make me chase it to nearly 90 feet first. I think it was my deepest dive of the trip.

This purple anemone and clown fish were also located under the Samurai Pier during our first day of diving. This is really intended to be photograph of the anemone and not the Clownfish.

This Barramundi was found on Doubilet's reef, named after the noted underwater photographer David Doubilet. It is noteworthy for its massive sea fans.

This is a rather large example of a Sweet Lips.

This is the juvenile form of a Sweet Lips. I was attracted to its peculiar and constant motion. It's hard to believe what it looks like when fully grown. (above)

This is an enourmous school of fish beneath the Samurai pier, which we dove on our first day. The perspective of this photo is a little hard to grasp, but I'm looking straight up toward the bottom of the pier. The school surged in and out around the pilings.

This was a really large nudibranch also hanging out under the pier.

This little girl came out to sing to us at sunset. It is perhaps my favorite photo from the trip. Sunsets always make dramatic photos, I thought this was particularly so, because it doesn't actually have the sun in it. I had some video of her too, but the noise of the generators on the boat drowned out the singing.

Here is the mighty Star Dancer awaiting our return from a shore excusion. She is a mighty fine ship, with a mighty fine crew.

This is a view of the downtown area of Brisbane from the river. We stayed overnight on our way out and back. It is a beautiful city of about 1.7 million inhabitants.

What can I say, I'm a sucker for a sunset.

When we were anchored near a village, children came out to the boat. The captain would give them bars of soap and pencils. They were very polite and quiet, occasionally they would sing for us.

Every place we went locals came out to the boat to sell produce and crafts.

These tiny purple fish along with many other types of juvenile examples were plentiful everywhere that we dove.