Milne Bay Trip

Milne Bay Trip report

Trip taken:                                 18^th February to 01^st March 2013

Trip to:                                       Milne Bay Province

Purpose:                                    Deploy Permanent transect to 4 selected sites

This is a short report of trip taken to Milne Bay Province from 18^th February to 01^st of March 2013 to deploy permanent transect in four different locations. The first lot of permanent transects were deployed at Samarai Islands, specifically at Logia. The second lot were deployed at Nuakata Island while the third and fourth were Losuia and Motorina respectively. Out of the four locations, three were successfully consigned while Motorina was not visited by the team due to mechanical problem faced with the motorized dinghies while travelling to Motorina from Misima. The report logs in daily activities of the team throughout the duration of the trip together with costs incurred by the officers.   

Sunday 17^th February 2013- Port Moresby

All diving gears were carefully packed together with about 8 bundles of 14 pipes tightly packed with masking tape and wrapping plastics that were allowable for airlifting. Transportation was arranged and paid for by the officers to the airport as flight to Gurney, Milne Bay was early 6 am.

Monday 18^th February 2013- ALotau

The first day of the trip was early morning and gear transportation was done by the private arrangement with the assistance from enforcement officers. At the airport, there were no hiccups as Purchase Order for the weights of the pipes were provided. However, the tickets did not match the PO because the PO was raised under Airlines PNG and our flight tickets were under Air Niugini. We changed the names to Air Niugini and advised our Manager, to advice accounts of the changes.

Although flights were delayed to 9am, we finally manage to arrive at Gurney at around 9:45am and went straight to Masurina Lodge. 

We went straight to Conservation Internal Office, Alotau, headed by Mr. Noel Waguno.

In order to manage the sea cucumber fishery in Papua New Guinea, Sedentary under Fisheries Management Unit likes to work together with NGOs to better manage marine resources and to have full recovery of the BDM fishery in Papua New Guinea. As Conservation International has been working with communities in Nuakata Island, it was one site ideal for deploying of permanent transect so data can be collected to coincide with their monitoring. The meeting was fruitful as envisaged as Noel was so helpful and willing to work with us. Sites were identified through map and reports of their previous monitoring and survey work was provided to the officers. Two of their monitoring officers were also made available to us to assist in our monitoring with BDM. The two officers were well trained by Noel Waguno and his organization and we were privileged to have the expertise of the two CI samplers to work on our permanent transect. We thanked Noel Waguno for his time and went on to arrange for boat at Sandersons Bay.

Tuesday 19^th February- Samarai Island

With the dinghy already anchored at Sandersons Bay, the team with the skipper of the dinghy loaded fuel at Islands Petroleum and got containers refill for the afternoon trip to Samarai Island. We bought rations at Alotau Enterprise then packed all our gears onto the boat and left Sandersons Bay for Samarai Island at 2.30 pm. We arrived at Samarai Island at 3.30 pm and went straight into the district office (white house). The Area Manager at the station helped us with the site selection and identified the ideal location to be Logia. Fortunately, the councilor of the area was on the Island station so he took us to the potential site and identified two samplers for the project. In late afternoon we went back to the Island and overnight at the guest house at Samarai Island. We paid for our accommodation and also for the boat skipper and his three crews.

Wednesday 20^th February 2013 – Samarai Island

At around 7.30 am, we went over to Logia Island and got the two samplers to fully read and got them to sign the sampling contract. After an hour of briefing and teaching the methods off the permanent transects to the two samplers, we started deploying the first five transect at the slope to the North. The flat and crest each followed with 5 transect each and all in total of about 15 transects. At around 2.30 pm we travelled back to Alotau.