Photo by Dana Africa

Divers go to Papua New Guinea to meet the zany and infamous Captain Alan Raabe, as well as to dive the Bismarck Sea aboard the good ship FeBrina. Master Raabe's reputation as entertaining and irreverent precede him on a global scale. So it was with shock and disappointment when our group was informed that The Captain had taken a break to Australia. My fourth trip to PNG, I was not ready to have a stranger take me hundreds of miles across open ocean.

As trip leader, the dreaded question fell from my lips," Who's skipper?"

Matty, a skinny Aussie who looks like he just graduated middle school, met my eyes and said, "Me". I let out a groan of relief.

Matty Johnson redefined the task of Divemaster last time I visited the boat. Seemingly two or three people at once, he could fix your regulator, fix the engine, and somehow be next to you under water, pointing things out. Hannah the Cook adores him, which, in my book, is an absolutely gold-plated character reference. That he suddenly levitated to the status of skipper didn't really surprise me so much as how the hell he did it in a year and still not age one wrinkle's worth.

In spite of my confidence, I had some disappointed customers. They wanted Alan Raabe. Instead they got a virginal teenage skipper with a penchant for Hawaiian print, hip-slung baggies. Matty had his work cut out for him from the get-go.

Our itinerary took us from Walindi Plantation to Kavieng via the Fathers Reef system. Two of the group were brand-new divers, while the other eleven reeked of ancient booties and tattered dive logs. Martina, our Australian Divemaster on vacation from medical school, took on the newbies and taught them stuff no dive manual could ever print.

Matty's first big hit with the group was to smoothly moor the FeBrina on a bommie in Kimbe Bay, cut the engines, then somehow be in the water waiting with an encyclopedic collection of macro critters to show us. Anemone shrimp, Frogfish, bizarre nudibranchs, and octopus. A blue-banded sea snake slithered by. How'd he do that?

Awe of his skills rapidly replaced his youth-and-beauty reputation. By dinner of the third or fourth night, he had managed to sit with everyone at least once, shared a glass of wine, refilled glasses, told stories, listened to other people's stories, and generally schmoozed each and every one of us. Thoughts of the missing Cpt. Raabe just went away. Dubbed "Captain Matty's Cherry-Poppin' Kavieng Cruise", the whole adventure exceeded everyone's expectations.

The boat running smoothly, the meals on time and delicious, we all fell into the routine of dive, eat, dive, dive, eat, dive, nap, dive, eat, (drink), sleep. FeBrina is a fall-off-the-back-deck kind of dive boat, with a rare dinghy dive just to keep you fit. Briefings are just that. Brief. Here we are, this is how deep, you'll probably see this, this and that. Bring this lens. Be back on board by then because we're leaving.

If you needed a little hand-holding, Nelson did the honors. For whining about not finding a crinoid crab, Nelson gently brought me the entire animal, decked out with two crabs, a cling fish, and a crinoid shrimp. After I shot up my roll of film, he took the crinoid back to its coral head.

Nelson is a local man in his early twenties, divemaster, deckie, and excellent critter spotter. He knows where the Harlequin Ghost Pipefish live. He's on the guest list of Restorff Island's Devil Scorpionfish. Nelson gets the stone fish to come out at night and successfully herds cuttlefish.

The fish populations around Fathers Reef are staggering. I read this as evidence that little more than subsistence fishing is done here. Every dive is a blitz of PNG Butterfly fish, multi-colored anthias, great flows of Trevalee jack, barracuda, and fusilier. Squadrons of Batfish check your every move.

The coral is healthy-table, staghorn, lettuce, gorgonion, whip, and even the unusual Organ Pipe corals. Littered in amid the crannies reside the most spectacular array of anemones and their resident fish. There are a couple of common ones, like the Pink and the Spinecheek, then a handful of the slightly more unusual; a Whitebonnet, the Orange Fin, and the Red and Black Anemone fishes.

One becomes inured with the sensory overload of fish species. There are so many striped fish, it's hard to settle down and catalog them. The multitude of angels, butterflies, banners, and sergeants weave rainbow nets across your field of vision. There is a cleaning station around every corner packed with shrimp, wrasses and their loyal patrons. It would seem impossible that a parasite could survive these well-ordered waters.

Some people just can't be pleased with a plethora of every fish and invertebrate listed in the Who's-Who of Ocean Life. They want sharks. They want sharks on every dive. Not so with this group, but Matty figured he could make points by tipping the odds of shark sightings in his favor.

The Eigenheir Device is an invention created by the Mother of Necessity (Matty), and named after the gentleman who made the initial sharkless complaint. It is a flat-sided, half-gallon, plastic jug with one inch holes cut in it. Stuffed with old fish parts and securely hidden in a reef wall, this device sneakily wafts dinner smells to the shy reef sharks. Damn, if we didn't have sharks on most dives! Even after catching on to the lure, the divers were tickled by the toothy company.

The boat running smoothly, the meals on time and delicious, we all fell into the routine of dive, eat, dive, dive, eat, dive, nap, dive, eat, (drink), sleep. FeBrina is a fall-off-the-back-deck kind of dive boat, with a rare dinghy dive just to keep you fit. Briefings are just that. Brief. Here we are, this is how deep, you'll probably see this, this and that. Bring this lens. Be back on board by then because we're leaving.

If you needed a little hand-holding, Nelson did the honors. For whining about not finding a crinoid crab, Nelson gently brought me the entire animal, decked out with two crabs, a cling fish, and a crinoid shrimp. After I shot up my roll of film, he took the crinoid back to its coral head.

Nelson is a local man in his early twenties, divemaster, deckie, and excellent critter spotter. He knows where the Harlequin Ghost Pipefish live. He's on the guest list of Restorff Island's Devil Scorpionfish. Nelson gets the stone fish to come out at night and successfully herds cuttlefish.

The fish populations around Fathers Reef are staggering. I read this as evidence that little more than subsistence fishing is done here. Every dive is a blitz of PNG Butterfly fish, multi-colored anthias, great flows of Trevalee jack, barracuda, and fusilier. Squadrons of Batfish check your every move.

The coral is healthy-table, staghorn, lettuce, gorgonion, whip, and even the unusual Organ Pipe corals. Littered in amid the crannies reside the most spectacular array of anemones and their resident fish. There are a couple of common ones, like the Pink and the Spinecheek, then a handful of the slightly more unusual; a Whitebonnet, the Orange Fin, and the Red and Black Anemone fishes.

One becomes inured with the sensory overload of fish species. There are so many striped fish, it's hard to settle down and catalog them. The multitude of angels, butterflies, banners, and sergeants weave rainbow nets across your field of vision. There is a cleaning station around every corner packed with shrimp, wrasses and their loyal patrons. It would seem impossible that a parasite could survive these well-ordered waters.

Some people just can't be pleased with a plethora of every fish and invertebrate listed in the Who's-Who of Ocean Life. They want sharks. They want sharks on every dive. Not so with this group, but Matty figured he could make points by tipping the odds of shark sightings in his favor.

The Eigenheir Device is an invention created by the Mother of Necessity (Matty), and named after the gentleman who made the initial sharkless complaint. It is a flat-sided, half-gallon, plastic jug with one inch holes cut in it. Stuffed with old fish parts and securely hidden in a reef wall, this device sneakily wafts dinner smells to the shy reef sharks. Damn, if we didn't have sharks on most dives! Even after catching on to the lure, the divers were tickled by the toothy company.