Port Vila in Vanuatu has many different scuba diving sites. Most are located on the southern side of Mele Bay, the outer harbour of Port Vila. The main dive site on this side of the bay is Twin Bommies. Nearby is another of the many dive sites, Honeybone.
Honeybone is a short distance to the west of Twin Bommies (you can actually do a drift dive to Twin Bommies) at a GPS Reading of S17° 45' 31.3" E168° 16' 44.8" (using WGS84 as a map datum). There is a mooring at this location.
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Strange coral at Honeybone | Another shot of the reef |
From the mooring, you drop to the bottom at seven metres. The coral here is pretty much dead, but this is to be expected in such a shallow location. From the mooring, you head west over a gradual slope to 12 metres. This takes about nine minutes.
Soon you hit a much steeper slope. This drops to 20 metres in only a few dozen metres. This is the top of a wall. This drops to at least 25 metres. We went to about 24 metres a nd followed the wall in a south-south-west direction. There are quite a few small gutters and a couple of overhangs. The coral here is much better, with very colourful corals.
Along this section of reef we saw some pipefish and nudibranchs. There is not a great deal of large fishlife, but lots of small tropicals. After about 24 minutes we headed east up to the top of the reef here. This is about 18 metres. From here we headed roughly north, following the "ridge" back towards the mooring.
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Black-rayed phyllidia - Phyllidia picta | Believe it or not, this is also a black-rayed phyllidia - Phyllidia picta |
We saw more pipefish, including a pregnant male. There were also bannerfish, batfish and more nudibranchs. We also saw a few anemones, all with clownfish. Some of the anemones also had clear pinky coloured shrimp in them. Very interesting, look carefully in all the anemones and you should find one with some shrimp.
The ridge gradually rises back towards the mooring. There are a lot of small coral bommies and some gutters that can be interesting. After a bit over 50 minutes we arrived back at the mooring.
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One of a number of pipefish we saw here Note that he (yes he) is pregnant | This anemone had many shrimp in it |
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A clownfish at Honeybone | A yellow flutemouth |
This is a reasonable dive site, with only average visibility on the dive we did here (about 15 metres) as it was a couple of days after a huge downpour of over 200 mm. Water was a very warm 28°.
Note: We also did this dive as a drift from here to Twin Bommies. This was a good dive.
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