Tawali Dive Resort

Tawali Dive Resort is located on the water’s edge, surrounded by lush rainforest and overlooking aquamarine waters, curving around a quiet bay. The resort itself is more like a complex of tree houses connected by elevated walkways. At the resort’s highest point, looking out over the bay you’ll find the restaurant and bar – great place to check out conditions in the morning, and watch the sunset with a cold one in the evening.

There is a very pretty swimming pool by the beach and beyond this, the watersports centre, where you can hire snorkels and fins, kayaks and SUPs, even some strange looking amphibious paddle boats, and they can also sort you out with dive gear.

In front of the dive shop is a long jetty, the end of which is home to the resort’s dive boat and larger 8-cabin liveaboard MV Spirit of Niugini. The dive boat itself is big, with plenty of room on board for the dozen or so people usually on board.

Tawali Dive Resort has an instructor and several dive guides – all extremely helpful, happy to join you on a guided night dive and with eagle eyes able to spot a pygmy seahorse the size of your pinky fingernail at 20 paces, or a well camouflaged Leaf Scorpionfish.

Tawali Dive Resort is in a good location both physically and geographically, with pristine surroundings and its position on the north coast, which provide shelter from the prevailing south-east winds most of the time. This means there is always access to the best dive sites of Milne Bay all year round (with the exception of February when the predominant winds create fairly big seas that make it very difficult to manage the boats).

Getting there: Fly from Port Moresby to Gurney Airport (50 mins), travel by road to Marina (90 mins) and on to Tawali Resort by boat (15 mins).

Tawali Dive Resort has 14 Deluxe Bungalows, 5 Standard rooms, 1 Ocean Villa and 1 Nenehuna Villa. Inter-connecting rooms make the Deluxe Bungalows ideal for families.

The Deluxe Bungalows are very large, with two double beds, a small sitting area, a desk, a small wardrobe, air-conditioning and your own bathroom with hair dryers. There are tea & coffee making facilities as well as a small fridge. The rooms are furnished in beautiful timber and local art is displayed on the walls. Beautiful paintings from a local artist complete the picture.

The rooms do not have TV, radio or phones. Each room has its own large private balcony overlooking the bay. The Standard Rooms are smaller in size and more basic. They have air-conditioning and private bathroom facilities.

The dive crew will load the boat while you enjoy breakfast and meet you at the jetty at around 8am for the two morning dives. The boats used for the coastal boat dives are two 7m (22ft) centre-console boats with twin 50 Honda engines. They are big and comfortable and take a maximum of 6 divers each.

‘Prowler’ is the name of the day boat, a 12m (36ft) catamaran with a cruising speed of 23 knots. The day boat is very well laid out with two tank racks and a big bench for seating and cameras. ‘Prowler’ has a toilet and shower. After the dives, there are water, tea, coffee, soft drinks, snacks and towels provided. The boat also has all of the modern navigation aids such as GPS chart plotter, radar, HF and VHF radio, and depth sounders. Up to 12 divers will be taken at a time. If there are fewer divers (2-4), a smaller day boat will be taking the divers to various coastal reef dive locations.

Dive Sites

Much of the diving at Tawali is made on the coastal reefs which are only a short boat ride away. There is a little muck-diving to be enjoyed, but most of it is reef diving. On one of these sites, ‘Wahoo’, mantas, barracudas, hammerhead sharks, stone fish and crocodile fish are common sights. The variety of marine life in Milne Bay is almost unbelievable. Not only are rare scorpion fish like the Rhinopia aphanes (or Merlot Scorpionfish) seen regularly here, but you also will find creatures that have not yet been recorded from other places of the world.

There are many other dive options for every taste. Visit Observation Point on Normandy Island – a great “muck” diving experience and home to seahorses, frogfish and rare species of garden eel, blue ribbon eels and many different species of clownfish. The day boat “Prowler”, can zoom into actual Milne Bay in a very short time, where you can do some great drift diving.

The main house reef can be accessed from the jetty, no need to take the boat. This is great for snorkelling and many of the night dives are done here. There is a resident mandarin fish, loads of anemone fish, nudibranchs and flat worms. A Maori wrasse also appears to be spending a fair bit of time here.

You can dive up to four dives per day, with a double dive in the morning, a single in the afternoon and a possible sunset or night dive.

Read more about Tawali’s underwater paradise on the Diveplanit Blog.

Pricing for Tawali Resort