UEPI ISLAND PARADISE ABOVE .... AND BELOW

Everything at Uepi Island seems to evolve around coconuts. As soon as you arrive on the island you are warned to watch out for falling coconuts. At anytime of the day, and night, you can hear coconuts slamming into the ground and occasionally a roof. The local crabs eat the coconuts and you can even use coconuts to attract the sharks – all just part of the charm of this wonderful little island.
    Uepi Island is located in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands , on the outer edge of the longest lagoon in the world – Marovo Lagoon. The island is covered in dense rainforest that is home to birds and lots of crabs, even the rare coconut crab that has claws big enough to rip apart a coconut! Warm blue water surrounds the island, which is calm and sheltered on one side of the island and exposed to deep ocean waters on the other. The island is also the location of a wonderful small resort – Uepi Island Resort.
    The resort sits neatly at the end of the island, amongst the coconut trees, and accommodates a maximum of 26 guests in six bungalows, two units and two guest rooms. Guests can just relax around the resort in one of the hammocks – just check for coconuts before you get too comfortable – or enjoy activities such as bush walking, fishing, swimming, kayaking and snorkelling. However the majority of visitors to Uepi Island only want to do one thing – scuba dive – as the island is surrounded by some of the best diving in the South Pacific.
    The most famous dive site at Uepi Island is The Elbow. Like many of the dive sites around Uepi Island this is a wall dive, where the reef drops straight into deep water. Decorating this wall are hard corals, colourful soft corals, wide gorgonian fans, usual shaped sponges and rope-like sea whips. As you drift along the wall you will encounter a wide range of reef fish – parrotfish, angelfish, clownfish, hawkfish, rock cod, butterflyfish and many others to numerous to mention. While amongst the corals are many invertebrate species such as sea stars, featherstars, crabs, shrimps, octopus and pretty nudibranchs.
    However, The Elbow is better known for its larger visitors, which includes schools of barracuda and trevally, graceful eagle rays, turtles, reef sharks and even the odd giant groper. But most divers are hoping to see its special guest stars, the hammerhead sharks, as scalloped hammerheads can often be seen at The Elbow from June to November when the water is a little cooler than its usual 28°C.
    There are a dozen other lovely reef and wall dives around Uepi Island ; such as Landoro Gardens where I spotted a manta ray, North Log where cuttlefish and tiny pygmy seahorses can be found and Elbow Caves , where you can get lost exploring the maze of caves. Uepi Point is another wonderful dive site if you like watching a parade of fish life. This site gets washed by strong currents which inturn attracts the fish – including schools of barracuda, trevally, mackerel, rainbow runners and quite a few reef sharks.
    One of my favourite dives at Uepi Island is right in front of the resort, just a short step off the Welcome Jetty. Here the wall drops straight down to 30m and it is again decorated with spectacular corals, a wealth of reef fish, bizarre invertebrate species and also some huge giant clams. If you swim out across the sand you will also see stingrays and hundreds of swaying garden eels that slip back into the sand when you get too close.
    This jetty also has a resident population of reef sharks – white tip, black tip and larger grey reef sharks. They don’t bother divers, in fact they can be frustrating to photograph as the sharks can be shy and avoid divers. But one way to attract them to the surface is with a coconut. By throwing a coconut into the water the splash gets the sharks interested and they come up to investigate it!
    While you could easily spend all your time exploring the underwater wonders around Uepi Island , further a field is a wealth of amazing dive sites. General Store is another good site for hammerhead sharks, while pelagic fish are common at Charapoana Point. For those that want to look at rust – shipwrecks – there is the wreck of a fishing trawler and two plane wrecks near Seghe Airport, not recent crashes as both these planes date from World War 2.
    Other victims of war are found 50km south west of Uepi Island at Wickham Harbour . Here two 50m long Japanese transport ships, Iwami Maru and Azusa Maru rest in 30 to 40m of water. The harbour also contains two unidentified shipwrecks, one in 40m and the other in shallow water lying in 15 to 27m. All of the ships are fascinating to explore and a reminder that the Solomon Islands wasn’t always a peaceful paradise.
    The diving may be spectacular around Uepi Island, but you will also remember this wonderful island for its superb meals, its laid back atmosphere and its beautiful lush environment; just remember to watch out for falling coconuts!

  For more information visit – Uepi Island Resort

Article appeared in Solomons No.53 Dec 2010/Jan 2011