Tufi · Papua New Guinea · Muck & macro · Night
Tufi Wharf
Wartime scrap, a dumped Land Rover and mandarinfish under one jetty
Area photo: Larry V. Dumlao · CC BY-SA 4.0
The jetty in front of the dive shop is Tufi's macro and night dive, and it needs no boat at all. Everything happens in less than 10 m of water, over silt, pilings and wartime scrap, with gobies, nudibranchs, mandarinfish, ghost pipefish and banded pipefish living in the debris — including a Land Rover parked neatly on the bottom.
Where it is and how deep
9.0808° S, 149.3168° EApproximate position — the dashed circle shows where the site lies; your operator's briefing has the mooring.
The dive
You get in at the jetty, in front of the dive shop, and the dive is over almost as soon as it starts if you swim rather than hover — the whole site sits in less than 10 m of water. The bottom is soft and dark, the pilings give the structure, and the interest is in what has been dropped or sunk on top of it: wartime debris, discarded machinery and a perfectly good old Land Rover, parked so neatly that the resort makes a point of not explaining how it got there until you surface.
The species list is the reason people come back to the same patch twice a day. Tufi Resort counts every conceivable species of goby, nudibranch, mandarinfish, ghost pipefish and banded pipefish in this one bay. After dark the cast changes completely, so the wharf is dived as a different site at night than it is by day, and because there is no boat involved you can run it whenever the day allows.
When the wind is up and the wharf is uncomfortable, the same style of diving continues in the fjords nearby, which the resort dives both for the muck and for the shelter they give from the wind. The ground there is the same soft, dark bottom rather than reef, so the macro diving carries on through the windy months without a long run offshore.
Background
On 17 March 1943 two American PT boats, PT-67 and PT-119, and the Australian vessel AS 16 caught fire and sank at Tufi; the US Navy loss list records PT-67 as destroyed by a fire that broke out while she was fuelling in port. Wikivoyage notes that the boats sunk that March now provide a popular dive site, and their remains, mixed in with machinery dumped off the wharf since, are what the muck dive is built on.
Marine life and season
- Macro critters
- Nudibranchs
- Mandarinfish
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fair | Fair | Good | Prime | Prime | Prime | Good | Good | Good | Prime | Prime | Good |
Season follows Tufi: Apr–Jun and Oct–Dec are calmest for the offshore reefs; the fjords stay divable year-round whatever the weather does.
Know before you go
- Wartime debris is scattered on the bottom here, including 50-calibre anti-aircraft machine guns and loose ammunition. Look, photograph, and leave it where it lies.
- Silt: this is a soft, dark bottom under a jetty, and one careless fin stroke ends the visibility for everyone behind you.
Questions divers ask
How deep is the Tufi Wharf dive?+
Less than 10 m the whole way. The limit on the dive is your air and your patience rather than depth, which is why it works as a long macro dive or a night dive.
Do you need a boat to dive Tufi Wharf?+
No. The entry is right at the jetty in front of the dive shop, which is what makes it the standing night dive here. When wind makes the wharf uncomfortable, the diving moves into the nearby fjords instead.
Sources
- Muck Diving — Tufi Resort
- Wreck Diving — Tufi Resort
- Tufi — Wikivoyage
- Tufi — Wikipedia
- List of United States Navy losses in World War II — Wikipedia
In The Logbook
- Night diving: the best night dives in the worldNight diving · 12 min read
- The best muck diving in the worldMacro & muck · 6 min read
More dive sites in Tufi
Wreck
A near-intact Flying Fortress on white sand at 45 m
Reef
Walls from 7 m to beyond 40 m under a seabird island
Wreck
A 99 m wartime steamship at 49 m, found in 1986
Similar dives elsewhere
Mandarinfish at dusk, then straight into the night dive
Where the holotype of the psychedelic frogfish was collected in 2008
Black sand at 10 m with mimic octopus and frogfish
Resident hairy frogfish a short ride from the island