Oh boy, the submersible!

When we first boarded in Broome, I selected and charged a ride on the ship’s submersible, but they didn't know, at that point, what day it would  be offered.  Today was that day, in the Conflict Islands, Papua New Guinea.  They ran 8 trips, 45 minutes each, throughout the day.    My review would be:  great piece of machinery, not so great viewing experience.  I mean the unit itself is cool beyond words.  And small.  Very small.  (and I’m not).  The day of the trips they will have taken the submersible to the dive site area, and then 6-people-per-dive take a zodiac to the area, to access the sub.  The surface access wasn’t bad, there’s a railing on the top of the zodiac, to grab onto, as well as the usual “sailor’s grip” thing with crew members.  Then one descends a ladder into the unit and crawls a few feet to a seat - three on one side, three on the other.  It’s just that these units are apparently designed around people about 4 feet tall, which I am emphatically not.  Very cramped, knees in chest.  Then, as it turned out, the actual viewing was a big disappointment.  We descended to about 50-60 meters (~170 feet) to the sea floor.  On the way down, I caught a momentary glimpse of a reef shark, but he disappeared before I could try to take a pic.  The sea floor was just not very interesting, some small coral here and there, but nothing of particular note.  Obviously the cruise company is not responsible for the quality of any given reef, and the clarity this day was not helped by the very windy conditions on the surface.  It was just not impressive, had I done and seen the same thing with scuba, I would have classified it as a dive that was, at best, mediocre.  Win some, lose some.