There's something very special about muck diving... a term that applies to dives often characterised by a less than pretty site. Dark sand beaches hide a wealth of rare and unusual critters and Papua New Guinea's volcanic shores are renown for it.

The night dive off the pier at Tufi Dive Resort is a classic muck dive - there are old crates with coke bottles, rubber tyres and boxes vying for space with tiny sponges and small corals. Our divemaster gave us the new diver tour and within half an hour we had a list of critters that included mandarin fish, ornate ghost pipefish, toad fish, banded pipefish, juvenile scorpionfish and some cowries.

Our most exciting find was a pair of harlequin shrimp killing an orange starfish. We spent a lot of time on this site. Every moment spent studying the rubble was repaid with another weird creature camouflaged by it's location.

In WWII, Tufi acted as a base for American Patrol boats and at the bottom of the bay are the remains of a torpedo tube, with the torpedo still in it, a 50mm gun AND an intact Land Rover.

There's plenty of pretty diving too. Just an hour's sail away are a group of oval sea mounds that drop off to over fifty metres. These are a haven for an incredibly diverse amount of marine species including barracuda, spanish mackerel, schooling jacks, damsels, angels and fairy basslets. Along the walls, there were grey reef sharks and off in the blue, glimpses of mantas, tuna, spanish mackerel and small turtles.