I’m back. Physically at least. Since getting off the plane late Saturday night, I’ve been buried under a mountain of emails, phone calls, to-do list items, dog walks, etc. It’s always like this, but sometimes I wonder whether it’s worth re-entering the real world. And it doesn’t really help when I get emails from PNG saying “The waters are frickin’ amazing now. You should’ve stayed longer!” Sigh.

Anyway, I’m nearly through the first wave of stuff and will hopefully get time soon to pull my notes together to put together a summary of the trip. In short, it was terrific. PNG was hit by some less-than-desirable weather, but the passengers on the MV Golden Dawn liveaboard trip were truly fantastic, among the best bunch of people I’ve ever had the pleasure of being stuck on a boat with, and my stay at Loloata was filled with interesting experiences, as always.

My apologies to everyone who sent me emails, greeting cards, e-greetings, etc., over the holidays. I tried to reply to all the e-greetings, but most likely missed a few inadvertently, and one person I responded to found my response in his spam folder, so please check your spam folder. I replied. Honestly!

While I was away, I had quite a few articles published. First are a Perspective column (108 kB) entitled Pondering Plastics and a destination feature about Tonga (1.7 MB) for FiNS Magazine. These two articles are available via my iTunes podcast too.

For Japanese readers, I also had two articles published in Web-lue, one about Papua New Guinea (3.2 MB), and the other about Tonga (2.1 MB).

And finally, my face-on, full-frame photo of a sperm whale with its mouth wide open is featured in the Big Shot column of the most recent issue of DIVE magazine in the UK, though I don’t have a physical or e-copy yet.

…back to work

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