Diving Guide to Papua New Guinea (Diving Guides)

click here for more details, find new or used items	Franco Banfi Our price £11.21 (£16.99) New from £4.48 Used from £44.09 Pages: 160 (Paperback) ISBN: 1853108103 Pub: The Crowood Press Ltd Pub date: 1996-06-19 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 371732

Reader Reviews:

The appetiser - Not the meal. (15/15 people found this helpful)

Once again these publishers (White Star of Italy) have provided a stunning cover picture and a wide selection of high quality photographs. As a guide, however, this book is lacking in everything except that photography simply because it does not contain any of the basic information the prospective traveller needs to know.

The contents page reveals an overall introduction followed by 32 specific dive sites taken from the islands of New Hanover, New Ireland, New Britain, Madang on the mainland and the southeast corner of the mainland. The book then concludes with selection of fishes drawn by the resident artist.

The book commences with a map of the country displaying the approximate location of those 32 sites - one of which, incidentally, is a dive to 4m. The mainland, which is by far the largest coastline, is represented by 6 sites (3 from the author and 3 from another contributor) and 11 sites are found close together in a small corner of New Britain. By now the reader will have realised this is not a guide to Papua New Guinea but a guide to the nearest places which might easily be visited during a short stay.

Any book purporting to be a guide to a specific country, needs to contain a little something from every corner of that country and not just concentrate on those sites nearest the hotel. Once again these particular publishers have produced a book which appears as though it was completed with the least-time-possible spent in the country itself. This approach brings into question the book's credibility as a serious diving "guide."

Having attracted the potential visitor to the product with photography of the highest standard, the modern diver will then ask questions which this book fails to answer. There is no information on; travel agencies, airlines, airport tax, tourist boards, hotels, diving facilities, safari boats, available equipment, what to bring, what to wear, electricity, currency, language, time differences, photography, local traders - and more. In summary, this is just another collection of pretty pictures from a small corner of Papua New Guinea.

The final chapter is entitled "The Fish of Papua New Guinea" and includes 117 artistic renditions of various fish representing a fair cross-section of those found in this corner of the world. Interestingly, 62 of these pictures are taken from the Maldives Diving Guide (or vice versa) where several are given different names...

What with this particular publisher's peculiar brand of "Italian-English" - which really does become very off-putting, and their penchant for hiding photographic captions in every conceivable place - except, immediately below the photograph itself, one has to consider this book in particular (and the series in general) as being of little value to the serious diver.

Altogether, this book clearly fails any test as a "Diving Guide" and although it will give the reader a taste of what may be found underwater, the meal itself was never delivered.

NM

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