ABOUT US
UNIQUE OCEAN EXPEDITIONS
In 2020, Richard Barnden established Unique Ocean Expeditions, leveraging over twenty years of underwater experience and extensive knowledge of Palau and the Pacific region. His focus is on creating exclusive dive expeditions timed with moon phases and capturing unique imagery.
From the beginning, Richard aimed to offer a more educational diving experience than the typical dive vacation. He recognized a growing demand for divers seeking unique, natural, and educational experiences. This insight was the foundation of his offerings, which have now expanded to include a variety of world-class destinations.
Unique Ocean Expeditions collaborates with renowned operators and local dive guides with in-depth regional expertise. This partnership, combined with their high level of service and expertise, ensures an unforgettable and hassle-free diving experience.
UNIQUE DIVE EXPEDITIONS
Unique Dive Expeditions managed by Richard Barnden and Paul Collins, owned and operated by Sam’s Tours from 2012 - 2019.
After five years of filming and guiding around Palau’s dive sites, Richard and Paul started to notice pattern’s emerging in their log books and stock photography/videography catalog’s. Fish kept appearing in larger than normal school’s at certain dive sites around certain moon cycles and seasons. These they would later learn are spawning aggregations.One book which became the bible of spawning information to them was 'Words of The Lagoon' by Dr Johannes, a pioneering scientist in the late 70's. Dr Johannes came to Palau and worked with local fishermen to understand spawning aggregations, something that would take a lifetime to learn without local knowledge.
With the local Palauans help this would lead on to the pioneering work establishing Palau's Bull's. A closing period of fishing during spawning times thus protecting these vulnerable events from the every increasing pressure of overfishing. Most of these are still in force today.
Years went by reading more information and piece by piece they eventually started building a library of their own formulas and spawning events.In 2012 Richard and Paul managed a brand new product called Unique Dive Expeditions, owned and operated by one of the most popular dive shops in Palau, Sam’s Tours. These expeditions are based around the moon’s lunar cycles throughout the year for recreational scuba divers to witness some of mother natures hidden secrets - Spawning diving during the day and blackwater diving at night.
EXPEDITION LEADERS
PHOTOGRAPHERS
RICHARD BARNDEN
FOUNDER
BIOGRAPHY
Richard Barnden was born in the UK and recently moved to California. He spent his early twenties fascinated by Palau and its waters, spending 15 years guiding scuba divers before turning his real passion in unique underwater photography into his profession. Eventually specialising in spawning aggregations and black water night diving. He has spent more than ten years researching spawning aggregations and their predictability, trying to unravel more of their timings and formulas. In 2012 Richard and Paul Collins co-founded and managed Unique Dive Expeditions owned and operated by Sam’s Tours which was the first of its kind educational diving product targeting spawning events. These spawning events are tailored around lunar phases to observe fish reproduction mainly during the early hours of the morning. By night Richard spends most of his time photographing blackwater night diving either by drifting over deep water in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or making an underwater bonfire with dive lights somewhere shallow to photograph plankton and its environments. In 2018 Richard put a team of rebreather divers together to photograph the grouper reproduction in French Polynesia, which later went on to win him underwater photographer of the year.
