Woken at 05:30 I wasn't very happy. Still, I had slept better last night and we were in the water immediately after sunrise and descended to 30 metres. We were diving again at South Lagoon on Little Black reef in the Whitsundays. There were the usual suspects swimming around, parrotfish and fusiliers. 30 minutes into my dive I was completely enclosed by a massive school of tiny glass fish which must have been hundreds of thousands strong. They swam back and forth around me for 10 minutes and it was a really beautiful sight, with the sunlight reflecting on their scales.
During the second dive, at the same site, we saw a grey reef shark swimming away from us, fusiliers, a beautiful dark green nudibranch with lighter green patches and a red skirt on it, which I named 'red beret', mimic filefish, rabbitfish, goatfish and a female bird wrasse.
Our third dive, by far the best dive of the Whitsundays trip, commenced with a greeting from a white tip reef shark who expressed some interest in us. There were angelfish, wrasse, royal dottybacks, sea cucumbers, sea squirts, blennies who were seemingly protecting each other, butterflyfish, another huge school of glass fish, a white translucent tube worm that free fell than caught onto a piece of hanging coral. I saw the biggest anemone I've ever seen with pink anemonefish in it. It was wonderful.
After a couple of hours kip we had dinner and embarked on our night dive at The Maze at Blue Pearl Bay by Hayman Island, one of the islands in the Whitsundays. We donned our power ranger lycra suits and hoods which will protect us from stingers and the tender RIB dropped us in The Maze. Although we didn't see a great deal, and the visibility was poor, the dive itself was very relaxing. Yesterday Ian expressed his will to see a juvenile pinnate batfish which is a small black batfish with a golden edging, which we recently identified in a marine book. Tonight I found him his batfish, hiding behind a coral and when I acquired Ian's attention, not to mention the attention of every other diver in the area, he braved an appearance and revealed himself to us in full glory. He was stunning. Ian found me another colourful nudibranch and we both found some more christmas tree worms, some that were white and orange. There were some big batfish present, a potato cod and sleeping parrotfish, one was sleeping vertically with his head pointing down. There were plenty of shrimps and crabs in the corals too which always give a glowing red reflection when you shine your torch at them.
Copyright 2003 Helen Fuller. All rights reserved.