Friday August 24

After carting my dive gear into gorges, towns, cities and the outback I’ve finally used it. 

Well . . . I have to say that the wait was all forgotten once I got into the water, especially as after our two weeks snorkelling I was well and truly bursting to enjoy the freedom afforded by not having to keep surfacing for air.

On Monday I went on a dive boat out of Tantabiddi to dive on the outer Ningaloo Reef.  Fortunately, the wind decreased the further we went and after an hour and a half we arrived at our first dive site.  As luck would have it, the owner of the dive business was up from Freemantle, where he has another dive shop, to try out a new twin tank setup with one of the staff from Exmouth and I got to dive with them.  This suited me, as many of the other divers were relatively inexperienced.  The advantage of this was that ‘Baz’ from the Exmouth store, knew all the best spots – like where the reef sharks, octopus and nudibranchs (sea slugs)etc were, so Mark and I had our personal guide.

Unfortunately, as Heff explained in our last blog update, my camera flooded whilst we were snorkelling so I can only tell you about most of the things I saw on this dive.  In order of size we got close to White and Black-tipped Reef Sharks, Wobbegongs, olive head sea snakes, Queensland Cod, Coral Cod, Coral Trout, Trevally and literally thousands of smaller fish, including a huge range of spectacular butterfly fish, wrasse, parrot fish and goat fish.

On the second dive that day, I saw the most varied and spectacular number of nudibranchs I had ever seen, something I wasn’t expecting in this part of the world.  It did convince me however, that I need to get some magnifiers for my dive mask!

Last Thursday, I dived the Navy Pier at Exmouth.  The palaver one has to go through to get onto the pier was simply ridiculous, however it was well worth it as the Navy Pier is rated as one of the top 10 shore-based dive sites in the world.  It is within the Ningaloo Marine Reserve and don’t the fish know it!  This is undoubtedly the place to go to see a variety of BIG fish and schools of Trevally and Barracuda as well as large Queensland Groper and White and Black-tipped Reef Sharks.

One of the many highlights was a big Grey Nurse Shark, which was slowly swimming in circles under the pier.  Whilst these sharks look pretty ferocious, they are actually harmless (and yet another threatened species) and to have the opportunity to see a 3 metre one close up was awesome.

Another great plus diving in this part of the world is that the water is warm, so even after an hour one still isn’t cold – a very pleasant and unusual experience for those of us from the south!

Yet another plus - a couple of people on the Navy Pier dive had functioning cameras and they kindly shared some of their photos which give you all a bit of a feel for what it was like down there. 

Blotched Porcupinefish

 

Catfish

Wobbegong Shark

 

Coral Cod

Fringe-eyed Flathead

Grey Nurse Shark

Lionfish

Map Pufferfish

Weedy Scorpionfish