Some dives are just meant to be just wonderful. As we stood geared up ready to plunge into the cool 16 degrees water the GLUG group was treated to a huge humpback whale breaching at the stern of the boat. Feeling elated we made our way down to the barge. It is an old garbage barge lying in 28 metres of water a couple kilometres off the entrance to Wallis Lake.
Even though the visibility was around 5m there was lots to see. A few huge old snapper were cruising a couple metres off the bottom while a school of small scale bulls-eyes hid under the bow of the wreck.
I was fascinated by the enormous school of black and yellow striped balling catfish who were literally balling their way around the edge of the wreck. You could gently pass your hand into the mass and watch your hand being engulfed by the fish.
In the rusty bowels of the wreck was a school of around 20 big mullaway, seemingly hanging in suspended animation.
After our mandatory surface interval, where we compared notes on what each buddy pair saw on the dive we pulled anchor and moved to our second dive location, The Colours. The Colours is just that, a very colourful area of reef in about 10 metres of water off the north end of Mc Brides Beach. The area has lots of sand and kelp covered gutters and it isn’t hard to get lost in the maze of reef structures. Even though there was a lot of surge in the water and the group doing the reef life survey got themselves a bit tangled up there was a great range of fish species to be seen. These included the ever friendly blue groper, a number of colourful senator wrasse, schools of yellowtail scad and lots of rock cale.
Anita Roche
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment