Great Barrier Reef Day 2

July 13 – Great Barrier Reef Day 2

Beau and I made an executive decision to forgo the 6am dive. We are allowed 4 dives a day and with 5 opportunities this seemed like the best one to skip. Breakfast was quite the feast with pancakes, hashbrowns, sausages, beans and tomatoes. The boat moved dive locations and we were now on 360deg Coral Garden but still on Briggs Reef. We really had only moved about 500m. We had a dive brief before jumping in the water for our 8am dive. We descended right off the back of the boat but by the time we hit 19m we still couldn't see anything and were pretty disoriented. We didn't want to swim out into the great blue yonder so we surfaced then snorkeled till we could see the bottom then descended again. We had a nice dive and saw tons of fish but by the time we had surfaced we were a bit of a ways from the boat and most likely back at Fish Bowl. Once back on the boat we had a short break then went in again for our 11am dive. This time we snorkeled to the front of the boat and descended. We were joined by another diver whose buddy was having trouble with her ears so the 3 of us stuck together. This dive was awesome we petted a turtle saw a puffer fish and a mantaray! We got super lucky with the mantaray we had started swimming in the opposite direction when we heard a metallic tapping. We turned around and one of the guides was behind us trying to get our attention to point out the mantaray. It was super cool. After our exciting dive we had lunch and then a big break till our next dive. Beau went for a nap and I read up on deck. There ended up being 4 mantarays around the boat at one point and I ran down to get my camera waking Beau up in the processes. I got some surface pictures then turned to Beau and commented that we had seen turtles, whales, sharks and rays the only this we are missing is dolphins. Next this we knew someone was yelling there were dolphins off the back of the boat! Pretty awesome! A bunch of people, including Beau, hopped in the water since the mantarays were still around. Those of us on the boat were yelling at the people and directing them to the rays. Beau got some shots of a ray before it left him in the dust. Then we were back in the water for our 4pm dive. This dive had lots of fish again and was really nice too. We tried not to pig out on dinner again but it was hard since it was fish and chips. Not really a light meal before a night dive. We went on our dive unguided this time and it was super good. Right at the begining we saw a purple and yellow cuttle fish and we got pretty close before it jetted off into the night. There were red bass around again but we still couldn't get them to eat a fish. We also some white tipped reef sharks and a sleeping turtle with his head under some coral. We were heading back towards the boat when Beau starting flashing his light over one spot. For the life of me I couldn't figure out what he was trying to show me until I saw some glowing green eyes (sharks eyes are green in the dark). It was a wobbogong shark, they are super camouflaged and are pretty flat too. You could easily miss him if not for his glowing green eyes. Back on the boat we had a quick shower before falling into bed.

Yellowtail Fusilier

Moorish Idol

Titan Trigger fish

Bat Fish

Mantaray

Mantaray, from the boat