Sat 2nd January

It was a rough beach launch and lumpy on top of the water. We headed out to Flat Rock and Turtle Cave where the other boats had opted to dive to check out the conditions. It was blue and nice visibility, there was a decent current at Turtle Cave and the only promising dive was a drift , however due to an Open Water diver on the boat having only done 10 dives we decided to go to Manta Bommie.

Manta Bommie was also pretty wild on top with some current and surge.

One of the divers had mentioned spotting a Bamboo Shark the previous weekend protecting a newly laid egg and I was keen to find it. I spotted the Bamboo shark straight away upon descent. I followed it for a while but it was skimming fast over the rocky terrain and there was too much current to continue on. I had a look for the egg in the area where it was last spotted but given it was not in a protected spot had probably been caught in the surge and current by now and was nowhere to be seen.

The first 20 minutes of the dive was crap. I felt I was constantly just kicking and going nowhere. I was getting sick of the current and surge and having the drag of a large camera through the water column. I was chasing a lazy dive but that wasn’t going to happen, and I was just about to call it quits and head back to the mooring line when the Mantas appeared.

The Mantas didn’t disappoint. I interacted with 8 different Manta Rays, all whom were very friendly and curious coming in close. They all kept coming to the bommie just under the boat so I decided to spend the entire dive there, meaning less finning! There was one Manta in particular, a large light grey colour on top that kept coming in and eye balling me. It would swim by then hover just in front of me staring at me, which was pretty cool.

Both dives here were same same but different, on the second dive I did less finning as knew the Mantas would just turn up under the boat anyway.

60 minute dives, average depth 7 metres, maximum depth 10 metres

 

Sunday 3rd January

After Manta Lodge had mentioned the Dusky and Spinner Sharks had been spotted we decided to do an exploratory drift from Turtle Cave to find them again. With 7 divers the plan was Nick to lead us around and wide of Blue Corner and we would need to stay together as not to scare the sharks off with bubbles.

It was fairly good visibility but there was a layer of muck about 25 metres down. Unfortunately the current was very mild which made the drift very slow with not much animal life to see. It was still a very relaxing, lovely dive in the blue and a stark contrast to the current and surge yesterday. We did spot 3 Dusky sharks but they didn’t come in close. We also saw a school of Mobular Rays and some Barracuda and Mackeral.

45 minute dive, average depth 20 metres, maximum depth 27 metres

Our second dive we headed back to Manta Bommie and conditions were fairly similar to yesterday.

60 minute dive, average depth 7 metres, maximum depth 10 metres.