Wednesday 6th January

We headed over to Stradbroke for the day. The seas were flat on top, with minimal swell and a South Easterly wind bringing blue water in. The water temperature was 26 degrees celsius.

We went to Manta Bommie for both dives and Nick and I decided to do one long dive on Sidemount.

As soon as we descended we saw 3 Manta Rays under the boat, where they stayed for the majority of the time we were there.

Nick had a lucky encounter witnessing a large male Loggerhead turtle attack a smaller female. He filmed it on the Go Pro as it decided to bite the female Loggerhead, causing its shell to start to come away. The female having been awoken abruptly was not happy and after trying to back out of the napping hole which she was almost pinned into, retaliated by biting and chasing the male.

She then twirled staring at Nick as if to ponder if he was involved in this incident, and Nick thought “I’m getting out of here!”

There was some current and surge again so for the first 50 minutes we didn’t go far from the mooring and filmed the Manta Rays. There were also another 2 or 3 different Mantas that were visiting the area. The large male Loggerhead, we name “Snappy” for obvious reasons, was also very inquisitive and bold coming up to the camera.

I spotted the Bamboo shark again under the boat, perhaps looking for its recently laid egg that had disappeared.

After 50 minutes I was starting to get a bit Manta’d out and felt like exploring so Nick and I headed North. We saw several Pink Whiprays in the sand and Octopus.

We went down the Shark highway, this is an area we named due to there usually being an aggregation of Guitar sharks here. Its a sandy bottom covered with shells, and is where the current picks up as its on the outer side of the dive site and rocky terrain. It drops down to 11 metres. As we drifted down in the current Nick signalled to me “sharks” and to come over but he was well in front of me up current and the current was too strong to drag the camera and myself back through it. Nick came over signalling that he would take the camera and so I handed it to him (quietly laughing to myself inside) as I knew there would be no way to pull it through that current. Sure enough, 60 seconds later Nick gave up and we decided to do the drift again but swim out wider at the start so we would be in the right position this time.

We swam North against the current on the dive site to get to the top of the area then swam as fast and hard as we could directly West. I could see the Guitar sharks start to appear. 3, 7,10, 14, they were scattered everywhere, some very large and babies too, many more in the distance. We weren’t exactly being stealth due to heading directly towards them in a strong current but they didn’t seem too annoyed and just moved to the side. I would estimate about 30 Guitar sharks in total in this area.

That was fun. Time to do it again! I could feel my back pain and a voice in my head saying “maybe you should stop now” but it was too tempting, so again a big swim up North. This time there was a school of Eagle Rays hanging low in the current and merging onto the dive site. Some Barracuda had come in to enjoy the current too. After drifting along again with the Guitar Sharks I noticed some shadows out wider so swam harder to get out and saw several large Pink Whiprays in the sand. They were easily spooked and fluffed up a lot of sand. Now a big swim back onto the dive site.

After the 3rd big swim and drift I was feeling tired, and dehydrated. I felt a headache coming on so decided that I’d had enough and wanted some water. We both headed back to the boat to have a rest.

110 minute dive. Maximum depth 11 metres. Average depth 7 metres.