Dive report - West Side Saturday 4 July 2009

O's Wall started our day with more little creatures and juvenile fish than we could count.  The whole reef was wriggling with brightly coloured little blobs that were yellow boxfish, baby goatfish, zillions of damsels in all sorts of neon colours, tiny silver & blue fusiliers and fluttery long fin bannerfish no bigger than the palm of your hand.  The nudibranchs in all of their bright colours and funky patterns were out in force.  The skunk anemonefish were zipping in and out of tentacles faster than we could keep track - it looked like they were grabbing little morsels of food then darting back inside.  The cleaner wrasse were very busy with a nice group of sweetlips and a huge coral trout made a run across the reef right through us!
WATER TEMP: 21-24C
VISIBILITY: 8-15m
CURRENT: slight
SURGE: none
DEPTH: 22m

After yesterday's awesome manta action, we had to visit Central Station for dive two. Once again, we had only just reached the bottom when a big manta came out to greet us. This was a beautiful black manta ray, huge!, with the biggest kingfish swimming along underneath him...the kingfish must have been 2m each! As we watched the manta circle the cleaning station, a second manta appeared from the distance...then a third...then a fourth! They formed a reasonably neat line and just kept swimming around us, through our bubbles and back through the cleaning station.

The cleaning station was active underneath the manta rays, too. A big blue bone came in for a wash and then rudely swam right through the line of mantas, making the one he cut off wave his wings in disgust. Two octopus were out of their holes, walking here and there over the reef as the mantas glided by overhead. We stayed with them for about 20 minutes before heading off to explore more of the reef.

Of course we had to check out another cleaning station and who should join us not two minutes later? The big black manta! He was followed by three others, including a small 2m manta ray who was very curious and hovered right next to us, checking each diver out! One of the bigger mantas swam directly at one of the divers and came so close we thought it was going to run him over! Incredible.

At our safety stop we were surrounded by an enormous school of blue surgeonfish. What a rush! It was a totally incredible dive!
WATER TEMP: 24C
VISIBILITY: 20m
CURRENT: none
SURGE: none
DEPTH: 16m