Dive report - Lighthouse Bay Monday 24 August 2009

What a gorgeous day for a cruise around the Nor'West Cape here on the Ningaloo Reef!  We started today at Tantabiddi and followed lots of whales north to our first dive site in Lighthouse Bay.  Blizzard Ridge was outstanding for fish life, even for this normally active site it was amazing.  Huge schools of fish, zooming white tip reef sharks, wobbegong sharks out and about, olive sea snakes everywhere, blue spotted rays tossing sand far and wide as wrasse and parrotfish got into the mess to find tasty tidbits. Schooling mackerel. And we had a gorgeous eagle ray! Fabulous dive!
WATER TEMP: 22C
VISIBILITY: 15m
CURRENT: none
SURGE: none
DEPTH: 14m

Labyrinth's batfish population has exploded again and we had schools of small & medium batfish, random small batfish handing out under ledges all by themselves and huge batfish at several cleaning stations. Octopus were putting on a disco show of colours and patterns wherever we looked and there were tons of colourful nudibranchs out and about, too. Green turtles were abundant, white tip reef sharks were lazy and painted crays were bravely halfway out of their holes. Cute baby anglerfish, ugly frogfish and a gorgeous but poisonous cone shell. Great diving!
WATER TEMP: 23C
VISIBILITY: 15m
CURRENT: none
SURGE: none
DEPTH: 14m

We were accompanied by a good number of whales during our cruise down the Gulf and back to the marina. Couldn't have picked a better day to go from one side of the Cape to the other!