Exmouth Diving report - Lighthouse Bay Saturday 2 January 2010

Ah so much nicer today! The wind and chop have settled down and the tides have taken most of the dirty water away. We started today at Gulliver's and descended the mooring straight into a school of about 50 snapper. They weren't shy and barely made room for us! Our resident Harlequin shrimp pair is now a single mom - no sign of her mate but there are some very tiny babies and it appears that she also still has some eggs. The white tip reef sharks were being lazy in the sand and wobbegong sharks were tucked up tight under small ledges, a couple only had the curls of their tails showing. It was a really good dive!
WATER TEMP: 22C
VISIBILITY: 10m
CURRENT: none
SURGE: mild
DEPTH: 13m

Turtles, Turtles, Turtles! That's what our divers wanted to see so we dropped in at Labyrinth for dive two. And had 5 turtles in the first 13 minutes! Turtle #6 was snoozing in a crack in the reef and as we came in for a closer look he arched his neck over wanting a scratch. He accepted a brief one, then oh-so-very-slowly swam up towards the surface - but stopped at about 7m and came right back down to one of our divers and proceeded to rub his head, flipper and belly on her outstretched hand. It was an amazing experience that not many get to have! We also had schools of sea perch, a few white tip reef sharks, lots of big batfish getting cleaned, nudibranchs & egg spirals, tons of shrimp gobies outside their holes as bulldozer shrimp cleaned house and more raccoon butterflyfish than we've seen in ages - they seemed to be wafting in pairs wherever we looked. Fabulous dive!
WATER TEMP: 22C
VISIBILITY: 10m
CURRENT: none
SURGE: mild
DEPTH: 12m