Exmouth Diving report - Lighthouse Bay Friday 7 May 2010

We took advantage of neap tides and low swell today to hit a site that needs the perfect conditions to access. Fish Hole rocks with masses and masses of fish, beautiful reef structures and the possibility of something totally cool happening. Today we had big turtles, little turtles, giant morays, tiny white morays, schools of trevally, sweetlips, snapper, darts, barracuda (HUGE!), parrotfish. Lionfish were tucked up under small ledges. The largest tawny nurse shark ever - well over 3m with a crazy girth - cruised over the top of the reef, led by 12 bright yellow juvenile trevally and followed by 6 gigantic cobia. And dolphins were zooming through the trevally over and over! We not only got to watch them underwater, but back on the boat more dolphins joined the fun and we watched them for most of our surface interval! A-Mazing!
WATER TEMP: 26C
VISIBILITY: 15m
CURRENT: slight
SURGE: mild
DEPTH: 14m

A northerly was blowing and making things a little rocky on the surface, so we moved down to Blizzard Ridge for dive two. Our pair of orange banded pipefish are still hanging out in their little cave and dad still has his bellyful of eggs. Coral trout were everywhere, mostly hanging right on top of the ledge with a few joining big rankin cod and zooming the small groups of baitfish. A white tip reef shark was getting hassled by a suckerfish. The suckerfish would start on the shark's cheek, then work its way up to his eye. The shark didn't like suckerfish on his eye and would thrash his head and whole body to try to dislodge it, only to have the suckerfish do loop and replay the scene. At one point the shark took to ramming a smaller female white tip reef shark and rubbing his head against her flank. Very cool behaviour!
WATER TEMP: 26C
VISIBILITY: 8-10m
CURRENT: slight
SURGE: mild
DEPTH: 14m