Exmouth Diving report - Lighthouse Bay Monday 8 November 2010

Now this is the way to start the week! We headed for Blizzard Ridge for dive one as we wanted to try to find the new anglerfish that we'd seen on Saturday, but, alas, he was no where to be found. We were very sad. But the crazy amount of fish, sharks, sea snakes, eels, and nudibranchs helped us get happy again! We even had a grey reef shark checking us out. Two different lionfish were showing off their fins in mid-water: there's something stunning about a red and white firefish with all of its bits spread out against a blue background! We had two mating octopus today, too. The female was BIG and she was making the male work pretty hard - dragging him all over the reef, swimming away, tucking into small holes, sitting up high on the reef edge and all the while both of them are showing off a breath-taking array of colours, patterns and textures. Best mating display ever!
WATER TEMP: 26C
VISIBILITY: 10m
CURRENT: none
SURGE: mild
DEPTH: 14m

We had a hunch about Gulliver's so made it our second dive site. The place was hopping with a huge school of five lined sea perch, smaller groups of snapper, a big rolling school of convict surgeons and a dizzying school of southern drummers buzzing & circling us several times during the dive. One of the small magnificent anemones was rolled up into a purple vase and its resident pink anemonefish were weaving in and out of the mohawked tentacles. And we had two manta rays! One of them took over the cleaning station for about half an hour - back and forth, coming right over the divers' heads, circling around, getting a wing massage from our bubbles. AMAZING!
WATER TEMP: 26C
VISIBILITY: 8-10m
CURRENT: none
SURGE: none
DEPTH: 14m