14 September 2005 (Day 9)
We must be getting used to WA time, either that or the diving is really taking it out of us! This morning Helen only woke a few minutes before the mobile/alarm at 6.30am, after another early night.
At 7.30am we were at the dive shop again, collecting our gear for a full day diving trip out to the Murion Islands. These are a pair of islands north-east of Exmouth, still within the Exmouth Gulf, and about 1½ hours by boat from Exmouth Marina.
After Hamilton Island Marina Village, which is the main shopping centre for the island, the Exmouth Marina is, well, functional. Not a shop in sight, not even the usual fish shop – just jetty and boats.
We all formed a chain between the dive centre trailer and the boat to transfer our gear to the dive boat then all piled in and we were off! Today’s boat was bigger than the dive boat to Lighthouse Bay on Tuesday, and powered over what was quite a sizeable swell, driven by high winds. No whales this time, just occasional small flocks of seabirds swooping over patches of water, brown terns mixed with common seagulls shining silver in the morning sun.
We anchored in the lee of South Murion Island and took a giant stride in off the marlin board. We were diving with one of the instructors, Junka, a young Japanese woman, and another couple who seemed to be quite new to diving still, judging by the amount of silt they managed to kick up and the number of times they ran into us!
The first dive had a depth of around 14m, onto a predominantly sandy bottom with some low coral and lots and lots of fish! The dive site is called “Cod Spot”, and their certainly were a lot of cod around, although we didn’t see a potato cod at this site. Junka led us all around in a classic novice diver circle pattern, which got quite frustrating, but luckily there was a lot to enjoy in the water.
Some of the species we saw were (we think): another wobbegong, this one seemed to be feeding on something, lots of rockcods, wrasse, schools of baitfish, various pipefish, angelfish, butterflyfish, wrasse, surgeonfish, bannerfish, anenomefish, and Daniel has a great range of photos of nudibranches. We also caught a glimpse of a white-tip reef shark, but couldn’t get a very good look at it. We also saw an olive sea snake, they are quite curious, particularly about waving divers’ fins!
When we were all back on board the boat moved slowly to the new site around the island whilst we were stripping off and trying to warm up! We had a big buffet lunch on board (cold meats, chicken, salads, bread) then, far too soon after that lunch, it felt, we were gearing up again for our second dive. Pulling on wet wet-suits, yick!
The second dive site was called “Whalebone” and had a spectacular array of coral bommies. The coral types on the sides were hard, with the soft type corals and sponges on the top, between 8-6m below the surface. The corals were in all colours, white, green, blue, purple, red, orange, gold, and came in forms of plate, elephant ear (fascinating ot come through a swim-through and see the underside of the elephant ear), featherstar, honeycomb, brain coral, and probably many more that we just didn’t recognise.
Despite being in the lee of the island there was still a strong swell – most noticeable when you’d seen something you wanted to look at and next minute the swell had moved you 10m away!
One of the first things we saw when we had descended for the dive was a small turtle, swimming away from us. Helen tried to give chase to have a closer look (vis was pretty bad for both dives, about 6-8m with lots of sediment in the water) but couldn’t continue without getting lost in the murk. One of the other impediments to visibility were the incredible schools of fish – baitfish and silver bullseyes swept past in the swell, enveloping divers, or lurked in the crevices and underhangs.
There was also a good range of fish, lots of small fish hiding in the coral and anemones, plus the “usual” bannerfish, butterflyfish, angelfish, parrotfish chewing away at the hard coral, surgeonfish, a yellow trumpetfish and other pipefish, cod and wrasse.
For the second time today Daniel and Helen didn’t use up our air first, the novice couple in our group went up first for a change and we kept swimming around with Junka until Daniel was at 50 bar before heading for the drop line and a safety stop at 5m.
Finally we were all on the boat again, busily stowing our gear and swapping “did you see the whalebone?” and “no, but we saw a turtle!” whilst Darren, the skipper, started us powering back to the very functional marina. We formed a human chain again to transfer the gear to the dive shop bus, then it was back to the shop to wash the gear and finally our second dive day was over.
We headed back to Stalag 20 and eventually to lamb cutlets marinated in honey, lemon and mustard, cooked on the BBQ (once Daniel coaxed it into working) with sliced potato, tomatoes, onions and mushrooms. After a few hours looking at the day’s photos trying to identify what we had seen through the day we headed for a not so early night after all, with the bed moving with the afternoon’s sea swell as soon as the eyes were closed and the wind blowing in the trees outside our window mimicking the sound of the waves.
At 7.30am we were at the dive shop again, collecting our gear for a full day diving trip out to the Murion Islands. These are a pair of islands north-east of Exmouth, still within the Exmouth Gulf, and about 1½ hours by boat from Exmouth Marina.
After Hamilton Island Marina Village, which is the main shopping centre for the island, the Exmouth Marina is, well, functional. Not a shop in sight, not even the usual fish shop – just jetty and boats.
We all formed a chain between the dive centre trailer and the boat to transfer our gear to the dive boat then all piled in and we were off! Today’s boat was bigger than the dive boat to Lighthouse Bay on Tuesday, and powered over what was quite a sizeable swell, driven by high winds. No whales this time, just occasional small flocks of seabirds swooping over patches of water, brown terns mixed with common seagulls shining silver in the morning sun.
We anchored in the lee of South Murion Island and took a giant stride in off the marlin board. We were diving with one of the instructors, Junka, a young Japanese woman, and another couple who seemed to be quite new to diving still, judging by the amount of silt they managed to kick up and the number of times they ran into us!
The first dive had a depth of around 14m, onto a predominantly sandy bottom with some low coral and lots and lots of fish! The dive site is called “Cod Spot”, and their certainly were a lot of cod around, although we didn’t see a potato cod at this site. Junka led us all around in a classic novice diver circle pattern, which got quite frustrating, but luckily there was a lot to enjoy in the water.
Some of the species we saw were (we think): another wobbegong, this one seemed to be feeding on something, lots of rockcods, wrasse, schools of baitfish, various pipefish, angelfish, butterflyfish, wrasse, surgeonfish, bannerfish, anenomefish, and Daniel has a great range of photos of nudibranches. We also caught a glimpse of a white-tip reef shark, but couldn’t get a very good look at it. We also saw an olive sea snake, they are quite curious, particularly about waving divers’ fins!
When we were all back on board the boat moved slowly to the new site around the island whilst we were stripping off and trying to warm up! We had a big buffet lunch on board (cold meats, chicken, salads, bread) then, far too soon after that lunch, it felt, we were gearing up again for our second dive. Pulling on wet wet-suits, yick!
The second dive site was called “Whalebone” and had a spectacular array of coral bommies. The coral types on the sides were hard, with the soft type corals and sponges on the top, between 8-6m below the surface. The corals were in all colours, white, green, blue, purple, red, orange, gold, and came in forms of plate, elephant ear (fascinating ot come through a swim-through and see the underside of the elephant ear), featherstar, honeycomb, brain coral, and probably many more that we just didn’t recognise.
Despite being in the lee of the island there was still a strong swell – most noticeable when you’d seen something you wanted to look at and next minute the swell had moved you 10m away!
One of the first things we saw when we had descended for the dive was a small turtle, swimming away from us. Helen tried to give chase to have a closer look (vis was pretty bad for both dives, about 6-8m with lots of sediment in the water) but couldn’t continue without getting lost in the murk. One of the other impediments to visibility were the incredible schools of fish – baitfish and silver bullseyes swept past in the swell, enveloping divers, or lurked in the crevices and underhangs.
There was also a good range of fish, lots of small fish hiding in the coral and anemones, plus the “usual” bannerfish, butterflyfish, angelfish, parrotfish chewing away at the hard coral, surgeonfish, a yellow trumpetfish and other pipefish, cod and wrasse.
For the second time today Daniel and Helen didn’t use up our air first, the novice couple in our group went up first for a change and we kept swimming around with Junka until Daniel was at 50 bar before heading for the drop line and a safety stop at 5m.
Finally we were all on the boat again, busily stowing our gear and swapping “did you see the whalebone?” and “no, but we saw a turtle!” whilst Darren, the skipper, started us powering back to the very functional marina. We formed a human chain again to transfer the gear to the dive shop bus, then it was back to the shop to wash the gear and finally our second dive day was over.
We headed back to Stalag 20 and eventually to lamb cutlets marinated in honey, lemon and mustard, cooked on the BBQ (once Daniel coaxed it into working) with sliced potato, tomatoes, onions and mushrooms. After a few hours looking at the day’s photos trying to identify what we had seen through the day we headed for a not so early night after all, with the bed moving with the afternoon’s sea swell as soon as the eyes were closed and the wind blowing in the trees outside our window mimicking the sound of the waves.
posted by Daniel & Helen at
9:03 PM
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