The summer months sees dozens of leopard sharks invade the waters around Cook Island, and to photograph these leopards was the main reason we recently dived the island from the charter boat Ocean Dive.
Chris Mair, the owner and operator of Ocean Dive (a 8.4m fisher mono-hull surveyed for ten divers) informed us that there were plenty of leopard sharks about, especially on the Northern Ledge, where we were just about to dive.
The dive conditions were near perfect, light south east winds, only a small southerly swell, but calm on the northern side of Cook Island, and the water was clear, blue and warm at 26C. We jumped in and started to search over the sand, looking for leopard sharks in 12m of water.
Within the first few minutes we had found an ornate wobbegong lying out in the open, a lovely egg cowrie feeding on a soft coral and encountered a wonderful variety of colourful reef fish, but no leopards. After five minutes of searching, and no sign of a leopard, we decided to head out into deeper water in hope of finding a leopard shark hiding near the small bommies that sit in 14m to 16m.
These bommies are covered in sponges, corals, ascidians, sea stars and millions of featherstars. Searching the sand between each bommie, we still couldn’t find a leopard shark. However, we did find dozens of blue spotted stingrays and common stingarees hidden under the sand, a couple of turtles, blue gropers, a brown banded catshark and two very cute juvenile marbled rock cod.
We soon found ourselves
spending more and more time investigating each bommie looking for critters, and
soon spotted grubfish, hawkfish, gobies, blennies, several octopus, including
one guarding eggs, shrimps and an assortment of nudibranch species.Our search for leopard sharks ended at the next bommie when we found a spectacular sea horse clinging to a small sponge. We couldn’t believe it, we have been diving Cook Island for almost twenty years and had never seen a sea horse here before. For those in the southern states finding a sea horse may not sound that exciting, but for us it was amazing, as we had never found a sea horse in Queensland (or northern New South Wales where Cook Island is actually located) before.
This little beauty kept us captivated for the next ten minutes. Bright orange in colour, and standing almost 8cm high, it was a lovely sight as it gently swayed back and forth with the sight surge. We both shot dozens of photos from numerous angles before leaving this little sea horse in peace. This sea horse species was later identified by Australian fish expert Rudie Kuiter as a rare deep water sad sea horse.
The leopard sharks forgotten, we refocused the dive as a critter hunt, searching each of the bommies for little treasures. We soon found some tiny cuttlefish, several goby species sharing holes with goby shrimps and an unusual green coloured blenny patterned with tiger stripes. The two best finds were a large purple-edged ceratosoma nudibranch and a very well camouflaged velvetfish species that looked just like the surrounding algae.
Back on the surface Chris couldn’t believe we had found a sea horse. He has probably done more dives at Cook
Island
than anyone over the last thirty years and had never seen one. After our surface
interval we took Chris to see the sea horse and continue our critter hunting
around the bommies.On the way to the bommies Chris showed us two lovely pipefish that were living at the mooring just under the boat. We also found a Spanish dancer nudibranch here before heading out over the sand again. We quickly found the spot where the sea horse was, but it had disappeared. So we split up to search for the little critter.
Within minutes Chris called us over and pointed out two beautiful robust ghost pipefish, a larger brown one and smaller red one. This was getting better and better. We usual associate Cook Island with all the large animals that can be seen here like turtles, stingrays, eagle rays, wobbies, gropers, shovelnose rays and leopard sharks. But we will have to dive Cook Island more regularly, with close-up lens, as this place was also a heaven for spectacular small critters.
After spending some time photographing the wonderful robust ghost pipefish, Chris called us over again as he had found the sea horse. It had relocated to another bommie, obviously trying to avoid over excited photographers. After more photos we were starting to get low on air and reluctantly returned to the boat.
We might not have seen a leopard shark at Cook Island that day, but didn’t really care as we had found one of the best critter dive sites in Australia.