It was a great day for a dive, light winds and calm seas, spaces were filling fast and I didn’t want to miss out, so I booked on the afternoon trip with Go Dive, who operate two dive trips to Straddy on Sundays. I arrived at Manly’s East Coast Marina at 11.30am just as Dive Quest, Go Dive Brisbane’s spacious dive boat, was returning from the morning trip. Dive Quest is a 11.4m long by 4m wide custom built catamaran powered by two 300 HP Verado Mariners.
We loaded the gear, sat through the boat and safety brief and were soon heading across the clam waters of
Once in the water we found the visibility to be 20m and the water temperature a lovely 23°C, and below us were millions of bullseyes. This massive school of fish were covering the boulder bottom and below them were quite a few fat wobbegongs looking to catch a few of these bullseyes for dinner.
We explored the rocky reef on the western side of Shag Rock, and going no deeper than 13m saw anemonefish, lionfish, globefish, goatfish, moray eels, sweetlips, butterflyfish and morwong. There were wobbegongs everywhere, both spotted and ornate, resting on top of the boulders and under them. We also explored the sand flats for a while and found a blue spotted stingray and a very large numbray.
Heading back towards the boat we followed a rocky wall and encountered two green turtles and several spotted wobbegongs swimming about, no doubt having heard about the feast of bullseyes. Arriving under the boat we were about to surface when I noticed a large fish lurky amongst the boulders – it was a barramundi cod!
These rare fish are generally not seen as far south as Brisbane, this was the first I had seen off Straddy, so it was a big surprise to see a fully grown ‘Barry’ just hovering between the boulders. I slowing moved towards it and managed to capture several images before this shy fish darted into a cave and disappeared from view.
For our second dive we headed out to Flat Rock. On the morning trip there had been a bit of southerly swell crashing into Flat Rock, the swell was still there but it had dropped enough to allow us to dive the norther
n
end at a site called the Northern Ledges.This is one of the best spots to dive at Flat Rock as it is washed by currents and always produces something special. In the past I have seen everything from bronze whaler sharks to manta rays, and also giant
Once Dave, the skipper, had anchored we jumped in to be greeted by 30m visibility and fish everywhere. We dropped down a wall to 20m and headed into the current towards a group of boulders coloured by soft corals, sponges and black coral trees. Swarming around us were hundreds of bannerfish, surgeonfish, fusiliers, trevally, jobfish and batfish.
I had only just started to photograph a swarm of batfish when something else caught my eye – a massive school of cownose rays. There must have been over two hundred of these rays, which are brown in colour and look similar to an eagle ray, but have a concave head. I forgot about the batfish and started swimming towards this ‘stampede’ of cownose rays. Flat Rock is the only spot off
I photographed several silhouettes images of the school, but what I was really after was an individual shot of a cownose from only a metre away – this had been a dream of mine for a long time, but it had yet to happen as you generally can’t get any closer than six metres to these rays. The only time I have got closer than six metres in the past was after I had run out of film!
I followed the school for a minute, but they effortlessly glided away from me and disappeared into the blue, looks like I would have to make do with group shots yet again. We then explored more of the rocky reef seeing spotted wobbegongs, brown banded catsharks, spotted eagle rays, turtles, parrotfish and a large, but shy, groper.
Towards the end of the dive the cownose rays made another appearance, the pack gliding passed us, but again staying a respectful distance away to avoid me getting my portrait photo - one day I will get lucky.
After two wonderful dives we headed back across