Saturday 6th February - Diving

A big day today. A twilight dive and then a night dive hopefully to see manta rays.

A humpback whale was breaching as we arrived - a good sign as they eat similar things to manta rays.

Visited Eel Gardens - saw lots of garden eels which live in the sand and disappear if you get too close. Also several moray eels and lots of fish. Then a surface interval on the boat waiting for the sun to go down before our second dive.

We were each given a large torch and a blue glowstick on the back of our tanks. Entered the water around 6.45pm. A slightly surreal experience going into a dark world. A box of lights was sitting on the rocks - only about 35 feet deep and we were told to settle down around it and shine our torches upwards into the plankton to encourage plankton and manta rays. Whilst we were waiting the reef was still alive around us. A large moray eel out hunting fish made its way around various boulders towards me and I gave it a wide berth. After 20 minutes or so there were no signs of any mantas so we started exploring the reef instead whilst still keeping an eye out for any movement around the lights.

Lots of other creatures come out at night. Shining our torches we saw two sponge crabs (literally large crabs which have sponges living on their backs) having a minor argument. More moray eels came hunting using our torches to catch out unwary fish. Most of the fish looked sleepy - either hiding between the corals or somewhere else safe. Someone did see a moray catch one. A few red shrimps and a couple of smaller bright orange crabs. A slipper lobster was pointed out to us - all I could see was two eyes the camouflage was so good.

I thought I could hear whales singing. This is quite common as their songs travel quite a long way.

Back on the boat the captain had seen another whale right next to him and wanted to jump in to see it but couldn't find the spare mask. He couldn't get our attention whilst we were under the water so we all missed it.

A lovely starry night - could see Orion and Cassiopeia from the boat - not much light pollution here.