DIVE LOG AUSTRALASIA FEB 2025 ISSUE 410

My intimate encounter with this Diagonal Sweetlip

wonderful encounter with a beautiful friendly fish with a freshly serviced camera in hand and the perfect lens for the occasion and the time to settle in for a good photo session. This is what the Barrier reef is all about. Blue magic, sunshine, stunning fish life and sheer excitement. My fishy friend and I interacted for a while playing tag and exchanging wise thoughts, I imagined. What adventures this magnificent fish had seen. I wondered. Where were its children? What tales of wonder and life on the reef did it have to tell? As I wandered further along the reef, more Sweetlip hung lazily in the sunshine filled waters. A huge colony of Tomato Clown fish making dozens of

family groups lived inside a three metre coral colony. Numerous Butterfly fish and Angel Fish danced over the corals. Perisher Blue is a dive site to immerse your senses and as you drift off into a state of joy; The Gerschwin song sung by Ella Fitzgerald comes to mind as it often does up here… “It’s wonderful, It’s marvellous.” Great Detached has a number of columns of coral that you can dive on. These pillars of coral that arise from the sea floor at about 35 to 40 metres are found all across the Pacific. I have dived plenty of them in Fiji, PNG and on the reef. They are a coral geologists dream revealing history of past coral growth and rising sea levels since the last ice age This old man Green Turtle has seen many days and fathered many babies.

This Steep Head Parrotfish was so tame and fearless.

DIVE LOG Australasia #410 - February 25 24

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