DIVE LOG AUSTRALASIA FEB 2025 ISSUE 410

School of Glasseyes

For day four we moved overnight from Ashmore to Boot Reef and a dive site called: ‘Silver Tip’ where we had two exhilarating drift dives along a wall on the edge of the Continental Shelf. As the name implies, we sited several large Silver Tip Sharks and their little cousins: White Tip

underwater, we could only dream of having an underwater encounter with these mystical creatures on a future expedition. For day five we steamed overnight south past the site of

Reef Sharks. However, what was super impressive was the size of the giant Gorgonian Fans – some 2 mts across. Also present amongst the diversity of fish life were Clown Trigger Fish, Trigger Fish and out in the deep Mackerel, Trevally, Dog Toothed Tuna and Big Eye Barracuda. Then out of the blue came a giant Queensland Grouper the size of a VW car. Although a fish, when you get that big, not even sharks worry you, so we were quite cautious while firing off a few photos. Our third and fourth dive of the day was at a site named: ‘Cassowary Head’ because of the distinctive shape of the reef we could identify from one of the drones we had onboard. Here we found the variety of soft corals, gorgonians, large red Barrel Sponges – the colours – just wow - and the associated fish life was again amazing. The ‘safety stop’ in shallows were not at all boring. Small schools of various fish species danced about us and darted in and out of the Table-Top and Staghorn coral heads. In the late afternoon, we spotted several of the 12 mts and extremely shy Omura Whales on the surface. Omura’s or the dwarf fin whale (Balaenoptera omurai) is a species which very little is known. Originally it was thought to only inhabit the waters of Japan, however its presence in the Great Barrier Reef was confirmed in 2016. Rarely photographed

Bottle Nose Dolphins

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DIVE LOG Australasia #410 - February 25

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