DIVE LOG AUSTRALASIA FEB 2026

Situated just about a minute from the resort, in a bay in the middle of the fjords, the wharf right next to the dive shop offers excellent muck diving. It was the perfect spot to start off the underwater adventure. The wharf dive isn’t exactly your typical kind of muck dive – sand, rubble, maybe one or the other kind of debris. Here you find heaps of rocks and pillars with nooks and crannies for little critters to hide. Isn’t it amazing how many weird little things there are below the surface? It certainly always fascinates me! Here, just off the wharf, we found nudibranchs, squat lobsters, mantis shrimps, pipefish and even a tiny orange juvenile sea cucumber, which I had never seen before. In one spot we encountered what must have been a whole family of pyjama cardinalfish, happy to pose for the camera. One of my favourite finds to finish off this brilliant dive was a couple of sea spiders sitting on top of an algae-overgrown rock. The pictures didn’t turn out as hoped, so I’ll just have to come back one day and try again, I guess! The next few dives on the inner reef were absolutely beautiful, with water temperatures just under 30 °C. Long walls, plenty of soft corals and lots and lots of small fish – a treat for wide angle photographers. It got even better

Scribbled Puffer, Arothron mappa photo by M.Scotland

further out, where we spent most of our time on the North-Western ‘Keiko’s Reef’. At the beginning of the dive at around 20m we encountered a friendly turtle, keeping us occupied for quite a while, as it kept coming back to us after taking a breath at the surface every now and then. Eventually deciding to keep going to see more of this stunning underwater world, we found us surrounded by purple queen anthias. They were everywhere. Beautiful vibrant purple sprinkled all over fields of subtly coloured hard coral, contrasting the blue background.

A Bluespotted Fantail Ray, Taeniura lymma photo by M.Scotland

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DIVE LOG Australasia #416- February’ 26

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