DIVE LOG Australasia

Exploring the Jake sea plane.

The next few dives quickly made up for this. First up was Siaes Tunnel, one of the sites I most wanted to dive as I knew it was a spot to see some rare fish. This spectacular cave has an entry on the reef wall and opens into a massive chamber than exits at 30m. Lined with gorgonians and soft corals it would make for great wide angle images, but I had a macro lens on to hunt for small, unusual fishes. I spotted the first after a five minute search, a very rare Cocos-Keeling angelfish. This rare fish is only 6cm long and very shy. I tired to photograph it for five minutes as it ducked in and out of cracks in the wall. I managed a few decent images until Epi called me over and showed me two more that were even shier. Then I looked for the rare black and white butterflyfish, and spotted a few of these, but they were also very elusive. After exploring the tunnel we cruised the reef wall, seeing reef sharks, pufferfish and turtles. Our next dive at Ulong Channel was even better. We started the dive at the channel entrance with reef hooks and watching a dozen grey reef sharks cruising back and forth. They were joined by several whitetip reef sharks and a cute small spotted eagle ray. After hanging in the current for twenty minutes we detached and drifted with the current down the channel. Here were healthy hard corals, gorgonians, sea whips and whip corals. Coral trout were everywhere, thousands of them, but we also saw gropers, reef sharks, batfish, snappers and sweetlips. We briefly paused in a cave to watch a hawksbill turtle feeding.

Our afternoon dive at Siaes Corner was one I was looking forward to as skipper Ken said it was the best place to see a fish that has eluded my camera for years, the rare flame angelfish. This was another wonderful wall dive with abundant grey reef sharks, schools of barracuda and snappers. We also encountered giant morays, hawksbill turtles and a wonderful variety of reef fish. Ken gave me the tip to look for the flame angelfish on the top of the wall, and after a few minutes I spotted the first. These lovely small colourful fish are a variety of pygmy angelfish, so seen in small groups consisting of a male and several females. I spent several minutes photographing the first group of three and got some nice images. I was extremely surprised by the end of the dive to have found twelve of these normally rare fish. The next morning, we returned to Ulong Sand Bar to look for more spawning bumphead parrotfish. The visibility was not as good today, around 30m, and we headed straight out into the blue water to look for the action. We spotted reef sharks and schools of pelagic fish and then saw a dark cloud - thousands of bumphead parrotfish. For the next thirty minutes the action was insane, with group after group heading towards the surface to spawn. These groups appeared to be one female and group of five to eight males. It was amazing to watch, but frustrating to photograph, as the spawning only lasted a few seconds and was generally five to ten metres away.

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DIVE LOG Australasia #408 - October ‘24

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