We began the day with another morning dive, at the same site as yesterday evenings night dive, The Maze at Blue Pearl Bay by Hayman Island. There were lots of small jellyfish at the surface but we were completely covered head to toe with our lycra stinger suits so were pretty fearless. The only parts of us exposed were our hands and filtrums! There were more christmas tree worms to entertain me, most of them seem to be quite sensitive, especially the white ones. Ian spotted a nudibranch. I found an undulated moray eel and after alerting Ian to his presence noted that he was having his teeth cleaned by a cleaner wrasse! I had a friendly sergeant fish following me around for most of the dive and there were a dozen red emperors resting on the bottom between two bommies. As six of us divers were being towed back to Ocean Pro by the RIB some large batfish followed us back, chasing us and each other.
Our second dive was at Castle Rock in Blue Pearl Bay by Hayman Island and this was a wonderful dive to finish our Great Barrier reef encounter. We saw a yellow boxfish, groupers, sergeants, soldierfish, a fantastic green turtle resting on the bottom to which I had to gain Ian's attention as he couldn't see him for looking. I guess we've become accustomed to looking for small things. We saw many, many beautiful christmas tree worms, nudibranchs and in the last 5 minutes of the dive I spotted a sleeping stingray hiding under a bommie with his tail exposed.
As soon as we had returned to the boat, following a long surface swim, we dried off in the sun and the skipper piloted us back to Airlie Beach. It took over 3 hours to return and we were left to ourselves for most of the journey.
Back at the hostel we checked in and made our way to the various dive shops to return hired gear and thereby witnessing the destruction of credit card bonds that secured the hire. We then sat in a bar with two jugs of beer discussing our recent liveaboard amid other things.
After an hours kip at the hostel we returned to Airlie Beach bars to find liveaboard dive students for some more jugs of beer, but by that time I had become quite tired so after a little while we we went back to the hostel for rest.
Copyright 2003 Helen Fuller. All rights reserved.