Superunknown

Another blistering day of diving with no current, blue skies and great viz in the water. On top of that the Greenhouse were also celebrating their one year anniversary, so congrats to them for providing good food for hungry divers over the past year.

It's all good

We decided to shake things up for a change today and cruise the mini wall and sand garden for the first dive instead of the main wall, and just see what was out there. There was a good selection of jacks and hogfish hanging around, not to mention large shoals of sweetlips, grunts and sergeant majors so we had quite a nice variety today.

Look at those sweetlips. The fish ain't bad either! Boom-boom!

And we did have the odd turtle or two cruising around as well so it was definitely a mixed bag creature wise today.

Hero in a half shell........

The best was yet to come however as the sun slipped towards the horizon and we got ready to get in for our customary night dive and the discovery of some new friends that we hadn't seen before.

Scuba cat provide last minute buddy checks and ensures the purr-fect dive plan

Night time is the right time

First priority of the day was to try and get a shot of the jawfish at the 6m as it was taunting me with a mouthful of eggs from the previous dive, unfortunately with a 30mm macro you need to be on top of them to get the best results and after 25 minutes of trying to coax him out of his hole, he wast budging. I'll get you next time!

However, just a little way off I found a really nice surprise of a sea plume shrimp on a sponge. It really caught my eye with it being so green (like kermit but without the hand up it's bottom), which was a nice find as I'd never seen one here before and supposed to be a bit rare in this neck of the woods.

Something new and exciting!!

We also found our usual sleeping turtle under the coral head, every night dive without fail, that's where you find it and for an added bonus we had a little burrfish buzzing around as well.

As the dive wore on the blood worms got increasingly worse and I must say this is the worst I've seen them yet which was a real shame as they really get in the way of some of the shots and ruin them, but there's not a lot you can do about it so you make do.

Blood worms aside, I did find a lovely little purple-ring nudibranch which we got some shots of before the worms moved in and obliterated the area.

But that's not all, we also had a second surprise from another new visitor in the shape of a sculptured slipper lobster which was superb. At first I thought it was a flouder with the flat shape and the fringes but then I noticed the legs. Very unusual and very nice, like a hovercraft but not as noisy.

If there were two you would have a pair of slippers........

I got a little bit of video of the slipper lobster as well but you'll see what I mean about the blood worms being everywhere. Lovely. Not.

For those without flash embedded, you can also see the video on Youtube: HERE

But with making a couple of new friends on the reef this evening and the nudis, it's difficult to complain.