Dive time: 01:00:00
Max depth: 27.1 metres
Temperature: 29 C
Visibility: 40 metres
Buddy: Axl
Surface interval: 02:37:00

MANTA!!!! After Axl going through the dive brief without mentioning the M word in case he jinxed us, we descended onto the ridge and within 1 minute of hitting the bottom at around 20m, On banged furiously on her tank and signalled a ray. We followed her pointing and sure enough there was a manta ray swimming at our depth coming within 10 metres of us. It was accompanied by a couple of pilot jacks. It was so beautiful, with black and white markings on its body. It swam past us, did a u-turn then swam past us again before disappearing into the blue. We all cheered!!

We continued swimming along the ridge, saw a banded snake snake and a big giant moray close to the sandy bottom, along with a peacock mantis shrimp scurrying along the sand. I heard someone squeal behind me and saw an eagle ray swimming by. Score! Already an amazing dive and we were only 10 minutes in.

We came up to the top of the reef and pottered around a bit where we saw a couple of Napoleon wrasse, a big blue one and a smaller more coloured one. Also saw another giant moray, loads of moorish idols, a hermit crab, juvenile trevallies schooling juvenile fusiliers into balls and then attacking (a bit like our own nature documentary happening in front of us), a few lionfish, a porcelain crab hiding in some fire coral, anemonefish, some large groupers, butterflyfish and angelfish, some black snapper, and some barracuda at the surface. Amazing dive!