Dive time: 00:51:00
Max depth: 22.6 metres
Temperature: 30 C
Visibility: 40 metres
Buddy: Sophie
Surface interval: 02:54:00

What a stunning dive! We descended onto Batfish Rock and swam amongst the big granite boulders where there were soft corals and sea fans sprinkled around. There were schools of little fish everywhere, giant trevally and bluefin trevally cruising past and hunting the little fish, a school of batfish hovering near the bottom and as we cruised past one of them followed us around for about 10 minutes. We swam off the main rock and out into the blue where there was a massive school of barracuda hovering in midwater and occasionally swirling around us and in front of us with a few giant trevally swimming with the school as well. The batfish was still following me at this point, and would come up and swim very close to my face and when I reached out to touch it, it almost looked like it would let me stroke it before it turned away at the last moment.

Also saw amongst the big boulders some large black sweetlips, oriental sweetlips, a brown grouper that was about a metre long, a banded sea snake, a giant triggerfish moving bits of coral between its jaws to get at some food, a flutemouth, quite a few anemones with anemonefish, filefish, and lots of various colourful reef fish.

We ascended up the mooring line where we hung on for dear life during the safety stop as it seemed like the current was roaring, even though it wasn’t so bad on the bottom. But as soon as we let go of the line to drift back to the boat the current seemed OK.

Sophie and I were all smiles back on the boat!