January has proved to be an amazing start to the New Year, with fantastic new visitors coming for dinner at our favourite site “Bashful Bommie”. There must be great food hanging around because it has been enticing Manta Rays of all sizes who have been performing "Loop The Loops" under the boat with wonderful regularity.
Word about the good food must have got out amongst the reef community, because we are extremely happy to report that “Bashful Bommie” was visited by a Whale Shark towards the end of the month: a 9 meter juvenile cruised the site. These magnificent animals have not been sighted in the area for years, so we hope this is the first of many.
Visibility continues to hold up with regular days of 15 metres plus, giving us great sightings of the reef residents. The juveniles we were watching in December are getting bigger but there are plenty of other babies to take their place in the cute listings including Midnight Snapper and Western Leopard Wrasse.
The White Tip Shark family at “Whaler” have become an established sighting for us. It is great to see the juveniles growing and finding their favourite spots to sleep during the day; still within the territory of their mother, which may not last too long, but we are enjoying it whilst it does.
The New Year brought northerly winds with it so we took the opportunity to visit a few sites that we do not often get to see, including “Fish City” near St Crispins Reef, which, as the name suggests is a haven for lots of fish - Squirrelfish, Blue Streaks and Sweetlips were schooling in large numbers around the bommie whilst being prowled about by pelagics: Barracuda and Big-Eye Trevally.
