Ready for the Season

Miguel's diving staff is ready for the 2006 – 2007 diving season. Our custom-built dive boat has been refitted and repainted with a few improvements. Dive tanks have been inspected, some hydro tested, and filled with fresh, cleaned air. Today we tested the boat engine and made a couple of dives to check out conditions.

Seas are incredibly calm but a bit churned up because of the change of season coinciding with the full moon. Plankton and baby jellyfish clouded the upper couple meters of water. All this should settle down during the coming week.

Dives at Shadowlands and Little Barrier Reef dive sites proved quite enjoyable. We had a hard time deciding which was more fun: searching for yet another nudibranch specie or flying through dizzying schools of fusiliers and unicornfish. Fish stocks look very healthy after months of weather too rough for much fishing.

Highlights included being shadowed by a large Napol.ean wrasse, several times venturing within two meters of us. A charged current dive off Little Barrier Reef pushed us past two large (old) green sea turtles. Our dive master found a rare puffer playing hide-and-seek in a huge Salvador Dali Sponge. We only find a Lantern toby (Canthigaster epilampra) every other year.
Everything looks set for a great diving season. Next time out we will even remember to bring the ladder!