Night diving on Norman and Saxon Reefs, GBR

As part of our short break in Cairns, we spent 4 days and 3 nights on the dive boat ‘Taka’.   Deep Sea Divers Den runs daily trips to the reef, where you then transfer to their Liveaboard boat.  The majority of dives are on Norman and Saxon Reefs, which we have dived countless times over the past 12 years, we never tire of it, and every dive has been great fun, especially the night dives.

So armed with our new torches/video lights, we jumped in.  The first thing I noticed, was that my light was too bright, and it scared all the fish and critters away.  Fortunately, I can adjust the light intensity as well as change the light to a red beam.  I found the red light great for spotting the creatures, however my photos do tend to have a bit of a red tinge.  The other thing that we learned was that sharks are attracted to flashing lights.  While Phil was shinning his torch on a grey reef shark, he accidentally switched his light to strobe.   The shark immediately changed direction and headed straight towards the flashing light.  Needless to say, Phil quickly turned the strobe effect off.  Here are our favourite photos from our three night dives.  Hope you enjoy.

Giant Moray; This guy was busy hunting, he was in and out of the coral. It was great to see the whole eel, something we’ve only ever seen at night.

One of the many prawns to be spotted on night dives.

Decorator crab; you have to look real hard. We only spotted this crab because it was moving. I promise you, it is there, it takes up most of the photo.

Sea hare; We’ve seen this sea hare once before on the GBR. Well, we think it is a sea hare. If you can identify it, please let us know.

Nudibranch, Elisabeth’s Chromodoris; it was about the size of my finger nail.

Sea Hare; There were two Sea Hares, the second Sea Hare is just visible on the right.  We did identify it while on the boat but can’t recall its name.  They were about 30cm long.