Diving Lady Elliot Island

We just spent a weekend diving around Lady Elliot Island in the Southern Great Barrier Reef.  The diving out from this island can be spectacular.  You are guaranteed to see manta rays, turtles, cobia, reef sharks and other larger pelagic fish as well as the smaller stuff (if you can drag yourself away from the awsome spectacle of the manta rays).

We spotted this Manta Ray about 5 minutes into our first dive.  We watched it circle us for about 15 minutes before it moved on.

Unfortunately for us, we picked a weekend when the weather didn’t want to co-operate.  We had high winds, large swell, complete cloud cover, rain and a morning thunderstorm.  And for the first time ever, I experienced a touch of sea sickness along with most of the people on the boat.

The diving was still good, though not as good as when you have ideal conditions. But hey, that’s diving, you pay your money and take your chance with the weather.  I will definitley  dive Lady Elliot again, hopefully in better conditions.

Here are the best of our photos from the weekend.

Spotted Emperor

Brown/Black Sweetlip

Cobia near the Severence wreak.   There was also heaps of sweetlip and emporer fish mixed in among the cobia.  We did this dive late in the afternoon and unfortunately the lighting was very poor for taking photos.

We enjoyed our night dive.  It was spent mainly under the boat, looking for tiny crabs and shrimps.

Coral crab

Hermit crab

Cowrie

Squid. There were dozens of squid using the boat’s lights to hunt.