Had a wicked dive today. My diver didn’t want to do the last dive so I decided to go out on my own and look for some of the cool stuff that is hanging around.
So first I found two robust ghostpipefish. They are not very common and look like a leaf. Then I moved on to where the two harlequin ghostpipefish are hanging out and found them together with a very small dwarf lionfish, about 2 cm, and a spotface moray. Then I swam on to where they had found a Halemida ghostpipefish the day before. They are very rare so it is very cool that we have them on our house reef.
Got my pictures and swam on to see what else was down there and while I was looking for stick pipefish (didn’t find them, though) I saw a ray in the blue. First I thought it was a common bluespotted stingray but then I saw the tail that just went on and on and I knew it was an eagle ray. They are so beautiful and graceful. I put my camera on video mode and filmed him while he was just swimming around me.
I even got some pictures after before he took off again. Then by one of the buoylines there was a massive green turtle, about 1,5m from head to tail, and I got really close and he was just LOOKING at me like he was saying ” What are you doing here? This is my turf!” Swam on to a pile of tyres where there was another massive turtle, a juvenile emperor angelfish and some shrimps. On the way back to the jetty I came by a lionfish, two more robust ghostpipefish and a marbled snake eel.
I was down for 67 minutes and could have stayed an hour more but I had to get up because the boat was going back to Semporna.
But what an amazing dive:-)