As a special birthday treat, we went out with the Octopus Diving team to explore a reef that Aure discovered while passing over it on his boat. To our knowledge this area had never been visited by divers, so it was a rare treat to explore a virgin reef.

The seas were quite rough, and Chris stayed on the boat as large swells broke over the bow. Underwater, there was a strong current, which made swimming difficult, particularly for Stuart, who was towing a surface marker buoy. The reef itself was quite beautiful with a wide variety of sea fans and other soft corals waving in the surge. The topography featured stratified rock jutting out at an angle and small sandy channels where fish congregated.

There was a considerable amount of sea life, including very large spadefish and angelfish. A skittish hawksbill turtle did not seem to be comfortable around divers, unlike many of the turtles we see at frequently-dived sites. There were a great many sponges of varied types, including a strange, maze-like formation on the underside of a rock ledge.

After 40 minutes, we scrambled back onto the boat amidst crashing waves and headed to Ilet Pinel for a drink, and to discuss plans for future explorations of this new site.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 13th, 2009 at 8:02 am and is filed under Diving, Explorations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.