It has been a few weeks since I’ve been out diving. The weather has been miserable and nobody is motivated to go out in the rain. Yesterday, however, I did get lucky and had two divers and a snorkeler on the boat. We went to the south end of Leper Island.

I thought that I had my camera fixed, but it still locks up when I go deeper than about five metres. I think that I know how to fix it now, but I can’t be bothered to work on it because I’ll be winging off to Port Moresby and Brisbane on Wednesday (yikes, only two days away!). I’m going to try to post every day, but it may not be possible. If I go missing for a day or two, I’m not dead (probably), I’m just on the road.

I’ll show you a few shots that I did manage to get on Saturday, even though all I could do with my camera was press the shutter release. Here is a small school of Blue and Yellow Fusiliers (Caesio teres):

It’s not a particularly good shot, but the pattern of their bright yellow tails scattered across the image is amusing. I have another image of this fish in A Nasty Customer and Fancy Pants.

These Bblackspot Snappers (Lutjanus ehrenbergii) swam past in a constant stream for two or three minutes. There must have been thousands of them:

The water on the surface was quite cold, at least by our standards. It was raining a little and the wind was picking up. It was a delicious experience to dive down under the cold fresh river water on top into the wonderfully warm water below. Our average water temperature down as far as you dare to go is between 28 and 29° C (82-84°F).

I’ll finish up today with a nice little shot of a small mob of female Purple Antheas (Psudanthias tuka):

The Antheas are among my favourites in the category of small fish. There are a multitude of varieties here. They float like clouds of jewels over the coral.

I will probably have one or two more posts before I’ll be reporting from Brisbane.

G’day, mate.

Related posts:

1. Wrapping Up a Week of Diving It's been a long week of two dives a day, a bit much for my old bones. Still, it's the first time in years that I've hit the water on my back so many times....
2. A Good Spotter Makes All the Difference Good buddy RIch Jones is back in the water 18 months after getting bent. He's currently "spotting" for me as I shoot. However he has a new Canon G11 just like mine. I feel a contest coming on....
3. Improving the Eel Garden Dive Site Floating mooring buoys are a waste of money and a poor way to protect the reefs. We're going to put rings underwater for mooring. Nobody will steal them....
4. Sunday at the Office I LOVE driving all the way to work on Sunday because swampsucking TELIKOM can't figure out how to twist two wires together....
5. Undersea Bits and Bobs I wish you a happy Australia day and present you with treasures from under the sea....
6. Cruising the Eel Garden If they are humanists, are we miscreants or mentally disturbed? If religious, would we be Gods who disturbed their peaceful world for our demented amusement?...
7. More Underwater Critters Today I show you some fish, a nudibranch, a fat slug and a nice shot of three genuine UFOs....

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 26th, 2009 at 10:28 and is filed under Under the Sea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.