Bare Island, Western Side, 17th November 2007

Dive No. 280. 10.53 am, 18 degrees, 64 mins, 14.6 max, 11.3 av

Liz, Sharon, Caroline and I decided to do the western side rather than go with the large group led by club DM Leeza, who opted for the eastern entrance. Liz was fired up by a reported sighting of an eastern blue devil fish by Caroline three weeks ago on the western side and was determined to see it and maybe a Red Indian fish as well. The conditions on the surface were perfect on all sides of the island and we entered via the “rock-pool” on the western side and soon hit a cold thermocline. It was a lovely dive even though we didn’t get to the holy grails of the eastern blue devil fish or the Red Indian fish or even a relatively commonly-sighted weedy sea dragon (or seedy wee dragon, as Leeza calls it). We did see two green (or golden?) moray eels, a crested horn shark resting amongst the colourful sponges, some squid (they’re smart and fast so it’s very hard to get close to them - they fix you with those intelligent eyes as they swim away from you, backwards), cuttlefish - both little and giant, lots of blue gropers and a few nudibranchs. Liz and Caroline lost us on the way back; Sharon and I surfaced after looking around for a little while and I was surprised to find how far west we were when we surfaced (about 10 metres west of a small fishing boat!). It seemed as if we were at least 50 metres from the point and we’d already swum a fair way east so the reef must go a long way west.