Fairy Bower 8th December 2007

Dive No. 283 10.53 am, 19 degrees, 72 mins, 7.2 max, 5.2 av
Liz, Sharon and I went off from the main group (led by JP) and were planning to go west when an exiting diver responded to Liz’s question about dusky whalers by saying that they’d seen “lots of big ones”. So we got all excited and headed east to the seagrass beds but, after much searching and me losing the others and finding them, after surfacing, about 100 metres away to the north, well on their way to China, we decided, after surfacing again about 50 metres from Shelly Beach and having a brief discussion, that the exiting diver must have meant wobbegongs instead of dusky whalers. We certainly saw plenty of the former, like last week I counted at least 8 of them, including a dead one on the western side, its carcass all grey and washed-out of the characteristic wobby pattern and, curiously, no scavengers tearing the ample flesh from its bones (Liz suggested we have a look in the same spot if we dive at Fairy next week to see if the carcass is still there and whether it’s been eaten very much by then). Apart from the wobbies we saw a couple of giant cuttlefish, nudibranchs (a whole conglomeration of white ones on a rock), blue, green and yellow gropers, yellowtail, mullet, estuarine catfish, tarwhine and morwongs -- and a champagne bottle (probably empty).