Fairy Bower

• Rising tide
• 70min, in at about 1pm
• 8-10m vis
• NE
• 23 degrees
• JCJ

Fairy Bower once again turns it on. A rare week without rain and we just had to have a dive. The high tide was a little after 9am so we decided to go for an early afternoon startto catch the rising tide. JCJ wanted to take pictures of sharks so it was Fairy Bower. Easy. Clear blue skies and air temps in the mid 20s. We found a parking spot closeish but far enough away to ensure we'd be sweating our arses off by the time we got to the waters edge.

All forgotten as we entered the water, passing swimmers that were dressed far more appropriately for the beach than we were. After only a couple of minutes we saw our first shark. By the end of the dive we had seen at least three fish - because we saw three together - and had seven sightings (two single fish, a pair and the trio; lets assume we saw four distinct fish.) The sharks, dusky whalers, are as incredible to behold as when I first swam with them, or their like, years ago. Sleek, elegant and very sharky.

But I get ahead of myself. As soon as we'd descended (well, dropped from the surface to the bottom, a couple of feet away...) we saw a huge school of squid ( I call them a "squadron") in the shallow water. More calamari than I've ever seen before, at least twenty animals. So that was first, then the sharks...in between I found a large octopus in a tyre, his (her?) ornaments arranged in the inside. The NE wind had knocked the edge off of the vis, but it was up to 8-10m, just a little milky. The first part of the dive does not have a lot of fish; the second half does.

After shark spotting we head north and slowly bimbled towards the rocks. Here there are lots of fish. Lots. There seems to be a resident school of yellowtail - check - that often have a couple of kingfish nosing around - check. There are a few old wives, a massive school of stripey, we saw mullet feeding on the surface, grouper, morwong, leatherjackets, and even a few small tropicals (angelfish) that are enjoying the balmy conditions but won't survice through winter.

Another highlight was a massive school of very small fish, maybe anchovy. They were all but see-through and hugging the sand. We could herd them with our hands, and as we swam through them they parted and we found ourselves swiming among them.

I could gush more, but I'll stop it here. Fairy Bower, fish-soup yet again. Warm and clear (enough) and fantastic.