Saturday – Day 6 – Three Reefs and GDR

Saturday dawned with clear skies and finally the wind had dropped to a light breeze that created ripples in the protected waters behind the reef systems. At first light the crew were in the water setting up the first dive of the day at The Deep Pinnacle in the Great Detached Reef region. Two towers of coral reached towards the surface from the 80m slope and reached 14m at their shallowest point. Glassfish filled all the crevices and gaps between the structures and the twin pinnacles seemed to like shimmer like mirage. Timing was the key to our next dive at the isolated tower known as Epic! The current was raging over the top of the structure that rises from 180m deep to just 9m from the surface. The walls were covered in colourful soft corals and Silver Tips darted around in the depths as schools of Fusiliers raced up and down the wall. Coming over the top of the wall the current increased and brought all the beautiful Anthias, Sailfin Queens and Fairy Basslets out from their hiding places amongst the branching and finger corals and coated to the top of the site in a magical orange, purple and blue carpet of tiny fish. The big pelagic fish were hunting any that ventured too far and the Trevally, darted in and out creating silver flecks of light as the sun reflected off their scales. After lunch Captain Ross gave us the ok to live drop onto the seaward face of the Three Reef wall were several schools of Fusiliers darted amongst the beautiful plate, branching and boulder corals that adorned the top of the wall. The afternoon and night dive at Big Woody gave everyone a chance to explore the tunnels and passageways at night time and we found a Segmented Tube Worm and a beautiful Decorated Crab crawling along the deep wall of the drop off.