Exmouth Diving 3-Day Live Aboard (Day 3 - Lighthouse Bay)

Austrailan Batfish on Acropora Table Coral

The last day of my 3 Day Live Aboard Dive Trip had bad visablity again. We went to Lighthouse Bay. Lighthouse Bay is a popular day trip dive site.  We were told "Bad Visibility but Great Marine Life".  They did not disappoint!

On our first dive of the day we saw a beautiful table coral.  Acropora is known generally as a brancing coral but some species form tables to try and maximize the access to sunlight. The tables provide home for lots of creatures above and below. This table is about 3 meters wide making this guy older than I am.
One of my favorite things to watch is called a Cleaning Station.

Cleaning Station

A fish will come to the station and flair open his gills and mouth and little cleaning wrasse or cleaning shrimp will swim around their gills, fins, mouths, and tails picking off dead scales and parasites. This is a regular occurrence on the reef and a great opportunity to watch fish because they stay still for a while. The fish are also accustomed to a line of large fish forming...so they sometimes stick around a bit even if they notice you. These two Batfish are being cleaned by several cleaning wrasse.
   Diving/snorkeling on a coral reef is amazing...there is so much to see wether you are a first time diver and only see the big pretty colorfull things or if you look deeper and appreciate the tentacles from the coral, a beautiful sponge or sea aneomie...there is a world of interesting things to watch.

Pin-Cushion Starfish

Starfish hiding between Coral

Invertabrates may be small but they are a pivotal to the reef ecosystem.  Sea stars or starfish are well known invertebrates. They move with tubed feet and feed on whatever is too slow to evade attack including snails, clams and dying fish.  There are lots of different types of starfish. I saw two different types of starfish on these dives including the pincushion starfish. Their name comes from the 5 star symmetry.

Black Sea Urchin

     Black Sea Urchins (Diadema antillarum) also have five symmetrical parts...including the 5 gills, 5 tubed feet near its mouth and 5 calcium carbonate teeth (each with its own tongue). They feed on algae and other invertebrates. Their spines are obviously used to defend the animal. They move similar to a starfish with little tubed feet that work in conjunction with the spines.   They are fantastic for keeping algae down on a reef but would destroy a reef without predators.

    My dive buddy and I were both armed with cameras and both on the hunt for slugs. Yep...you read it right...slugs.  Sea slugs or Nudibranchs are shell-less snails. They are beautifully, vibrantly colored oranges, blues, yellows, whites, blacks...they may be small but they are stunning to look at. Sometimes they look soft and delicate and sometimes they look hard and bumpy. The vibrant color is generally a warning in nature to advertise poison. They are carnivorous and feed on other invertebrates including sponges, soft corals, and jellyfish (yea...go little guys). We saw nudibranchs from 1 cm long to 6cm. The little one was so cute!!

Ring-tailed Cardinalfish and Nudibranch

Damsel fish, Giant Clam and Coral

Nudibranch-Chromodoris magnifica

School of Yellowtailed Fusilier

 Speaking of beautifully colored invertebrates. Those with shells are not too bad either. :) Giant Clams are always fun to see. The shells may have not sparkle and may have all kinds of things growing on it including algae and other invertebrates...but the tissue of the animal is a rainbow of shocking vibrant colors. This one was quite small...only about 25cm (10in) long.
     Pictured above are also damsel fish.  They are highly territorial to the point of even attacking large fish and humans swimming by if they get too close to the reef.  Like one ant defending its territory from a dog.  They are aggressive little guys!  One theory why some fish like the fusilier graze in a group is to defend against the aggressive damsel fish.
 

Round Ray

     From bony fish to the cartilaginous ones...in the class Chondrichthyes, sub-class Elasmobranchii are another of my favorite things to see underwater.  . The Lighthouse Bay dives were full of sharks and rays...and I mean FULL!  We saw some large rays.  At the bottom of one descent sat a meter wide round ray.  He just chilled at the bottom and was still sitting there when we came back.  Rays have gills on the underside and have rounded teeth to crush bottom dwelling crustations and molluscs.

White Tip Reef Shark

We encountered over a dozen Whitetip reef sharks. They are beautiful animals. They are distinctive with a white color on their dorsal fin and tail. These guys do not require movement to pump air water across their gills and so can lay on the bottom for a rest or snooze. For anyone hearing the jaws music...da dan, da dan, da da da da dan....you can rest easy as these guys rarely attack unprovoked. The puppy dogs of the sea (ha ha).

Tawny Nurse Shark - sleeping

We also saw a Tawny nurse shark that was over 6 feet long under a large overhang.  We noticed 3 or 4 reef sharks swim out from this ledge so the dive master went in to take a look.  He had to lay on his belly and move in. We all had a chance to see him.  With no room to move under the ledge once we could see him with the bad visibility...we were up close and personal...and I mean really up close.

Tawny's are nocturnal. They are fairly docile but need to be respected...they also have powerfull jaws and a mouth full of teeth.
Sharks are so wonderful!

Sea Snake

Fred the Sea Snake

     There is something to be said for reptiles underwater...it is exciting.  These dives were FULL of sea snakes.  They were all around.  My mind does not put snakes and diving together.  They are beautiful.  Their tails have been refined for their aquatic life by flattening out into a paddle shape.  The also have spongy tissue in their nostrils to help keep water out.  It is amazing how adapted they are to marine life.  Sea snakes are  in the same group as the most highly venomous snakes but they generally inject very little venom.  However, they keep to themselves and only bite to defend themselves.  One of the snakes on my second dive decided to introduce himself and I had to divert quite a bit to not shake his hand.  Fred was on a mission and did not care if I was in his way or not. He was CLOSssssssssE!

Turtle swimming (with wrasse and trigger fish)

Sea snakes do need to surface to breathe like turtles
Turtles...wow...did we see turtles on all three of our dives. Turtles are so fun.  We saw some of the largest turtles that I have ever seen in my life.  On our first dive, one of the divers came up on a hawksbill turtle and disturbed his nap.  He was so big and gave the diver a start when this huge shell started moving. :)

BIG Turtle

The turtle on the sand was one I spotted.  Yea!  He is a green sea turtle.  These are the type of turtle that sometimes travel over a thousand of miles back to their birthplace to lay their eggs.  Exmouth has a turtle beach.  It is important to protect these beaches as lights and people traffic has seriously impacted their already stressed population.  People have created multiple threats to these beautiful animals.
The turtle on the coral was SO funny.  He is a green sea turtle.  He was itchy or having problems getting situated or something because he did not care that we were around and just kept moving and wiggling and readjusting...just could not get comfortable.  He reminded me of a bear scratching himself against a tree or something.  He was focused!

    The first big turtle we saw was the largest I had ever seen.  On our 2nd dive of the day, the dive master spotted a turtle wedged under an overhang.  The shell was enormous!  Easily over a meter wide.  He was so well disguised that I would not have even see him.  As I was down there watching him...marveling at how large his shell was, he began to wiggle his way out of the spot that he had wedged himself into.  He slowly moved around.  I swear he looked straight at me for a couple of seconds...I was able to stare into  his eye and I really could see an old sage who had lived for hundreds of years.  He moved out and started to swim away.  The dive master grabbed onto my back and slowly moved me with the turtle as he ascended.  It was a beautiful moment.  Just me and the turtle floating up.  Wish I had had a video camera because it was a once in a lifetime National Geographic moment.

Hawksbill Turtle

Hawksbill turtles are critically endangered.  Although they normally feed on sponges, they also feed on jellyfish (especially the really nasty stinging ones like the Portuguese Man 'O War.

Crocodilefish

     A Crocodile fish is my last reptile....well not really a reptile.  The crocodile fish gets its name from the shape of its I assume.  It was an amazing find.  I did not know what he was.  After the dive those who had seen him raced back to look in the fish book to figure out what we had seen.  He is officially a Tentacled flathead (Papilloculiceps longiceps).  He was so well camouflaged!  There is always something crazy to see if you look hard enough.

It was a great day of diving!



Lighthouse Bay was a great place to dive. Bad Vis but GREAT Marine Life!