Tuesday 24 August The call of the whales

White mouth moray eel

In the afternoon we did a dive off the back of Jackster with Jack from Anthem. The seabed is what is known as spur and groove, big lumps of rock with sandy canyons between them. The first thing I noticed was how much warmer I felt in my thicker wet suit. We are such softies that 25c is too cold for a 2mm full suit. The second thing I noticed was humpback whales singing. It's something like cows lowing, cleaarly audible though they may have been 2 or 3 miles from land. I believe whale song can travel up to 5 miles. And it sounded like the young male we were told was in the area trying to catch up with the larger pod. I had a white slate in my pocket so I could write 'whales singing' and show it to David and Jack who were into their heavy breathing routines and couldn't hear more than themselves.

Another sea snake

Down on the seabed we found 7' to 8' traditional schooner anchors caught under the unforgiving rock. When these frigates visited scuba diving wasn't an available option to recover a fouled anchor. They must have had to saw the chain and leave it behind. We saw lots of sea snakes. One swam through David's fingers without him seeing it, but when he felt it he jumped and I laughed and flooded my mask in the process. All the time we were down I was looking, looking for a whale. Alas and alack no sighting. Next time perhaps...