Offshore Reefs
Day 41 to 53 (Nov 08-Nov 20, 2013)
From significant Cape York we began heading south-east down Cape York Peninsula. Anything beyond here has southing in the heading! This is wild country, volcanic-looking with naturally occurring tropical palm trees. My idea of bliss! I can imagine a tropical bird from the north heading sightly off course and pooping tropical flower seeds from northern islands. This is biogeography in action!
Travelling through the GBR we made a stop-over at Lizard Island and passed the very same spots where we had swum with the darling dwarf minke whales and the Minke Whale team in July. It was wonderful to be back in such a special place. Sadly, minus the wonderful, dwarf minke whales. The data from four satellite tags applied in July by the Minke Whale Project from aboard Whale Song, has yielded most interesting results. This new data, in fact the first tags to be deployed on dwarf minke whales, indicates they travel from the tropical waters of the Great Barrier Reef in the winter to the Southern Ocean during autumn. Please link to The Friends of the Minke Whale Project website to get more detail.
Heading offshore from Lizard Island to Lihou Reef (approx 145 nm) we desired to listen in on the tropical Coral Sea for large whales. This area is a relatively large plateau within deep water and was surprisingly very quiet. Snorkelling at Holmes Reef we enjoyed the tropical reef ecosystem, although it was not entirely pristine – perhaps suffering from natural cyclone damage from Yassie.
Heading from one offshore reef system kept my snorkelling gear at the ready. One hundred and eighty-nine nautical miles east of Hamilton Island, our next destination was Marion Reef. This is a backwards c-shaped reef 22.3 nm long and 12.6 nm wide with 50+ bommies in 30-45 m of water. As we approached the reef the blue colours of the lagoon were unbelievable! An overcast sky made our chosen coral bommie harder to spot. Merely a light green smudge hinted at the beauty below…
I slipped over the side and quickly called out “it’s really good here, I mean really good! Yahoo!” Six crew were in the water and with six cameras clicking away, we were determined to capture the sights. Fortunately, we were not disappointed. This is another special place…
From Marion Reef we made a beeline towards Jervis Bay. Strong southerly winds and two weather systems colluding in the form of a ridge on the coast and a low just offshore causing very short, sharp and uncomfortable seas encouraged us to seek safe refuge. Port Stephens fit the bill perfectly. Entering this wonderful natural harbour at 9pm in the dark with pouring rain we used all our instruments including the nav charts, RADARs and our night-vision camera, as well as observing the navigation lights. Anchoring we were relieved and excited to be safe and sound. All afternoon, in the worsening conditions we had heard a sea rescue group continually calling a vessel – to no avail. We hoped the boat crew were neatly tucked in a pub and had called the rescue group by phone…
Leaving Port Stephens two days later we enjoyed the spectacular scenery – another 300 photos of headlands! As we were leaving the heads Skipper spotted the first dolphins! An extremely productive area just to the south of Port Stephens supported hundreds of short-tailed shearwaters feeding ravenously. Even more photos to fill a hard-drive! A situation, whereby these birds die in a phenomena known as “wrecks” which occur every 7 years are now being observed every 2 years. Hopefully the birds we were seeing were going to survive. Travelling from the Arctic to breed on the east coast of Australia, sometimes with habitat reduction these birds arrive in very bad shape and just die upon arrival. Some are carrying the only egg of the season.
With lovely Risso’s dolphins in our sights and Point Perpendicular to starboard, we were thrilled to come alongside at HMAS Creswell in Jervis Bay.
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