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Coral Sea Stories
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Diving for Nautilus
By Eva McClure |
I was lucky enough to spend an unforgettable 5 weeks in the Coral Sea recently for work. For a whole month I woke up on the magnificent Lizard Island. Imagine long sandy beaches, brilliant blue water, amazing diving just minutes off the beach that makes you feel like you're swimming in an aquarium. . . this is Lizard.
A one week trip to Osprey Reef is honestly one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had. The first day of the trip saw us diving on the Outer Barrier Ribbon Reefs, including the world famous Cod Hole.
I was blown away on each and every dive - the structural complexity of the reef by itself is amazing, but then there's the huge schools of bigeye trevally that part around you, cuttlefish, turtles, sea snakes, gorgonian fans and of course brilliantly coloured fish as far as the eye can see. |
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Osprey Reef itself was something I'll never forget. A huge pinnacle over 100km offshore surrounded by clear oceanic water (around 40m vis!) rising straight up from 1000m, with fish species I had never seen before and more sharks and large pelagics than I knew could exist in one area. One night at Osprey we saw the lights of what the crew said was a long line tuna fishing boat, and it was pretty sad to think that those huge schools of fish and possibly even the sharks we saw may have fallen victim to a long line.
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Our main purpose while there was to capture, tag and track the elusive and bizarre nautilus, which inhabit deep areas of the reef around 300 metres. The knowledge gained from these expeditions will hopefully assist in preventing nautilus from being over fished throughout the Indo-Pacific.
It was a real buzz to swim these prehistoric deep sea creatures down to 30m to release them (after they were fit with ultrasonic transmitters) and watch them swim slowly into the inky depths. |
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Coral Sea Creature Feature
There was a time in history where nautilus species were the key predators in all the oceans, but then sharks and other fish evolved and nautilus moved into areas where these new visual predators were less of a threat: the dark depths. Read more about nautilus...
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