12 December 2020:
We got a sneaky Friday morning dive in before the weather turned bad yesterday afternoon and when we arrived at Julian Rocks and saw the vis and felt the temperature, we never expected it to turn into such a great day of diving. We even saw a Manta in the Needles!!! A big one! Highlight was definitely the schooling Bullrays and Eagle Rays in the Trench though. What an experience! (excuse the raw GoPro footage, it struggled a bit…) We also saw a couple of Grey Nurse Sharks and plenty of fish all along to the Cod Hole (even though it was pretty murky that way and we could just make out a lot of big shadows…). There were plenty of turtles in all sizes, the Clown Frogfish was still in its spot and we saw big Kingfish, large Snapper and Jewfish, big schools of fish in the shallows (where it was a little warmer), a cuttlefish and plenty more. Hopefully the strong Easterlies over the next few days will bring back the warm blue water!