Mike Ball..finally

Okey dokey!

Well i guess its time i (James) finally got round to writing about our week's expedition on the "Mike Ball Dive Expeditions" live-a-board which we did 6 weeks ago. I'm rubbish at this writing business :D

After settling into a sailors life the first night (champagne, cheese & wine, fruit, 3 course meal, light alcoholic beverages...erm, thats a sailors life right?), we were up and diving the next morning after a relaxed full english breakfast (the food was the best bit on this boat, forget the diving!).

That day we did 4 dives all with nearly full coral cover (particularly Acropora palmata for those interested), plenty of Giant Clams of all colours, puffer fish and large barracuda. Visability was good, the dive operation was a well oiled machine with an 'open deck' which allowed you to dive as much or as little as you wanted.

We didnt manage to get out to Osprey reef as, despite that October was supposed to the calmest month, we were looking at the prospect of +30knot winds at an exposed reef 90miles off the coast. So we stayed protected inside the GBR.

Katy successfully completed her Enriched Air (Nitrox) course so we could spend longer underwater 'cus we just couldnt get enough when we were down there. We both also completed our Underwater Naturalist courses with an awsome/mental/mildly schizophrenic/slightly unbalanced chap called Laurence we seemed to know more about the marine life than the whole of Blue Planet and more.

Essentially, we dived a whole load of other awsome sites, those particularly worth mentioning include Acropolis - the whole site was 100% covered with table coral of many different colours; Code Hole - which is home to the giant Potato Cods (~2m), a few easily viewed white tip reef sharks and considerable current amongst other things; Steve's Bommie - with all the different types of anemone fish in one place, lion and scropion leaf fish, stone fish and the sweetest little baby white tip i've ever seen, can't have been more than 2ft and looked rather weary of a 2m nemo shoving its ugly face next to it.

There were also many other dive sites and some cool night dives as well, with pleatny of cuttlefish (i love cuttlefish, incredible creatures!!), nudibranchs, pygmy sea horses, white tip & black tip and grey reef sharks, lobsters, giant puffer fish and some crazy little Flame File Shells which look like they are conducting electricity.

We also met some great people on board, passangers and crew alike, ate delicious food everyday and had a lot of fun.