COMMENTS & OBSERVATIONS

After 12 long months we finally got ourselves organised for a night dive. We found a Hydatina physis egg mass on our last day dive at Grays Bay so decided that since the winds were not favourable for Horseshoe Bay, it was worth a look at Grays Bay at night.  The visibility was very ordinary at around 1-2m, but when you are hunting slugs that is all you need. As we swam out across the sand, through the gloom, I spied what I thought was a clump of algae and went to investigate. My first reaction was, “great a sea slug in the algae”, then I realised there was no algae, it was just a mass of Stylocheilus sp.  “stampeding” across the sand. We found a second, then a third, then even more clusters of this species. We chose to follow the reef out to give us a reference point and found a new Chromodoris for us. After about 40mins the visibility dropped so much that we could not see anything so turned around and headed back into the limited visibility with the aid of a compass. Whilst the final species diversity was still low the abundance was certainly high.

Taxonomic Diversity:
–

Our Historical data:
– This is the first sighting of Stylocheilus sp. and Chromodoris lineolata for us in this region.

Guide to Symbols:
+++ New Species
+ First time sighted in Whitsundays
# Most commonly sighted at this site with %

TOTAL SPECIES SIGHTED: 3

DIVE IMAGES GALLERY

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