Rye Pier – Sunday 7th February 2016

Divers:  Lachlan, Ashleigh, Kirsten, Peng, Leon, Mark, Maureen, Pete  & Mark

The report from the divers at Flinders Pier yesterday, was that the viz was down quite a bit and we were expecting similar conditions today, some days you just have to take the good with the bad. However, on arrival at Rye the water looks good, in fact it looks better than good, it looks great!! We did two dives here today, the first was a very nice dive, we had a close encounter with one of the resident Bull Rays, saw plenty of fish, especially Juvenile Leather Jackets, they are here in their hundreds. Our second dive was really good, after 45 minutes we start to make our back to the ladder to exit the water and have some lunch. I’m thinking to my self that today has been a really good days diving, everyone is having an absolute ball and have good conditions. On the way back we see a Ray swimming just off the Low Water, not on the bottom like they normally do but mid water. So we stop, lay on the sand & watch him swim around, after a few minutes another two Rays come over and are swimming with the first one. They are so close to us they have to raise their wings swimming over us. I thought to myself wow, I’ve never seen three Rays swimming together like this before, but wait these more!! A fourth Ray swims in and is swimming over the top of us as well, at one point he swims right up to us, he is only inches from our faces, he stops, looks us right in the eye and then swims right over the top of us brushing his underbelly on our legs as he swims away. I can not believe this, but wait these even more!! a fifth ray now swims into the scene, this is unbelievable, for fifteen minutes or more we have these 5 Rays swimming inches away from us. Of course I didn’t have my camera with me, but I do plenty of eye witnesses, as we exited the water there were dozens of people standing on the pier, all in awe of the ray show.

Mark