I have just come back from the beautifully secluded Lord Howe Island. Located 720km North-East-East off the coast of Sydney. I have been staying and working with Taz Douglas and Lauren Gatherer the amazing husband and wife team who run the diving operation  at Prodive Lord Howe. The diving here is fantastic! Lord Howe has a huge choice of  80 dive sites around the island coupled with the Admiralty Islands located just north of Lord Howe. You really are spoiled for choice.

The catfish around the island stick together in tight balls. It makes for a really interesting display. They slide, dive, and slither as if they are trying to get somewhere before one another. More often than not they just go in circles…

Lord Howe Island is really interesting as it has an array of over 500 species of fish, both temperate and tropical species, it makes it unique in the diversity that one can see on a single dive. There are also plenty of hard corals, morays, reef fish, turtles, rays, sharks, and dolphins. Heading out to the Admiralties means soft corals corals cover the ocean floor as you drift past in the current, making for two highly diverse seascapes to explore. I had the chance to get out and dive the Admiralties, giving me the perfect chance to try out my new TUSA W1 wetsuit and give the Light and Motion housing a spin underwater. Huge kingfish, Japanese Boar fish, Galapagos sharks, a beautiful decorator crab with a black coral mowhawk, and huge green jobfish were just some of the visitors we had during our dives. It really is a beautiful place. We were fortunate enough to dive North Rock off the Admiralties, the deepest dive you can undertake at Lord Howe Island and it made for a truly spectacular dive. During my stay I also had a chance to help out Taz with putting Nathan Bridge, a divemaster in training working at the shop, through some of his rescue procedures. I always love going back over exercises on previous courses, refreshing my memory, and refining my skills. Throughout all my courses I found that the Rescue course and the component within the divemaster course was the most beneficial for me. It really does make you more confident, and feel secure that if something does go wrong you will be able to deal with the situation. I think it should be a must for all divers.

Richard Morgan who was diving with us at Prodive and I went out for a snorkel off Ned’s beach. This was taken just beyond the reef break.

There is some really interesting work being undertaken with the continued monitoring and running of the marine park that has been implemented around Lord Howe Island. Lauren and Sallyann Gudge (who is a ranger for the Lord Howe Island marine park under the marine parks authority NSW) have been working on raising the awareness of the feeding of the fish down at Ned’s beach on the North-eastern side of the Island. For a number of years tourists have been going down to Ned’s beach and feeding the fish, it makes for an interesting display with 5ft kingfish circling around your feet in 40cm of water. However it can potentially have negative effects on fish health, including creating dependency and ill health. I thought it was fantastic that Lauren and Sallyann were lobbying to get this practice stopped as even though it is good for tourism, it can have a negative effect on the environment and the natural processes that occur.

The stingray around the island are great to watch silently gliding across the sand just beyond the reef.

This little guy was only about 1cm. I followed him around on my stomach across most of Middle beach. This was the best shot I could get. I looked up once I had to much sand down my pants to move, to see a bunch of tourists looking at me with quizzical expressions.

Happy to be diving

A juvenile zebra lionfish only about 10cm. He was nestled down in the grooves of a Montipora sp. coral colony. A Lord Howe Island moray was right down at my feed while I took the picture.

Ready to dive in my TUSA gear. This dive was on the Northern side of LHI. The Admiralty Island as our back drop on our right, the steep cliffs and caves of LHI on our right. Couldn’t ask for more.

My time on Lord Howe Island disappeared all too quickly and I definitely hope to return, sooner rather than later! Thank you so much to everyone on Lord Howe Island, everyone I met was so kind, generous, and friendly. A special thanks to Taz and Loz for hosting me, they are your go to people for diving on the island and really know their stuff, Nathan, Richard Morgan and Colin Miles (who dove with us at Prodive for my entire stay), I had a fantastic time.