Maitland Bay (18th February '07)

Bitten by the snorkelling bug I headed up to the central coast, south of Gosford, on Sunday to the secluded beach at Maitland Bay. The kilometre walk from the carpark to the beach through bushland helps to keep the numbers of visitors down and apart from a handful of boats and their passengers the place was pretty empty.

We spent several hours snorkelling and saw a load of top stuff. Unlike Little Bay last weekend, this was more open ocean and much deeper water. There was also a lot more weed on the seabed which the fish liked to hide in so viewing them was maybe a little harder. There were, however, many more larger fish and it seemed the further you were willing to head out to sea, the better the action! When you're a couple hundred metres from shore in the open ocean though I tend to get a bit wary.

We saw several stingrays over the sand and various large fish in the rocky areas as well as all the usual little stripey ones. There were also loads of wee jellyfish that looked like teabags with coloured lights moving up and down their bodies! Amazing. Luckily they didn't sting because there were thousands of them. The highlights of the day, however, were the many Fiddler Rays or Banjo Sharks (Trygonorrhina fasciata) which were lying around sometimes in groups of up to four at a time. These beautiful fish were over a metre long and really quite spectacular. Unfortunately we didn't have a camera with us this week but check out the pictures here courtesy of the Australian museum. I also came face to face with my first proper shark! Unlike every other fish in the sea, which tend to swim the other way, this thing decided to approach me. It was only small, maybe just over 2 feet long, but it still freaked me out a bit and it was time for a sharp exit!