Day 63: Coral Bay Glass Bottom Boat cruise

 It is another cold and windy morning and rather than freeze in the water, we book to do a morning glass bottom boat cruise to see what is out there and whether snorkelling is the best way to see it. The cruise leaves at 9 am from the beachfront in Bill's Bay. We are told to wander down the beach about 15 mins before departure and the boat will be there waiting for us.


Bill's Bay is literally across the road from the caravan park, and when we reach the sand, we can see the boat in the distance



The boat was about half full, with 12 participants, so there was plenty of room for everyone and the 3 crew.




Looking back towards the village, the huge new RAC accommodation development seems to overshadow everything else. It looks like it is getting close to opening and should certainly have an impact onn this small place.

Soon we are underway and heading out into the bay to see some coral. Sadly, it is mostly dead. A major storm event in March 2022 resulted in the coral being starved of oxygen due to an accumulation of massive amounts of coral spawn trapped in the bay. As it decayed, it consumed much of the available oxygen resulting in the death of most of the coral. Live coral cover dropped from around 70% to 1%. It is now slowly recovering. This has happened several times before and recovery takes about a decade. So snorkelling in this bay would have been a major disappointment.

The cruise boat heads off South towards the boat ramp where I was fishing yesterday, and things improve greatly. We do see some live coral a lot of fish, mainly spangled emperor. We later learned they like this boat because each cruise they get fed. There were some very nice sized fish.





Spangled Emperor 


There was a bit of colour in some of the coral, which are all hard corals as water temperatures here are too cool for soft corals. The variety of fish we saw was also quite limited. The range of coral types was impressive, but we have seen better reefs elsewhere. The commentary by the crew was very good.

On our return to where we started we are shown one large boulder coral bombie that survived all of the devastation in Bill's Bay and is still very much alive. It is known locally as Ayers Rock. It is about 4 m in diameter and 4 m high. 


Ayers Rock

In past times fishermen used to anchor their boats to it if there was an impending cyclone. Of course this is no longer allowed.

At the conclusion of the cruise we decided if we don't go snorkelling here, we should not be too disappointed.

This afternoon we went for a walk along the beach at Bill's Bay. The wind has finally died down a bit and some keen people were back in the water.



Fishing today is not looking promising as for the next two days we are experiencing diurnal tides ie. only two tides per 24 hrs. Today high tide was at 4.34 am, low tide at 12.49 pm and the next high is at 5.30 am tomorrow. Best fishing here is around high tide.

At least it looks like the wind is easing.

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