Alison Stocker | Photo: The aptly named freckled hawkfish (to 22 cm or 9 inches)
It was only 17 nm to our next destination, so we did not leave Howie until 8:30 am on Sunday (1st August). This would provide us with good light conditions to get into the shallow anchorages that Lynne had found for Flora Reef. Looking at satellite images, it appeared that we would have to weave between many bommies to get to the big sandy areas for anchoring. In very calm conditions, we motored north with the dinghy raised on the side of Tregoning's bow.
None of us had been to this reef before, so Randall and I were a bit concerned when our electronic chart did not seem to be very accurate as we approached. Our chart showed depths of 20 to 30 m (66-98 feet) but we passed over several bommies that were only 11 m (36 feet) deep. Usually in such areas, with more bommies than can be individually marked, this would have been recorded as the depth of the shallowest bommie, in this case, 11 m. This discrepancy warned us to keep a careful watch but, fortunately, it was another gloriously sunny day, so we were able to see into the water and avoid the bommies.
A goldbarred butterflyfish (to 15 cm or 6 inches) at Flora Reef
We anchored the three boats in the sand area at the southern of Lynne's two GPS waypoints, although we later found that there was probably even more room a little further north. We visited the northern waypoint by dinghy and concluded that it was an anchorage only suitable for catamarans because it was quite shallow.
Randall and I snorkeled on a series of bommies in about 7 m (26 feet) of water. Although the coral was not particularly impressive, mostly small clumps of soft and hard corals, there were plenty of fish, the topography over and between the bommies was interesting, and, unlike at Howie, the water was reasonably clear.
A many-spotted sweetlips (to 72 cm or 28 inches)
I documented more than 80 fish species in 78 minutes. That included a large many-spotted sweetlips which kept darting out from under a ledge at the bottom of a bommie, swimming close past us, and then making a loop across the top of the bommie before returning to its hideout. In addition to the fish, Randall found a cute colony of little greenish golf balls. In fact, they are green barrel sea squirts and even though these were only around 1 cm in diameter, they can be as big as 10 cm across (0.5 and 4 inches, respectively). Now that Randall has pointed them out to me, I have noticed them in the background of quite a few of my fish photographs.
Green barrel sea squirts (these were between 1 and 2 cm or up to 1 inch in diameter)
That evening, we invited Lynne and Andrew, Sue, Graeme, and Jamie over for appetizers and music...and, yes, you do know one of the songs that we played. It was a fun evening for most of us but Lynne was understandably worried about her 98-year-old mother who had recently been taken to hospital in Sydney with pneumonia. With Sydney and much of NSW in a major Covid lockdown due to multiple outbreaks of the Delta variant, Lynne would be unable to visit her mother, even if she could leave Queensland and hope to return afterwards. Fortunately, her siblings were able to meet the relevant doctors and, since Mischief can use the Iridium-Go satellites, Lynne was able to get phone and text messages even out on these remote reefs. Once again, technology is helping to ease anxieties caused by the continuing pandemic.