DIVE HAPPY

Whale sharks are the most famous seasonal visitors to Ningaloo Reef, but the diving is spectacular all year round

I recently posted several items about diving with whale sharks at Ningaloo Reef in Australia. Now News.com.au has published a great article by Cameron Wilson about diving Ningaloo outside the whale shark season between April to July. Because the whale sharks are so spectacular, it's easy to forget how great the diving is on the reef - and Wilson's article does a good job of explaining the excitement of seeing manta rays and a profusion of other amazing critturs in Western Australia's pristine waters.

The day of my manta ray encounter begins with a dive on Blizzard Ridge, a limestone plateau flat as a counter-top, with small coral bommies (bomboras) lined up alongside like so many bar-stools. The spaces between the bommies shelter small groups of snapper, spangled emperor and coral trout, while closer inspection of the coral reveals more furtive creatures such as octopus and painted crayfish, as well as two of the biggest moray eels I've ever seen. The dive quickly becomes a procession of the oversized: the biggest white-tip reef shark I've seen, the biggest lionfish - even the biggest stingray, its two-metre wing span revealed as it lifts from the sand and rockets away.

Swim slowly enough and you'll spot smaller treasures such as nudibranch, a tiny miracle of aesthetic design, barely three centimetres long and sporting smart stripes of black, orange and royal blue.

The next dive is at a site ominously named Labyrinth (in reality just a haphazard collection of bommies). Here, we drift over giant clams regally tinged with shades of purple, as well as several anemones, each home to a family of king clownfish.

More fascinating still is our group's encounter with an olive seasnake, which is highly venomous and grows up to two metres long.

Wilson also really rates the Exmouth Pier dive, which I wasn't so keen on - but he writes convincingly about why you should definite dive there, despite my own disappointment with it.

There's also a useful list of practical information about how to get to Exmouth. Great stuff.

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Whale sharks | Ningaloo Reef | Australia