Tale of two reefs

Steve’s Bommie crawls with marine life. Schools of jacks and snapper formed like silvery-blue and gold rain clouds around the bommie. Green sea turtles napped along the bottom; that’s the best place to begin your dive before winding your way up. This coral citadel can easily be circumnavigated several times during a dive, and the best parts are in the shallow bits. Lu, one of the divemasters, found a leaf scorpionfish hiding in its coral redoubt. All around the top of the bommie, fairy basslets and scalefin anthias swirled around like a yellow and orange snowstorm. Clown triggerfish and spotted boxfish added to the color parade. This is the place to go slow — I often just stopped at a spot and waited until the local denizens became curious and popped around to check me out.

Our last dive, at Flare Point, brought out the local superstars. Tom, perhaps the luckiest divemaster on the boat, found mating cuttlefish on the first dive. A minke whale (June/July is the season for them) passed the boat during the dive, and after I’d had my fill of the cuttlefish (meaning that my computer was beeping to tell me my dive was over), I was accompanied back to the boat by a massive green sea turtle that just seemed to want the company. We swam side by side all the way to the boat, then the ancient mariner rose for air and slipped off into the blue after a brief last glance in my direction. It was a fitting end for a trip to a place I never grow weary of exploring.

Luckily, though, this was only the first leg of my trip. I was about to go to a place few divers make it to: the southernmost coral reef in the world, off Lord Howe Island. Like Osprey, it’s an isolated outpost, one that sits all by its lonesome about 350 miles from Sydney. It’s the last spot on earth that the warm water of the East Australian Current touches.

THE SOUTHERNMOST CORAL REEF

I’d been diving for a couple of decades before I’d even heard of Lord Howe Island. I ran across an old National Geographic article a few years back and vividly remember the underwater images taken by David Doubilet. There were double-headed wrasse, an odd-looking buck-toothed fish that I’d never heard of, reefs swarming with colorful moon and green-blocked wrasse, and a black anemonefish that exists only in these waters. And the colors — vivid greens, yellows, blues, reds, pinks, rich browns and even lustrous grays — popped off the reefs. It was one of those moments that made me realize just how much there is to experience on this blue earth. What I didn’t realize from the images is that they only hinted at the possibilities of Lord Howe.

Ty Sawyer / Sport Diver

Some things you know even before you see them, and Lord Howe was like that for me. As soon as the plane landed, I knew the island would not disappoint. The water surrounding it was vibrant, a kind of blue that seems to exist only in Windex bottles. The island itself, an odd mix of manicured lawns and wild forest, is a major sanctuary for sea and land birds. The tops of its volcanic peaks, Mount Gower and Mount Lidgbird, are covered with nesting terns, petrels and masked boobies. I checked into the exquisite Capella Lodge, which offers views of Lidgbird, Gower and one of the loveliest lagoons in the world, and gathered my dive gear.

I wanted to sit back and enjoy the view from the lodge, but I had only a short time on the island. And as it turned out, we were only able to dive one site because of the high winds. I hooked up with Brian Busteed of PADI dive shop Howea Divers, and we headed to Ned’s Beach. (I asked numerous people, but no one seemed to know who Ned was and why this beach was named after him. The island was discovered back in 1788, but I thought for sure that some local would remember Ned.) Despite being voted the best beach in Australia in 2005, it was empty except for a few saltwater ducks.

Ty Sawyer / Sport Diver

We waded in, and as soon as I put my face in the water I didn’t want the experience to end. The shallow coral gardens were literally covered with McCulloch’s anemonefish, which are endemic to Lord Howe. A green sea turtle slipped over the reef and wound its way through light beams playing at the surface. Schools of yellowtail kingfish, mullets and silver drums parted to let us pass. These fish stay in the shallows near Ned’s Beach because a few years back an old man started bringing food scraps and tossing them into the water. The fish caught on, and now it’s one of the island’s major sources of entertainment (second only to the local lawn bowling club).

Brian finned on through a cut in the reef, and as he did a small Galapagos shark appeared at the reef’s edge, then scurried out of view. Along the way, we saw rare juvenile split-head wrasse, flatworms and endemic Lord Howe morays with their haunted yellow eyes. We were accompanied by a couple of banded scaleyfins, also called bookfish. One of them nipped at my legs like a pesky horsefly for about 50 yards — not very bookish if you ask me.

We worked our way out to a sandy basin that bottomed out at 25 feet. Here, in the cracks and crevices, was another green sea turtle, three-stripe butterflyfish and a large spangled emperor. The hard and soft corals were wonderfully healthy. Our one dive turned into four, even though the water, at 72ºF, was a bit chilly. I discovered a plethora of juvenile McCulloch’s anemonefish, eels and loads of critters that have benefited from the island’s splendid isolation.

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