During our stay on Hamilton Island we had a day to relax on the beach and just generally laze about. We spent a bit of time on Catseye Beach and noticed that you could hire snorkel gear for the day.
For $15 each Nick and I both hired a snorkel, mask and fins and made our way out to two orange buoys about a hundred metres out. The buoy on the left is where you could apparently see turtles and the one on the right was swarmed with fish around coral.
It was quite shallow most of the way out and took a while to get all the way out there, but it was definitely worth it. We headed out to the right and eventually came across quite a small patch of coral but was filled with beautiful colourful groper and angel fish.
We then decided to try our luck at finding a turtle. Not far from the first buoy Nick signaled for me to look down and there one was! A huge turtle slowly walking along the white sand on the ocean floor! Sadly we didn’t have an underwater camera (Note to self: MUST buy a GoPro!) but he looked something like the below photo, and he was HUGE!
We didn’t have much luck once we reached the other orange buoy. We swam around for a while and after finding nothing we decided to head in. After powering into the shore with our fins, Nick popped his head up and pointed down again. Another huge turtle! He was so fast that he was out of sight after only a few seconds and Nick tells me that he almost collided with it underwater.
Nick then spent the next few hours laughing at my mask marks on my face. Ha!
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