Susan's Reef

The reef rises out of a saddle at about 25 m that links it to Vanessa's Reef, and that southern end is where the sea whips stand thickest, most numerous between 22 m and 15 m as the reef climbs. Pale sea fans hold the crest of the saddle at around 25 m, and when the current is right a few small sea pens push up through the sand there to feed.

From the saddle the dive tracks north along a reef with two faces: a sheer wall on the east side and a sloping garden of hard corals on the west. Continuing upward past the sea whips you come on three large red sea fans, and the deepest of them, at 14 m, is the place to slow down and look for long-nose hawkfish perched in the branches. Clinging tangles of colourful crinoids run through the same zone and are part of what sets the reef apart from the other Walindi reefs.

Above 10 m the reef is almost exclusively dense staghorn coral, with a few sea anemones scattered among it that host three different anemonefish species. The shallow top means the deep end of the dive can be kept short: drop onto the saddle, work the whips and the fans early, then spend the back half of the dive over the staghorn, which keeps the profile conservative and puts the safety stop directly over the reef.