West Minmi 4-3-06

Our hope this day was to get back out to the Hilda but the seas were against us. We headed for Minmi trench, just inside Cape Banks. On the way we had engine trouble. We put in an anchor so we wouldn't drift. We were about 700m west of the GPS co-ordinates given by Michael McFadyen. Once we got the engine going we could not get the anchor up so we dived there. This site is quite deep in places we hit a maximum depth of 22.2m and dived for 67 mins on 38% Nitrox. There are lots of very large boulders with small caves and buttes in between. Great fish life in abundance. I saw the smallest weedy sea dragon with a much larger one. Yellowtail, bullseye were in abundance. We recovered an anchor with over 4m of good chain on it. We didfind a bit of old wreckage which might from the wreck of the Minmi.

We traversed the general area several times, this area is a delight. If this is a taste of what Minmi trench is like we can't wait. This was my 208th dive.