Two-Tank Reef — Benwood & French

Look for

• 

  Glassy sweeper

  Copper-coloured clouds that fill the shaded spaces inside a wreck or ledge.

  Stay outside the structure and let the school reform around you.

• 

  Spotted moray

  White peppered with dark spots, usually one head poking from the rubble.

  Look into rubble and wreck gaps rather than the open reef face.

• 

  Caribbean reef octopus

  Blue-green and shape-shifting, out hunting across the reef after dark.

  A night dive doubles your odds. Keep the light off its eyes and it stays out.

• 

  Nurse shark

  A broad, mellow bottom-rester with rounded fins and two barbels at the snout.

  Check quiet ledges without crowding or blocking an animal's way out.

• 

  Stoplight parrotfish

  A heavy beaked grazer: green and gold as an adult, mottled red as a youngster.

  Move slowly near coral heads and let the colour find you.

• 

  Green moray

  A heavy olive eel that fills a crevice and breathes with its mouth open.

  The open mouth is breathing, not a threat. Keep hands away and it stays calm.

• 

  Squirrelfish

  Red and silver with huge night-adapted eyes, tucked into a hole by day.

  Red goes grey at depth without a light, so hold a torch on it to see the colour.

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