Nauti Cat -- Snorkel Safari Gold Coast

by Guy Vincent

Snorkel Safari Gold Coast (formerly Cooly Dive) in Coolangatta is joining the Snorkel Safari Team and have a new 9m catamaran called Nauti Cat. We headed down on Sunday the 18th of August to conduct one of our first exploration dives off this new and shiny dive platform. For those who don’t know, the reefs surrounding Cook Island extend as a submerged ridge all the way from the island to 9 Mile reef off the Gold Coast. With such a huge area to explore we thought it a shame to limit our diving to just the North Wall of Cook Island. So we chose to make it a drift dive. We entered the water near the wreck of the Bonza. As we were entering a Humpback whale surfaced nearby to investigate what all the splashing was about. As we descended and began our drift over the ridge, where we found schools of surgeon fish, hawksbill turtles, and a Tawny Nurse Shark. We had “virgin” drift divers in the group and everyone just loved it. Drift diving is also known as “the Lazy Mans Dive” and are always popular, not having to exert any energy with finning or the pressure to navigate back to the boat, makes diving too easy. It is defiantly a dive you don’t want to miss!