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Simon’s Cave

Depth: 13 - 16 m.

This is one of the most northern dive sites on 2-Mile reef, just slightly south of Hot Spots and Cat reef.

Simon’s Cave is right at the beginning of our route, and we have a lot of fun swimming through this cave, which is really more of a tunnel, about 8m long. Inside the Tunnel we often will find Dusky Baardman together with Coachman and sometimes a Honeycomb Moray, which has, on occasions, caused divers to rush through the cave faster than they should, as the whole tunnel is too narrow to turn around in and go back.

The photo on the left was taken at the exit of the tunnel.

After swimming through the cave we are welcomed by huge shoals of Yellow Snappers. Just south of there, at the beginning of our route, is a beautiful bed of Anemones with the attendant Skunk Anemonefish, swimming happily from one Anemone to the other. This is because the Anemone has reproduced by cloning itself, so the fish can move from one to the other. There are a number of resident Grey Reef sharks that might pay a visit to the divers.

We then drift over a beautiful carpet of both hard and soft corals. The meander continues along a beautiful reef structure which we call ‘the Garden Route’. Those divers that don’t consume their air in a hurry are very often rewarded by the White-tip Reef shark who loves to sleep in a cave that has been named after him.

The route we follow from the cave on our normal north to south current takes us down to 17m, so we need to watch our computers carefully to avoid going into deco.

If we have a reverse current, Simon’s Cave is still a very interesting dive, as the route we follow to the north takes us past some beautiful coral bommies (big coral structures standing out above a flat section) with their cleaning stations and attendant shoals of fish. This reef section is at a depth of about 19m. Just before we reach the very deep area, we can come across some Palette Surgeonfish (Dory from ‘finding Nemo’).