Selling a muck dive to a group that has spent three days on coral pinnacles is a hard conversation. The pitch is: it will look like nothing, the visibility is eight metres on a good day, and you are going to love it. Nobody believes this until the first frogfish.
What we found
Two thorny seahorses on the third piling, holding onto the same rope they were on in March. A frogfish the colour of the sponge it was sitting on, which took the guide four minutes to point out convincingly. Three mantis shrimp, one of which came out to make a point about it.
And then the thing that made the dive: a juvenile ornate ghost pipefish, hanging vertically beside a crinoid, ten centimetres long and utterly indifferent to six divers taking turns to look at it.
Why it works
Structure and nutrient in shallow water, with nothing else around for a long way. Everything that wants a nursery uses this jetty, and because the site looks like nothing it never gets crowded.
The one rule
Stay off the bottom. It is silt, and one careless fin ends the dive for everybody behind you. We dive it in pairs for that reason and we will honestly tell a diver they are not ready for it.