Dive at Shiprock, Port Hacking, NSW on 25/1/14

Dive Details

Location

Date

25 January, 2014

Time

3:42pm - 4:55pm

Details

This time we didn't jump in at the pool, but rather at the original entry point near the buoy. This was so we could check more of the wall before going around the corner. We descended to the sand and then slowly swam over the wall and to the bottom.

As we moved along the bottom of the wall, the visibility was not great but still reasonable. We continued along the wall to the pineapplefish. This took a lot longer than usual because we had started so far back.

Shortly after the pineapplefish, Peter Jaques descended to just above me with a huge smile on his face. He told me he had spotted and angler and tried to explain where but all I got was it was on top of something. Peter swam off to his dive buddies and Wayne and I continued along the wall.

The visibility got significantly worse after this point. It was as if the bottom had been stirred up. We pushed on regardless. Wayne spotted a pair of large blue swimmer crabs mating. A little further on I spotted a pair of mourning cuttlefish.

We met Peter coming back and so we turned at this point and followed him (and his entourage) back so he could show me the angler he'd found. On the way back we saw a number of large hermit crabs and a moray eel.

Back in the shallows on top of the wall, Peter indicated the approximate area in which he'd seen the angler and so I swam around, back and forth until I finally located it. It was a yellow striped angler rather then the yellow painted angler that Eddie had found. It was still a good find.

When Peter and Wayne turned to go looking for blennies in bottles, they accidentally kicked up the sand and this sent the angler up into the water column. Immediately a number of Chinamen leatherjackets started attacking it. I noticed then that it was missing most of its fins. These leatherjackets had been attacking it before we'd even come on it. I corralled the angler into deeper water so that it could hide under a rock. Fortunately, the leatherjackets followed me when I left. Hopefully, the angler will recover. You can see in the photographs below its missing fins.

I swam back to the exit and got out at the pool.

Buddy

Wayne Ladkin

Seas

Choppy

Visibility

2-3 metres

Duration

73 minutes

Maximum depth

15.2 m

Average depth

9.0 m

Water temperature

20.9°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides at Botany Bay AEDT

Note that tides at dive site may vary from above location.

High

3:32am

1.46m

Low

9:56am

0.63m

High

3:47pm

1.25m

Low

10:59pm

0.50m

Video

Camera gear

Camera

Nikon D7000

Lens

Nikon AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8D

Housing

Ikelite 6801.70

Lens port

Ikelite Flat Port 5502.41

Strobe

2 x Ikelite SubStrobe DS161

Photographs

Depth information, where present, indicates the depth of the camera when the photograph was taken and can be used to approximate the depth of the subject.