Dive at The Leap, Kurnell, NSW on 9/2/14

Dive Details

Location

Date

09 February, 2014

Time

1:04pm - 2:11pm

Details

I entered at The Leap and headed towards the sand line. I got my bearings a little off and headed east instead of east north east and ended up on the deep wall. I swam towards The Steps along the top of the wall and then descended to the sand line. I followed the sand line to Seahorse Rock and found "Rosie", "Bob" and "Eddie" on the rock behind Seahorse Rock. I took my time here and scouted around looking for other seahorses and found "Lucy" on the low rock further along from Seahorse Rock.

I continued on towards The Steps and found "Southern Cross", "Richie" and "Pierre" at their usual location as well as the small reaper cuttlefish. I took my time here as well.

I kept on swimming towards The Steps and found a weedy seadragon near where "Dana", the red painted angler, used to be. I then stopped at Big Rock for a while and looked for pygmy pipehorses, but didn't find any.

I then went to the rock where we'd previously seen the Miamira magnifica nudibranch. It wasn't on the original rock so I looked at the rock we'd seen it on Saturday. I found it on that rock, but it was on the other side than it was on Saturday. That got me thinking, could there be more than one. I scouted around that rock and found another one on the other side. This means there are at least two M. magnifica so we'll have to look for more.

I then headed back to the sand line so I could see the basket star. It was on its sponge but was not open. I followed the sand line past Little Big Rock and to the area where we'd last seen "Big John", the orange undescribed angler. There was a weedy seadragon in that area. I slowly swam over the large rocks looking for anglers and other things and then made my way to the shallows for my safety stop. I exited at The Steps.

Seas

Choppy

Visibility

10-15 metres

Duration

66 minutes

Maximum depth

20.9 m

Average depth

13.3 m

Water temperature

15.5°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides

High

5:09am

1.47m

Low

12:00pm

0.63m

High

5:49pm

1.14m

Low

11:26pm

0.64m

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.