Dive at Shiprock, Port Hacking, NSW on 13/4/14

Dive Details

Location

Date

13 April, 2014

Time

6:45am - 7:59am

Details

Cyclone Ita had been attaching the far north coast of Queensland and its effects had reached all the way to Sydney which was being pounded by 3-6 metre swells. There were few alternatives for a dive and I had to keep my consecutive weekend diving run going so I did a sunrise dive at Shiprock.

There was a bit of wind chop on the surface but no swell when I got into the pool. I descended the wall and the visibility was 2 to 3 metres it was also pretty dark because the sun hadn't really risen. There was a lot of particulate matter in the water and also a lot of weed floating around. I swam around the first bommie, straight out from the wall, a couple of times hoping to find one of the anglers but only found 2 dwarf lionfish. I came back to the wall and was surprised to find two pineapplefish a long way from their usual cave. I eventually made it to the cave and there were no pineapplefish there at all. I continued along the wall looking for interesting things. I found a couple of striped catfish swimming together.

Up in the shallows I found a large juvenile dusky butterflyfish. Not all that unusual for this time of the year. I turned and came back along the bottom of the wall. If I had done my usual swim back at 8-10 metres, I might have been lucky enough to see the frogfish with babies that Eddie told me about after the dive.

While cruising back I spotted another two pineapplefish again before I reached their cave. I'm not sure if they cruise around at night or something else had chased them from the cave. I found another couple (I'm pretty sure they weren't the same two) of striped catfish.

I came up the wall close to the exit point and followed the top of the wall passed the exit point looking for anglers and interesting critters. I found a third couple of striped catfish. Either that or the same pair were somehow following in front of me. I spotted two orange reef-gobies under a ledge that kept coming out to me.

I swam up and exited at the pool.

Buddy

Botany Bay AEST

Seas

Choppy

Visibility

2-3 metres

Duration

73 minutes

Maximum depth

16.8 m

Average depth

11.1 m

Water temperature

21.4°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides

Low

12:48am

0.53m

High

6:51am

1.55m

Low

1:04pm

0.44m

High

7:20pm

1.59m

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.