Dive at The Leap, Kurnell, NSW on 1 August 2014

Dive Details

Location

Date

1 August 2014

Time

9:15am - 10:33am

Details

Once again Botany Bay was flat and The Leap looked so inviting. This was the calm before the storm as we were in for rough seas this weekend so I got a quick dive in before it got bad.

We jumped in at The Leap. I used the low shelf as usual. We descended and swam to the sand line. At the sand line we turned north west and headed towards The Steps.

I found "Bob", the pot-bellied seahorse, on his usual rock and there was still no sign of "Lucy". I continued on to Seahorse Rock finding a weedy seadragon along the way. Behind Seahorse Rock I found "Rosie" on her usual rock.

A little further on PJ and I looked closely for "Max", the orange painted angler, but couldn't find him. Kim found a tiny Okenia hallucigenia nudibranch on the next rock.

"Southern Cross" and "Pierre" were on their usual rock but I could still not find "Richie". I'm worried he's moved on

I got left behind while I was looking for "Richie" and so continued on my own. I found two weedy seadragons together again. I think they might be the same, too. Looking at my photographs I am positive at least one of them is the same.

I followed the sand line all the way to the basket star. Just past the basket star I saw an eastern blue devil swimming around in the open. I have never seen one at Kurnell and rarely seen one out in the open swimming around. I managed to get some video of it but it dived into a crevice before I could take a photograph.

From here I headed up over the reef as I was running low on air. I did a quick check for the pygmy pipehorse but could not see it. I then swam straight to the exit, causally looking at the sponge covered rocks for anglers but found none. I did spot a stumpy tailed weedy seadragon amongst the kelp which makes 5 weedies for the dive,

I did my safety stop and exited at The Steps.

Buddy

Peter Jaques and others

Seas

Slight

Visibility

10-15 metres

Duration

77 minutes

Maximum depth

22.0 m

Average depth

15.7 m

Water temperature

16.1°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides at Botany Bay AEST

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

Low

5:23am

0.45m

High

11:40am

1.42m

Low

5:32pm

0.62m

High

11:37pm

1.49m

Video

Video captured with GoPro Hero HD with BlurFix plus Sola 600 and Ikelite DS161 video lights

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.