Dive Details

Location

Date

Saturday 25 April 2015

Time

9:24am - 10:40am

Details

This was the Saturday after the super storm that hit Sydney and New South Wales. The seas had been huge and we'd received a lot of rain. The water surface in Botany Bay and around Bare Island was dark brown and there was a lot of floating debris. The visibility was not going to be great but I was confident that once we got below the surface layer it would be better but how much better was the question.

We got in on the northern side of the island just to the east of the pool. Visibility on the surface was was less than 30 cm. We were close to each other when we descended but I could not see Ben at all until we got to around 3 metres where the visibility improved to around 2 metres. Once we hit the sand we headed west until the outboard motor. We went over the motor and onto the shelf and followed it around. We came to the rock where I'd last seen two pygmy pipehorses and it was almost completely buried in sand and there was no sign of the pygmies.

We continued on and headed down the slope. The area where the other two pygmies had been looked largely intact but I could not find either pygmy.

We followed the slope all the way to near the corner and then I tried to follow the reef to the west. With the poor visibility I wasn't able to find the west reef. We ended up going a little bit too far south so that when we turned around we ended up on the wrong side of the reef and headed towards the deep wall. I wasn't sure where we were but when we saw two other divers (who had told us they were going to the deep wall) coming towards us I knew we were off track. We turned around and started to head north when I came across a juvenile pot-bellied seahorse I had not seen before.

At this point I really had no idea where we were so I suggested to Ben that we surface and get our bearings. It turns out we were just to the west of the island. We descended again and I was now able to follow the reef to the west, north-west and north to the corner and come back up the slope to the exit. We exited between the pool a the ramp.

Buddy

Ben Lumen

Seas

Slight

Visibility

2 to 3 metres

Duration

74 minutes

Maximum depth

15.7 m

Average depth

10.7 m

Water temperature

18.9°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides at Botany Bay AEST

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

High

12:55am

1.60m

Low

7:51am

0.57m

High

1:56pm

1.24m

Low

7:27pm

0.78m

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.

Nudibranch, Phyllodesmium poindimiei. 13.5 m.
 

Female pot-bellied seahorse, Hippocampus abdominalis. 10.5 m.