Dive Details

Location

Date

Sunday 11 June 2017

Time

8:52am - 10:23am

Details

We jumped in at The Steps. The surface water was cold and murky and it didn't look good at all. We could barely see 3 metres. We descended to the sand line and were pleasantly surprised to see fantastic visibility. It was at least 10 metres and closer to 15. The surface must have just been runoff from the rain. The water temperature was a tad higher, too, at around 18°C. There was a gentle surge. We turned left and headed towards The Monument.

We were checking out the red algae along the way for widebody pipefish but didn't find any. At around a quarter of the way to The Monument I spotted an orange painted angler. It was very easy to spot and was quite large. I pointed it out to Roney and Mike.

At around Block Rock we came across a pair of courting weedy seadragons. The male's back was slightly deformed. The pair swam around each other for some time. I was a little frustrated I was set up for macro photograph although it didn't dawn on me to shoot video with the GoPro. Mike stayed with the pair for some time.

Right next to where the weedy seadragons were was the spot I'd seen the tiny orange painted angler. Once I located the rock it only took a short time to find the angler. It had only moved 10-20 centimetres. We left Mike with the weedies and continued on.

As we swam along the Deep Wall we looked for the red-fingered angler and the ornate ghostpipefish but couldn't find them. At the end of the wall I checked out the Carijoa covered rock. There was still quite a bit of snot algae through the colonies but it had reduced a bit. I could only find one cryptic pygmy pipehorse.

I moved to the rock up from the Carijoa rock and found the small red male pygmy pipehorse immediately. I looked around the rock and found a cryptic male.

We swam up to the rock with the White's seahorses and found the female on the side of the rock and the male was on top.

We headed along the reef and down to Four Pygmies Rock. The red male and cryptic female pygmy pipehorses were together in the purple finger sponge.

I was running low on air so I told Roney I was leaving. I headed up the reef and then back a bit so I could exit at the Little Bay. The exit wasn't too difficult despite the waves.

Buddy

Roney Rodrigues, Mike Scotland

Seas

Some surge

Visibility

10 to 15 metres

Duration

90 minutes

Maximum depth

12.7 m

Average depth

10.3 m

Water temperature

17.0°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides at Botany Bay AEST

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

Low

3:33am

0.47m

High

9:28am

1.37m

Low

2:59pm

0.62m

High

9:31pm

1.81m