Dive Details

Location

Date

30 June, 2013

Time

1:07pm - 2:32pm

Details

Entered at The Steps into the cold soup with freshwater. Descended to 5 metres and the visibility immediately improved. Headed to the sand line and then towards The Leap in search of seahorses. At the sandline the visibility opened up even more and was probably 15 metres. The lighting was quite eerie. The soup near the surface was cutting out quite a lot of light but the good visibility made it look like a twilight dive even though it was just after 1pm.

All the way along the sand line and just back from it are boulders covered in sponges. These are all very similar to boulders we often find seahorse. Despite this, we didn't find a single seahorse. They must be there somewhere. We did find more Port Jackson sharks, basket stars and another juvenile weedy seadragon which was quite close the area we saw the one with the head injuries on the first dive.

We turned and came back a little shallower, still looking for seahorse but found none. We again hit poorer visibility at around 5 metres and then the cold soup again near the surface. We exited at The Steps which was a bit tricker than the first dive due to the height of the tide over the rocks and the swell which kept taking us back off the rocks.

Buddy

Sheree Papuni

Seas

Rough and surgy

Visibility

3-15 metres

Duration

80 minutes

Maximum depth

17.1 m

Average depth

11.8 m

Water temperature

16.2°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Cyber Aqualand Nx

Tides at Botany Bay AEST

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

High

1:24am

1.52m

Low

7:56am

0.47m

High

2:18pm

1.50m

Low

8:26pm

0.69m

Camera gear

Camera

Nikon D300

Lens

Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II +5 diopter

Housing

Ikelite 6812.3

Lens port

Ikelite 6" Dome Port 5503.50

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.

Basket star, Astrosierra amblyconus. 11.1 m.
 

Reaper cuttlefish, Sepia mestus. 11.5 m.
 

Basket star, Astrosierra amblyconus. 14.1 m.
 

Juvenile weedy seadragon, Phyllopteryx taeniolatus. 16.5 m.
 

Juvenile weedy seadragon, Phyllopteryx taeniolatus. 16.6 m.
 

Juvenile weedy seadragon, Phyllopteryx taeniolatus. 16.9 m.
 

Common Sydney octopus, Octopus tetricus. 13.2 m.