Dive at Fish Rock Cave, South West Rocks, NSW on 1/3/14

Dive Details

Location

Date

01 March, 2014

Time

8:42am - 9:47am

Details

This was my first dive at Fish Rock. After a 30 minute boat ride from the ramp at South West Rocks we arrived at Fish Rock. Troy, our guide from South West Rocks Dive Centre, gave us a briefing for diving in the cave and then we jumped in for the dive.

We descended to 10 metres and then followed Troy around the corner and descended to the gutter which has the entrance to the cave. I nearly landed on a grey nurse shark which was swimming directly below me.

When we were ready we entered the cave in single file: Troy, followed by Sheree, me, Jani and Daniela bring up the rear. It wasn't long after we went into the cave that there was a lot of beeping from people's dive computers.

Inside the cave we saw a lot of wobbegongs, lobsters and various fish. Troy took us up to the bubble cave where we were able to remove our regulators and talk. That was pretty cool. We continued on through the cave and exited on the other side. At the exit there were even more wobbegongs.

We moved down the gutter at the exit and then climbed over the ridge to the south. We climbed rather than swam to avoid the current of which there was hardly any. It was when we got over the ridge and down the other side that we hit a strong current.

On the other side of the ridge, Troy fed the fish with a sea urchin and then a hawksbill turtle swam up to him as if it was expecting food. He gave it a back rub and then it settled down out of the current. We pottered around the area for a while and then ascended for our safety stops.

Buddy

Sheree Papuni

Seas

Choppy

Visibility

20-25 metres

Duration

64 minutes

Maximum depth

24.4 m

Average depth

13.6 m

Water temperature

22.3°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides at Yamba AEDT

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

Low

2:42am

0.15m

High

9:13am

1.77m

Low

3:33pm

0.11m

High

9:31pm

1.51m

Video

Camera gear

Camera

Nikon D7000

Lens

Tokina AT-X Pro 12-24mm f/4 +4 dipoter

Housing

Ikelite 6801.70

Lens port

Ikelite 6" Dome Port 5503.51

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.