Dive at The Leap, Kurnell, NSW on 23/3/14

Dive Details

Location

Date

23 March, 2014

Time

12:04pm - 1:21pm

Details

This was my first dive in Sydney after returning from Bali (this morning). What better way is there to return to Sydney than a dive at my favourite site?

Conditions looked great from the top of the cliff and looked just as good from the rock shelf. We jumped im, descended and swam to the sand line. The visibility was not wonderful but was good enough for easy navigation. What made the navigation a bit more complicated, at least around the amphitheatre was a layer of kelp where the sand line should have been. This made the terrain look different.

As we headed towards The Steps, I completely missed to rock where we've previously seen "Alex", the painted angler, fortunately my dive buddy has eagle-eyes and spotted "Alex" and called me back. The colour of "Alex" has changed slightly over the last 2 weeks.

We continued on our way and at the rock behind Seahorse Rock we found the pot-bellied seahorses "Rosie" and "Bob". Further along we looked carefully for "Lucy" but could not find her. She's often not visible so we're not worried yet. Hopefully, we'll see her next time.

We found "Southern Cross" on her usual rock right out in the open. "Richie" and "Pierre" were partially hidden as the were attached to the bases of sponges but weren't too difficult to find.

As we continued towards The Steps we sighted 5 different weedy seadragons. It is always good to see so many around, even when you aren't specifically looking for them.

We had a quick look on Big Rock for pygmy pipehorses but we were both pretty cold by this time and our air consumption was increasing. On a bit further and we started looking for the Miamira magnifica nudibranch. It appears to be slowly moving towards The Steps. While Sheree was looking she spotted a white pygmy pipehorse on a low rock which she announced with a squeal and much excitement as I followed her pointing to see the pipehorse, we both spotted a second one almost beside it. With all the excitement we almost forgot how cold we were. While I was photographing the pygmy pipehorses, Sheree located the M. magnifica nudibranch.

As we continued on, the cold got to us again so we made a fairly quick swim over the sponge covered boulders with only a casual eye for anglers, including "Big John". As we swam, Sheree spotted a huge sea hare floundering around in the sand.

After the sea slug we swam to the Plesiastrea colonies for our safety stop. We exited at The Steps.

Buddy

Sheree Papuni

Seas

Choppy

Visibility

10-15 metres

Duration

76 minutes

Maximum depth

21.4 m

Average depth

14.4 m

Water temperature

17.8°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides at Botany Bay AEDT

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

High

1:32am

1.61m

Low

8:15am

0.50m

High

2:12pm

1.27m

Low

7:58pm

0.60m

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.