Dive at The Leap, Kurnell, NSW on 28 June 2014

Dive Details

Location

Date

28 June 2014

Time

7:37am - 9:10am

Details

It was a fantastic morning at The Leap. The Sun had just risen and despite the strong northerly wind it was quite calm with almost no swell at all. Surprisingly, there were no other divers around to enjoy The Leap at its best.

As it was close to high tide, I slid down the wall next to the shelf at there was too much water over the shelf. I descended and headed at 60° to the sand line. I hit the sand line just to the south-east of the amphitheatre and headed north-west towards The Steps. I came across a smallish giant cuttlefish almost immediately but it swam under the rocks before I could get more than a couple of photographs.

I found "Lucy" and "Bob", the pot-bellied seahorses, on their new rock. "Bob" was hanging off the edge again but was easier to find because I looked where I'd seen him last week.

I swam on to Seahorse Rock and checked it out for seahorses. "Rosie" was on her rock behind Seahorse Rock. I also looked all around the area for "Alex", the painted angler, but still could not find him.

continued on looking closely at all the rocks for interesting critters. I found the next three seahorses, "Southern Cross", "Pierre" and "Richie" on their usual rock. "Pierre" was very pregnant. His pouch was more swollen than I have ever seen before. He was also quite active which suggested to me he might be ready to give birth so I hung around for almost 20 minutes but I did not get to witness a birth.

I was now 52 minutes into the dive, still at 18 metres and less than half way to The Steps. I had to get a move on. Thirty metres or so further on I came across a weedy seadragon and another giant cuttlefish. A bit further again I found two more weedy seadragons.

I swam along the sand line looking for pygmy pipehorses and when I got within 20 metres of the basket start I found a grey undescribed angler low on a rock. It was a bit lighter than the normal grey ones we see but had the tell-tale red tips to its fins.

I was down to just over 50 bar so I had to move a bit more quickly. I found the basket star but it was covered in snotty algae. There had actually been a lot of this algae throughout the dive, including with the seahorses. I had just enough air to take a few photographs of the pygmy pipehorse just up from the basket star, which also had a lot of the snotty algae around it, and then I had to make a bee line to the boulders. Along the way I had a quick look for "Big John", the orange undescribed angler, but I didn't really have time to look carefully and didn't find it.

I did my safety stop in the boulders straight out from the exit. While I was there a huge stingray swam passed. I exited at The Steps. Another brilliant dive at The Leap.

Seas

Slight

Visibility

15-20 metres

Duration

92 minutes

Maximum depth

22.1 m

Average depth

16.5 m

Water temperature

17.2°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides at Botany Bay AEST

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

Low

3:04am

0.43m

High

9:00am

1.35m

Low

2:30pm

0.57m

High

9:01pm

1.81m

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.