Dive at The Leap, Kurnell, NSW on Saturday 8 November 2014

Dive Details

Location

Date

Saturday 8 November 2014

Time

8:09am - 9:23am

Details

It was quite calm at The Leap with a gentle easterly swell. There was too much water over the low platform for me to use it for my entrance so I slid down the rock next to it. I swam on the surface around 15 metres along the shore to the south east and then descended. Visibility was around 5 metres as I swam at around 60° towards the wall. As I dropped down the wall the visibility increased to around 10 metres.

I swam along the wall to the end and then started to look for the new seahorses, "Shirley" and "Andy". I scoured the rock we'd seen them on last week and found neither. I also checked the adjacent rocks in all directions and found no sign of them.

I drifted to the rock with the white pygmy seahorse and found it immediately. Just as I arrived a medium sized wobbegong swam right past it and settled on the sand just to the right below it. I was going to have to be careful as I took photos of the pygmy pipehorse.

I swam on to the rock with the pink pygmy pipehorse. It took me over 5 minutes to find it again. It was a little lower on the rock this time. By the tme I had finished photographing it the visibility had dropped to less than 10 metres and it varied between 5 and 10 metres for the rest of the dive.

I headed off to Seahorse Rock looking for seahorses and weedy seadragons along the way. I found "Rosie" on her usual rock behind Seahorse Rock. I did not see any other seahorses until I reached "Southern Cross" and "Pierre" who were also on their usual rock.

Next stop was Seadragon Alley where I found 5 different weedy seadragons. At this point I was down to 75 bar so I headed to the top of the reef and made my way to The Steps. Along the way I passed the other basket star.

I started my safety stop while swimming over the boulders and finished it in front of The Steps. My exit at The Steps was easy due to the high tide and the gentle swell.

Seas

Slight

Visibility

5-10 metres

Duration

74 minutes

Maximum depth

22.2 m

Average depth

17.1 m

Water temperature

16.4°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides at Botany Bay AEDT

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

Low

3:29am

0.34m

High

9:54am

1.84m

Low

4:26pm

0.24m

High

10:28pm

1.42m

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.