Dive at Bare Island, La Perouse, NSW on Thursday 19 March 2015

Dive Details

Location

Date

Thursday 19 March 2015

Time

8:04pm - 9:26pm

Details

Night dive with Scubathlon. The plan was for me to show the group a pygmy pipehorse, then to head over to the deep wall to see the seahorses and them come back around the shallow wall past the caves.

We jumped in on the northern side of the island, descended and followed the boulders past the outboard motor and up over the shelf, along the sand to the top of the slope. I was only able to find one of the sentry pygmy pipehorses and it got a bit overwhelmed with all the lights.

We headed south through the gap but I went a little bit too far west. Even though I thought I was going pretty slowly, I lost everyone but my buddy Eric by the time we got to the shallow wall on the south west side of the island. I kept heading east but I think I'd started too far west and couldn't find the reef with the seahorses. We did see two pineapplefish swimming around in the open. This was the first time I'd seen pineapplefish at Bare Island.

I realised we were not going to find the seahorses so we headed north to pick up the shallow wall and then we followed it west then north west and finally north until we hit the caves. We swam east and then up the slope.

At the rocks with the pink sea tulips I found one of the pygmy pipehorses we'd seen earlier in the week. Further up the slope I found a velvetfish. I assume it was the same one as last night although it was a few more metres down the slope. The sentry pygmy we'd seen earlier was still on the rock so we hadn't harassed it too much earlier.

We followed the boulders back to the exit and got out at the ramp.

Buddy

Eric Kh

Seas

Slight

Visibility

3 to 5 metres

Duration

81 minutes

Maximum depth

15.8 m

Average depth

10.0 m

Water temperature

21.2°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides at Botany Bay AEDT

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

Low

1:49am

0.31m

High

8:10am

1.87m

Low

2:37pm

0.17m

High

8:44pm

1.68m

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.