Dive Details

Location

Date

Monday 30 January 2017

Time

10:09am - 11:45am

Details

We were once again looking for the pot-bellied seahorse: well I was, I'm not so sure about the others...

We got in at Sutherland Point and waded then surface swam to the edge of the wall. When we descended we were further south-east of the spot where I'd found pygmy pipehorses so I doubled back, found the rock and found the pygmies. The male is very pregnant and the female was hiding which made it difficult to photograph her. The others caught up to me and I showed the pygmies to Teagan. She was quite excited. The visibility was so good (>10 metres) we looked around the area for some time. I found a weedy seadragon with eggs and some interesting nudibranchs. Mike found a large giant cuttlefish in a cave.

We headed towards the north-east wall. On the lead up to the wall, I found a rock flathead and a pair of mating common Sydney octopus, and Mike found a Nembrotha purpureolineata. On the wall itself, Mike found a pipefish.

We saw the grey red-fingered angler on the same rock it had been on Friday, although it had moved on the rock. As I was photographing it it started to yawn and I managed to get a couple of shots before Roney dragged me away to show me Mike photographing a pygmy pipehorse. While I was waiting for Mike to finish I spotted two more pygmies together on the other side of the sponge so I photographed them. I then found two more on a rock two rocks away. Mike then indicated there was a fourth pygmy on the sponge.

We continued towards Split Rock and I found the other two pygmies on the rock a little to the north of Split Rock. That made 10 pygmies on the one dive. Mike pointed out the yellow White's seahorse who had moved to the other side of Split Rock.

We were both running low on air so we headed for the exit. We got out at the little bay around the corner from the flagpoles.

Buddy

Mike Scotland

Seas

Slight

Visibility

5 to 15 metres

Duration

96 minutes

Maximum depth

13.2 m

Average depth

10.8 m

Water temperature

19.7°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides at Botany Bay AEDT

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

Low

4:20am

0.42m

High

10:46am

1.81m

Low

5:17pm

0.27m

High

11:19pm

1.46m