Dive Details

Location

Logged dive number

1274

Date

Saturday 18 February 2017

Time

10:37am - 11:41am

Buddy

Graham Short, Jeroen van Meenen, Mike Scotland

Duration

64 minutes

Surface interval

 19:29:00 (hh:mm)

Maximum depth

21.4 m

Average depth

16.7 m

Water temperature

17.6°C
                                       

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides at Botany Bay AEDT

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

High

2:12am

1.41m

Low

8:30am

0.68m

High

2:20pm

1.25m

Low

8:28pm

0.63m

Details

Dive with Graham and Jeroen to show them some syngnathids at Kurnell. Mike joined us, too. This was Graham's first time to Kurnell and one of only a handful of times for Jeroen.

We jumped in from the low platform and when we were ready we descended and swam at around 30° to the sand line. The visibility was between 5 and 10 metres, there was not much surge but it was less than 18°C. We turned left and headed towards The Steps.

I found the male of Ian's pygmy pipehorses but before I pointed them out to Graham and Jeroen, Mike called us back and shallower to a small sea fan. On closer look there was a javelin pipefish in the sea fan. As we tried to photograph it a boisterous blue groper kept swimming in to get attention and flicking the sea fan with his tail. We had to coax him away before we could take any photos.

We swam back to the sand line and I showed the others the male pygmy pipehorse (IL2017010601) while I looked for the female (IL2017012901) and found her.

We continued on past Seahorse Rock and I found a weedy seadragon behind the rock where the striped angler had been. I then spotted the juvenile weedy on the other side of the rock.

We swam on to Southern Cross Rock and I spotted and pointed out the two white pygmy pipehorses. I looked for the delicate ghostpipefish but could not find it.

We went on to Seadragon Alley and saw two more weedy seadragons on the way. At the end of weedy seadragon I found the pair of pygmy pipehorses Roney had found on Wednesday and poited them out. At this point Graham was running low on air and was cold so we headed for shallower water.

We ascended to 5 metres and started our safety stop when we realised we'd lost Graham. We finished our safety stop and surfaced some way from The Steps. We could see Graham waiting for us at The Steps. We swam on the surface all the way to The Steps where we exited.