Dive Details

Location

Date

Wednesday 22 March 2017

Time

12:46pm - 2:24pm

Details

This was my first dive at Kurnell in over a month. My last dive here was the weekend before I went to Mexico and since I'd got back it had been too rough. The waters were quite calm and the water didn't look brown so it augured well for a dive.

We left the cars at The Monument and walked to The Steps via the shore. This was to avoid walking down The Steps and meant we'd have the cars at the end of the dive. At the Steps the surface water looked slightly brown so we didn't have high hopes. We jumped in and when we descended we were presented with visibility of around 10 metres. Not too shabby at all. The water was around 21°C and there was no current or surge. We headed towards The Monument.

We stayed up above the sand line so we could check out the rocks for anglers. I kept an eye on the sand line for weedy seadragons but didn't find any before The Monument. We didn't find any anglers on the way to The Monument or really any thing of interest other than a dwarf lionfish near Block Rock.

I looked all over Split Rock for "Roney", the male pot-bellied seahorse, or any other seahorse, but he was not there. I also looked around the area for pygmy pipehorses but didn't find any. Dama spotted an orange red-fingered angler not far past Split Rock. Its camouflage was amazing.

I swam on to the rock where the pink, red and black pygmy pipehorses had been, looking for pygmies along the way. I couldn't find any of the pygmies I'd seen earlier until I got the rock where I found the male pink pygmy pipehorse with white snout, a cryptic female and the pink female whose colour had faded somewhat. Dama found a grey red-fingered angler just to the south of the pygmies.

We looked for the other grey fingered angler and white pygmy pipehorse we'd seen before but couldn't find either. As we headed along the wall, Dama found a weedy seadragon.

I went out over the dirty sand at the base of the east-west wall checking out the Carijoa colonies on the isolated rocks. I found a tiny female pygmy pipehorse on one of the rocks.

I then headed up the wall and did my safety stop before getting out just inside the point.

Buddy

Dama and Roney Rodrigues

Seas

Slight

Visibility

5 to 10 metres

Duration

97 minutes

Maximum depth

12.2 m

Average depth

9.9 m

Water temperature

20.2°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides at Botany Bay AEDT

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

High

4:20am

1.44m

Low

11:12am

0.64m

High

5:14pm

1.20m

Low

10:52pm

0.74m