Dive Details

Location

Date

Sunday 12 November 2017

Time

10:48am - 12:10pm

Details

Malcolm and I met relatively early for our second day of diving. This would be Malcolm's first dive at The Leap and I lent him a 15L tank with nitrox to give us more bottom time. We would get in around 40 minutes after low tide.

We got in from the low platform and swam out on the surface before descending. We swam at around 30° to the sand line arriving just to the south east of Lucy and Bob Rock. Visibility was around 8 metres and the water temperature was around 19°C. The surge was gentle as was the current. We turned left and headed for The Steps.

We swam past Seahorse Rock and on to the flat rocks covered with sponges. I looked under the overhang and found a male weedy seadragon with eggs. His eggs were quite new. I then spotted the male that had the damaged head. His head appears to be healing. A little farther on we spotted another weedy.

We continued on to Southern Cross Rock. We stopped to look for pygmies. I found 3 males and a female. I showed them to Malcolm to photograph as well as taking some photographs myself.

We swam on to Seadragon Alley where we saw a male weedy seadragon with eggs.

At the end of Seadragon Alley we stopped at the rock with the green hand sponges. I found the male pygmy but I could not find the female. As Malcolm was photographing the pygmy I went on to the pair of red widebody pipefish. While I was photographing them, three divers swam up from The Steps. I didn't recognise that one was Ron and moved away from the pipefish as I didn't want to disclose their location. They went straight to the seahorse and pointed her out to me - although I'd already seen her. They then swam up to the pipefish and started taking photographs. I couldn't work out how they knew they were there. (It was only after the dive that I realised it was Ron and that Roney had shown him.) After the other divers left I pointed out the pipefish and the seahorse to Malcolm. I then searched around for the grey red-fingered angler but couldn't it.

We swam on to Big Rock. I found both new male pygmy pipehorses but none of the females. I didn't look for my male pygmy but I knew I'd be back here for the second dive. Roney was there and pointed out an Okenia mellita nudibranch.

We swam along the top of the reef to New Basket Star Rock. The basket star is still on the green hand sponge where I'd found it yesterday.

We continued on to Little Big Rock where we bumped into Roney again. He asked me to take a photograph of the Dendronephthya soft coral colony. I showed Malcolm the orange painted angler and asked Roney where the salmon red-fingered angler was and he pointed to it only a few centimetres from the painted angler. After taking a few photographs we headed off for the boulders.

At the boulders we ascended to 5 metres and started our safety stops while swimming to split rock. We finished our safety stops at Split Rock and then swam underwater to the exit. The exit was easy.

Buddy

Malcolm Nobbs

Seas

Surgy

Visibility

5 to 8 metres

Duration

82 minutes

Maximum depth

20.5 m

Average depth

14.2 m

Water temperature

18.5°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides at Botany Bay AEDT

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

High

4:28am

1.33m

Low

10:10am

0.64m

High

4:28pm

1.56m

Low

11:09pm

0.40m