Dive Details

Location

Date

Saturday 10 March 2018

Time

7:38am - 9:01am

Details

I was working today which presented me an opportunity to go for a quick dive at Bare Island before heading in to the Museum. I was also keen to look for the female pot-bellied seahorse others had been seeing above the deep wall. It was an outgoing tide which is not ideal for the deep wall but the tidal difference was less than 80cm so the current wouldn't be that strong.

I had planned to get in just to the south of the corner but the waves were a little large so I got in just the east of the "swimming pool". I didn't surface swim around the corner as it would be uncomfortable and I only had 90 minutes for the dive. I descended to the sand line and then past the outboard motor, over the sand in front of the boulders and then around to the south through the gap towards the southern side of the island. Along the way I saw a few eastern fiddler rays.

I swam to the wall at around 200° through a lot of fields of green hand sponges. I checked them all out for seahorses. At the wall I dropped down and then turned right and swam along to wall until it ended. I kept going until I came to the area where the seahorses used to be until the storm of April 2015.

I turned around again and headed back towards the top of the wall. I tried to stay at around 12 metres. There are lots of fields of green hand sponges there and I checked them all out for the seahorse. I still couldn't find it.

I turned west again and swam along the top of the wall in around 14 metres. Finally, I found the seahorse. She's quite small and still has her spines. After taking some photographs I headed west and then north to find the shallow wall.

I ended up a bit shallower than I had planned and swam along the top of the shallow wall and cut across to the caves. I then dropped down right on the caves - where I first saw the female great seahorse in 2016.

I hadn't gone far when I spotted a pygmy pipehorse. It was a female in front of the caves. I looked for a male but couldn't see one.

I headed around the corner and on to the rock with white honeycomb sponges which always seems to have pygmies on it I spotted a white male there. I looked around for the golden female but couldn't find her.

I continued on to the bottom of the slope and made a quick sweep looking for anglerfishes, red indianfish and nudibranchs before starting up the slope. I looked at all the spots I've seen pygmy pipehorses before but found none.

At the top of the slope I swam along the sand in front of the boulders and came on two more fiddler rays - or perhaps there were the same two I'd see earlier in the dive.

I started my safety stop before I got to the outboard motor and made my way to the exit. I got out near Carol's plaque.

Postscript: I didn't realise that after I got out I dropped my mask on the rocks. It was only while cleaning my gear, after I got home from work, that I realised it was missing. I posted on Facebook and Vicki Swinnerton posted that she had it. Ricky Chambers had found it 10 minutes after I dropped it.

Seas

Some surge

Visibility

3 to 5 metres

Duration

82 minutes

Maximum depth

17.2 m

Average depth

10.8 m

Water temperature

22.3°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides

High

3:27am

1.43m

Low

10:15am

0.68m

High

4:06pm

1.14m

Low

9:47pm

0.74m