Dive Details

Location

Date

Saturday 12 May 2018

Time

7:49am - 8:55am

Details

Today's dive would be an early quick one at Clifton Gardens. It might be too rough elsewhere. The tides were not great. I had to test my drysuit after it had been repaired by Leslie. Vicki was in hospital but I couldn't visit her until at least 10am.

The water around the pool and pier was very flat with hardly a ripple. When I put on my drysuit I realised the inflater was not working. My plan as I waded out from the beach was not to dump too much air from it. I tested it one more time and I was getting some air coming through the inflater so I dumped all the air from the suit. That was a big mistake as I couldn't get the inflater to work after that point.

I descended and swam under the pier to the intersection of the west leading pier. Visibility was around 5 metres and there was no water movement. Water temperature was around 18°C. Between the next set of pylons I spotted a large black striate anglerfish. This must have been one of Kim's. Being black it was almost impossible to photograph. The camera had trouble focusing and any particulate matter creates annoying backscatter.

I headed farther down the slope under the pier. As I got deeper my suit became more uncomfortable as I couldn't put air in it. Part way down the slope I spotted a decorator crab. I looked around all the sponges for seahorses and was surprised to only see the one.

I worked my way back up the slope looking for pipefishes. I didn't find any girdled pipefish and only found one large tiger pipefish. Near the top of the slope I found a painted stinkfish.

After trying to get some more shots of the black anglerfish I headed out on the sand to the west of the pier. I found two large tiger pipefish.

I headed up to the nets and found a golden White's seahorse in some weed. I followed the net to the west hoping to find the yellow striate anglerfish I'd seen two weeks ago but I couldn't find it.

I came back east along the nets to the black anglerfish and then headed north under the main pier to the beach. I spotted 2 juvenile threadfin butterflyfish on the way.

I got out just before the beach.

Seas

Calm

Visibility

3 to 5 metres

Duration

66 minutes

Maximum depth

8.3 m

Average depth

4.3 m

Water temperature

17.9°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides at Sydney (Fort Denison) AEST

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

High

5:35am

1.56m

Low

11:53am

0.47m

High

6:13pm

1.62m