Dive Details

Location

Date

Sunday 20 January 2019

Time

8:38am - 9:57am

Buddy

Cody Sheridan

Seas

Slight current and surge

Visibility

3 to 5 metres

Duration

78 minutes

Surface interval

Maximum depth

14.8 m

Average depth

11.9 m

Water temperature

19.0°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides at Botany Bay AEDT

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

Low

1:42am

0.39m

High

8:16am

1.92m

Low

2:59pm

0.21m

High

8:55pm

1.42m

Details

Today we were doing a double boat dive on Joe's boat. There was Cody, Sheree, Tod, Dan, Shane, Joe and me. It had been over 3 years since I'd last dived Henry Head and I wondered how much of the terrain I'd remember. I was also hopeful of finding pygmy pipehorses here as there's no reason they shouldn't be here.

Cody, Sheree, Tod and I jumped in together and descended the anchor line. We'd anchored to the north of the wooden hull of the boat on the sand. The visibility was only 3 to 5 metres an the water temperature around 19°C. There was a gentle current with the outgoing tide heading in the direction we would head out but we'd have to swim against it coming back to the anchor.

After I made sure the anchor was secure and remembering where it was, we headed south along the reef. Before we'd even got to the wooden hull, Cody called me over because he'd found a pair of pygmy pipehorses. This was the first time he'd found any on his own and the first pair I had known of at Henry Head. Sheree and Tod swam on while I took photographs of the pygmy pipehorses. This was a good sign and I thought we'd find more. I looked around the adjacent rocks for more but couldn't see any.

We headed slowly south. We were carefully checking each rock for pygmies, seahorses, anglerfishes, red indianfish and anything else of interest.

I found my way to Seahorse Rock. This was the rock that's covered with sponges and sea tulips that at one stage had a male and 4 female pot-bellied seahorses and also attracted a couple of juveniles. I looked carefully over it for seahorses but found none. The poor visibility made looking more difficult because I had to get close to see anything but it was too close for the unlensed part of my mask but too far away for the lenses.

We continued to swim around the rocks looking for interesting things. All I found was a dwarf lionfish and a clown toby.

We turned and headed back to the boat. We looked on all the rocks as we swam into the current. We swam past the wooden hole and on to the rock where Cody had spotted the pygmies. I found the rock and then found both of them again. I took some photographs before we continued on to the anchor. I headed up the anchor line and did my safety stop before surfacing and getting into the boat.