Dive Details

Location

Date

Sunday 27 March 2016

Time

8:47am - 9:40am

Details

The forecast was for a much smaller swell - around 1.2m but it was still from the east. It certainly looked calmer. We were hoping for better visibility than Friday but we would soon find out. We jumped it from the rock out from the shelf to avoid the mild washing machine directly in front of the shelf. When we were ready, we descended and headed to the sand line. Initially the visibility was perhaps 4 metres.

We turned right and headed along the sand line towards The Leap. By the time we'd got to the rock with white honeycomb sponge the visibility had dropped to around 2 metres. We headed up the reef to find the first two seahorses. The visibility got even worse here and I couldn't find the rock with the seahorses, even after swimming back and forth. I gave up and we headed back to the sand line.

Ê We continued along the sand line past Little Big Rock and I spotted a weedy seadragon. After taking some ID shots we kept on to Diversity Rock. I immediately saw the whitish male pygmy pipehorse and pointed him out to Chris. After a bit of searching I found the female. The next challenge was to find seahorses. I found "Noel" and then "Arnold" in the sponges on the rock behind Diversity Rock. I looked and looked but could not find "Daniel" nor "Rosie". Chris indicated he was on around 110 bar so we moved on as I wanted to show him the basket star.

We went along the sand line but the visibility had dropped to only a metre or less. It was so bad I swam right past the basket star without even seeing it. We turned and I looked more closely on the way back and I found it this time. We continued back to Diversity Rock.

Back at Diversity Rock I made another sweep looking for "Daniel" and "Rosie". I eventually found "Rosie" on the rock to the left of Diversity Rock. I still couldn't find "Daniel".

We headed on to find the other seahorses. This time I took a more direct route from Diversity Rock as I know more landmarks that way. This was a much better idea as I swam straight the the rock, albeit slowly. "Di" was out in the open on the rock and Chris spotted "Mikhail" low down on the sea tulips on the back of the rock.

With the mission accomplished, we headed for the boulders and started our safety stop as we swam along. I pointed out the Plesiastrea colonies that I use as landmarks. We stopped at the split rock to finish our safety stop. We swam to the exit. I got out first, which was relatively easy, put my camera and fins down and then helped Chris with his camera. All in all an easy exit.

Buddy

Chris Ross

Seas

Surgy

Visibility

0.5 to 4 metres

Duration

53 minutes

Maximum depth

14.6 m

Average depth

11.1 m

Water temperature

19.6°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides at Botany Bay AEDT

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

Low

5:33am

0.50m

High

11:36am

1.45m

Low

5:30pm

0.54m

High

11:51pm

1.60m