Dive Details
Location
Date
Saturday 11 June 2016
Time
9:21am - 10:32am
Details
This was my first dive after the big storm. The surface conditions looked good at The Steps from a swell, entry and exit perspective but the water looked very dirty. I wasn't expecting much from the dive but I wanted to see how much impact the storm had had and if the seahorses were still around.
I jumped in and visibility on the surface was less than a metre. I was hopeful that this might improve with depth but as I descended it did not get any better. It made going very difficult. I had to hug the bottom as well as the rocks so I'd have a chance of finding anything. I headed towards The Leap.
The first thing I noticed was the number of rocks on the sand line that had previously been partially or completely under sand before the storm. They were too bare to have been stripped by the storm. This was most obvious on rocks that had been partially covered previously as their bases were bare but upper surfaces still had algae and other growth on them.
I couldn't see from one rock to the next so it was pretty difficult to know where I was. I thought I spotted the rock with the tall white honeycomb sponge which is my navigation mark for the first seahorses. I headed up from the sand line but quickly got lost and couldn't find the rock. I headed back to the sand line.
I continued along the sand line. I was determined to find Diversity Rock. I swam past Little Big Rock. At this point the incoming tidal current was quite strong so I had to swim quite hard. There were more bare and partially bare rocks which made navigation more difficult as I could no longer rely on what the rocks looked like or how far from the sand they were.
Seas
Slight
Visibility
1 metre
Duration
71 minutes
Maximum depth
14.9 m
Average depth
12.0 m
Water temperature
16.7°C
Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand
Tides at Botany Bay ESDT
Note that tides at dive site may vary from above location.
High
12:35am
1.65m
Low
7:25am
0.52m
High
1:38pm
1.36m
Low
7:15pm
0.78m