Apr

29

Dive Number: 32 26/04/2010 15.03 St Leonards Pier

Wind: 15 knot westerlies

Tide: 3 hrs after 0.90 high tide at the geelong

Conditions: Reasonable conditions…fairly choppy on the surface, but the vis was OK.

Bottom Type: Peir pylons on sand

Visibilty: 5-7m

Water Temp: 18c

Bottom Time: 100 minutes

Max Depth: 3.6m

Air usage: 120bar/1800psi

SAC: 10.7 litres/min

Details: Probably my favorite St Leonards dive yet. Its the first time i’ve seen a cuttlefish here and also found the ellusive Conger Eel that i’ve often heard about. Also found a ver colour flabellina nudibranch..but didn’t have my macro lens on.

Camera Details: Canon 17-40mm , dual SS200 strobe.

Dive Report: I started the dive not really knowing what i wanted to target, but i stayed mid water for a while and started tto check out the pylons rather than going to the bottom and scanning the sand. This ascidian stood out to me.

This little leatherjacket had the same idea as me and just hung close to the pylons .

A lone seastar clung to a pylon remanant on the bottom.

A Spotted Stingaree cruised the seagrass just outside the pylons.

I accidently disturbed this baby cuttlefish that was doing its best to blend into its environment. Did a damn good job too!

Once i disturbed him though he took off in search of another patch to blend into:

As i was photographying the cuttlefish a baby flounder (or is it a sole???), was putting on a bit of a display, rearing up and giving away its position against the sandy bottom.

He didn’t really like being the centre of attention though and took off pretty quick.

My air was getting low and i spotted a critter peaking out from a small metal pipe. It was conger eel, but it was very shy and this is about as far as he came out. I couldn’t stick around long because of low air, but i’m hoping he’ll be there next dive.

Apr

29

Dive Number: 31 26/04/2010 13.53 Cottage by the Sea

Wind: 15 knot westerlies

Tide: 1/2 hr before 0.65 low tide at the heads

Conditions: Conditions looked pretty good from the shore, but they were atrocious in. Very milky water making horrible visibility, and a surge that made for dangerous diving.

Bottom Type: Reef and overhangs on sand base

Visibilty: 3m

Water Temp: 17c

Bottom Time: 29 minutes

Max Depth: 8.1m

Air usage: 50bar/750psi

SAC: 11.6 litres/min

Details: There was a small shore break on entry but nothing too large, however the surge was fairly strong. On my way out i got pushed over the shallow reefs and at one stage had my belly scrapping against the top of the reef. I soon realised when my weight belt was hanging around my crotch strap that scrapping the top of the reef was enough to force my weight belt buckle open. With my weight belt twisted around my crotch strap i figured the easiest way to get it back on would be to descend and fix it on the ocean floor rather than trying to get it around my waist at the surface. It worked out well and i soon had it on and was on my way out. I thought the surge might drop off deeper out, but it continued to be the strongest i’ve experienced at cottage. Vis was atrocious as well, so i decided to call the dive and head to St Leonards which is protected from westerlies. So much for my thoery that cottage should be divable on westerlies!

Camera Details: Canon 17-40mm , dual SS200 strobe.

Dive Report: I only took one pic…you can see how cloudy the water is:

Apr

28

Dive Number: 30 24/04/2010 10.45 Cottage by the Sea

Wind: 15 knot westerlies

Tide: 1.5hrs before 0.43 low tide at the heads

Conditions: Brain fade…i can’t remember! I should have written this up sooner.

Bottom Type: Reef and overhangs on sand base

Visibilty: 6-7m

Water Temp: 18c

Bottom Time: 122 minutes

Max Depth: 8.1m

Air usage: 230bar/2300psi

SAC: 12.7 litres/min

Details: A good dive with lots of critters around including a port jacko shark under some of the shallower overhangs, a crayfish, weedy seadragons, senator wrasse, starfish and Bearded Rock Cod.

Camera Details: Tokina 10-17mm fisheye, dual SS200 strobe.

Dive Report: Some wierd shaped sponges under an overhang:

There seemed to be more starfish around than usual today…this one must been sitting around for a while and was having a stretch.

A juvenile Blue-throated wrasse was cruising among the beautiful gorgonians and seafeathers.

A six-spined leatherjacket checked out what i was doing under its ledge:

A couple of Bulleyes:

A skull looking out from the sand…(or it could be a banksia seed pod).

These Bearded Rock Cods are really difficult to approach. This one was hiding under the ledges.

A mature Blue throated Wrasse patrolled the sand banks where it rests:

Moonlighters were in the same general vicnity too…

A Senator Wrasse stopped momentarily..a rare occurance.

Another starfish:

The dive was nearing an end and i decided to continue into the shallower areas of reef. Pleasantly suprised to see a Port Jackson Shark under a very unlikely little overhang:

Apr

28

Dive Number: 29 22/04/2010 10.50 The Springs

Wind: 15 knot westerlies

Tide: 0.27 low tide at the heads

Conditions: Suface conditions looked good, but a fair current running from north to south. Visibility was fairly poor.

Bottom Type: Scattered reef and bommies on sand base

Visibilty: 4-5m

Water Temp: 18c

Bottom Time: 58 minutes

Max Depth: 4.1m

Air usage: 80bar/1200psi

SAC: 11.9 litres/min

Details: I hadn’t dived for a couple of weeks because of the flu, and i was really keen to get back in the water. I had a half empty tank, so thought i’d make a quick dive before work just to wet the pallette.

Camera Details: Tokina 10-17mm fisheye, dual SS200 strobe.

Dive Report: The current was running fairly quick and i didn’t have a lot of air to wait for good photo opportunities, so this was more a dive just to have a look around and test out a new 6mm wetsuit i bought, and see how close my weighting was.

In a large sand hole in the middle of seagrass, were a large school of Old Wives:

I came across a couple of large objects that seemed unusually placed to be natural rock formations. I initially though one of them was an old mine, but i think it was just the number of abalone clinging to the sides that gave the impressions of the mine. I still have no idea what they are:

Apr

14

I’ve just added a new lightbox viewer for images in the posts. Previously, when you clicked on an image it would open that image in a boring white new screen. I think this looks much nicer now and you can scroll through each of the images in the post without having to read my uninspiring commentary! ;) I’ve also decided to increase the size of the images so you can see the same detail i do when i’m editting them.

Here’s a fly as an example of what the new lightbox and size will look like:

Let me know what you think…especially if the image size is too big for your screen and you have to scroll around to see the whole image. Thanks!

Apr

12

Dive Number: 28 10/04/2010 15.49 St Leonards Pier

Wind: 15 knot westerlies

Tide: 1 hour before 0.36 low tide at Geelong

Conditions: Water was reasonably clean but vis wasn’t specatular. Surface water was nice and still and a setting sun provided amble light beams throug the water.

Bottom Type: Sandy bottom with peir pylons

Visibilty: 5-6m

Water Temp: 19c

Bottom Time: 85 minutes

Max Depth: 3.8m

Air usage: 105bar/1500psi

SAC: 11.1 litres/min

Details: Thought I’d continue on with the wide-angle fisheye and take some scapes at St Leonards. The Vis wasn’t the best, but I was surprised how little backscatter you could eliminate with a well positioned dual strobe setup.

Camera Details: Tokina 10-17mm fisheye, dual SS200 strobe.

Dive Report: First up i found a Ceratasome Brevicardum, so i though i’d try some close focus wide angle. I couldn’t get a good composition but this shot brought out the colours nicely.

I’d never noticed this old wheel before:

Globefish hide under the ecklonia kelp hanging off the pylons, but they can still be seen from side on!

Of course, once they know they’re spotted, they head for another pylon.

A school of hulafish always hangs out in the same place near the weed covered breakwater.

Masses of baitfish lit up spectacularly in the sunlight penetrating the water

No kids around today, but this is a high danger area of being landed on when they bomb in the water. They exit from this ladder… i’ll have to try to capture the expressions of coldness on their faces in the next few months as the water temperature drops.

A small smooth ray lay in the shallows as i exited.

Here’s a bit of an impressionistic photoshop manipulation of the interplay of light and fish that was going on during this dive:

Apr

12

Dive Number: 27 10/04/2010 12.05 Cottage by the Sea

Wind: 15 knot westerlies

Tide: 1 hour before 0.57 low tide at the heads

Conditions: Mostly dark and overcast day with occasional patches of sunlight. Fairly surgey and low visibility.

Bottom Type: Rocky reef ledges

Visibilty: 4-5m

Water Temp: 18c

Bottom Time: 102 minutes

Max Depth: 8.1m

Air usage: 190bar/2700psi

SAC: 12.9 litres/min

Details: After some fin strap issues that required some gaffa tape magic to fix, I had the dreaded ‘hotshoe adaptor’ problem I had a few weeks ago…so much for me checking these things out before heading down to the dive site! Anyway, after I got underwater things went well but the vis wasn’t the best. Sometimes bad conditions pay off though with more creatures out and about feeling more protected by the bad vis.

Camera Details: Tokina 10-17mm fisheye, dual SS200 strobe.

Dive Report: After descent I was greeted immediately by a young cuttlefish that was out from beneath the ledges and frolicking around the seagrass.

Moving further along, I spotted the big old cuttlefish i saw a couple of weeks ago.

He wasn’t happy this time around and spat some junk at me..well..into the water anyway. He then went into the posture below, waggling his tenticles at me in some type of intimidation display…it worked!

While he was doing this ANOTHER small cuttlefish approached ,and he wasn’t happy about this eaither and quickly advanced towards the smaller cuttlefish. Look how dark and angry he looks:

I decided to leave this guy alone and took a few pics of the youngster that was keeping its distance:

He soon became intrigued with the camera and couldn’t get enough of the reflection.

You usually dont see cuttlefish out in the segrass, but it made for a great shoot.

Moving on, i started looking under the legdes, and the resident blue devils showed up:

Schools of tiny bullseye’s fill the black voids of the caves.

Gorgonians fan out from the ledge tops:

And colourful sponges layer the walls.

A cottage dive is never complete without an Old wive shot.

Apr

7

06/04/2010 11.15 Point Lonsdale Rockpools

Wind: 10 knot NE”s

Tide: 30min after 0.22 low tide at the Heads

Bottom Type: Rockpools

Bottom Time: 130 minutes

Max Depth: 1m

Camera Details: Canon 100mm macro, dual SS200 strobes and snoot + diffusers

Dive Report: I really felt the change in temperature today…the rockpools were freezing and i was shivering within an hour. Possibly because of the holes in my wetsuit that look like i’ve been attacked by a shark! But again, not a lot of nudi’s around, so i decided to try some new lighting techniques with the snoot and some new diffusers i made up for my second strobe.

First subject was Phyllodesmuim macphersonaea. I tried some backlighting, and attempted to backlight the kelp it was grazing on.

This shot made me feel like i must be torturing these little guys with light!

I moved on to a thornfish (thornfish love light! : )

Then tried some black and white shots with moody lighting:

There’s just too many Cleaner Shrimps in the pools to avoid taking photos of one…a quick try at a backlight shot before it jumped on the camera and started cleaning it.

A tiny Doto Pita is always a hard little critter to focus on..being only about 5mm.

A lone Smooth Toadfish wasn’t very afraid of my presence…allowing nice closeup shots of it.

I decided to play around the rock shelves and see if i could nail a shot of the Herring Cale that where around yesterday. I still didn’t get the shot i was after but these are bettter than yesterdays.

Movie strip framing seems to lend enhance the imagination and improve the image, i might start framing pics like this:

This ‘toddler’ magpie perch posed to the camera..what a cute face!

It was agood fish day, with this Victorian Scaly fin also enjoying posing for the camera. This is probably my favorite shot of the day.

Apr

7

04/04/2010 13.00 Point Lonsdale Rockpools

Wind: 15 knot NE”s

Tide: 3 hours after 0.16 low tide at the Heads

Bottom Type: Rockpools

Bottom Time: 100 minutes

Max Depth: 1m

Camera Details: Canon 100mm macro, single SS200 strobe and snoot

Dive Report: Another late arrival, but another big low tide. There were people everywhere on the platform, including some poms hassling a surf crab at the rockpool, which i found a limb of when i entered. The said they had recently harrased an octopus as well.

I jumped in and quickly found my first nudi…another common species ?????????????

I kept searching and soon spotted some large purple tenticles coming towards me, and then spotted the Maori Octopus peering out of the kelp.

I nearly put my wide-angle lens on for this dive, but thought ‘what could i possibly see in the rockpools that needs a wide angle?’ I had to make so with some eye close ups.

Seastars occassionally turn up in the pools, being common around the rockshelves. This one was was actively moving around.

A White-faced Heron hunted on the edge of the pools. I was hoping i could get a shot of it plunging its head underwater as it grabbed a fish, but it stuck to the shallows.

The pool soon flooded and i had a bit of a paddle around the rockshelve, where few juvenile Herringcale darted about. Damn these guys are hard to get a photo of!

Apr

7

04/04/2010 13.00 Point Lonsdale Rockpools

Wind: 15 knot NE”s

Tide: 2.5 hours after 0.12 low tide at the Heads

Bottom Type: Rockpools

Bottom Time: 30 minutes

Max Depth: 1m

Camera Details: Canon 100mm macro, single SS200 strobe and snoot

Dive Report: I arrived late at the pools, but it was a big low tide, so i still had some time to play. Little around again. Just the usual Phyllodesmuim Serratum.

It started doing some acrobatics:

Apr

3

Dive Number: 26 03/04/2010 13.05 St Leonards Peir

Wind: 10 knot South-Easterlies

Tide: 20mins before 0.13 low tide at the Geelong

Conditions: Overcast in the morning clearing to a fine and sunny day. A very low tide, with little chop, and visibility was ok for a macro-dive

Bottom Type: Sand bottom with Pier pylons..

Visibilty: 5m

Water Temp: 20c

Bottom Time: 105 minutes

Max Depth: 3.2m

Air usage: 125bar/1800psi

SAC: 11.1 litres/min

Details: This was going to be a dedicated macro snoot dive, and I decided to simplify and just take a single strobe. After initially heading out I heard the noise I fear the most; the annoying buzz of my leak detector! Luckily I was still fairly shallow and close to shore so I held the rig level, switched everything off, and quickly got back to shore and up to the car. After disassembly I was relieved to only see a thimble full of water…not enough to do any damage to camera or housing electronics. A slightly kinked o-ring caused the leak, so I fixed it and got back diving. (Thanks to Andrew Newton and his DIY leak detector!!! This is the second time this $5 device has saved my rig!)

Camera Details: Canon 100mm macro, single SS200 strobe with funnel snoot

Dive Report: Take two….I headed back out and tried some texture shots of one of the two swimming anemones that sat in the shallows.

Heading out to the first arm of the pier, two friendly blennies posed for shots.

I’ve never noticed that blennies had little rows of teeth:

A Sand Goby looked on nearby, so who was I not to take his photo.

A Ceratosoma brevicaudatum slid along the sand. These guys are too big for my macro lens, so I decided to get a shot of its gills.

After not seeing any seahorses for ages at St leonards, I finally found a small one nestled in some weed. They have a tendency to look away from the camera and a bit of swell made using the snoot impossible, so I had to make do with some standard macro shots.

Apr

3

Dive Number: 25 02/04/2010 12.12 Portarlington Pier

Wind: 20 knot Southerlies

Tide: 45min before 0.14 low tide at the Geelong

Conditions: Windy, overcast and a very low tide. Lots of sediment in the water.

Bottom Type: Rock wall breakwater covered in weed on sand base.

Visibilty: 3m

Water Temp: 20c

Bottom Time: 90 minutes

Max Depth: 4.0m

Air usage: 75bar/1000psi

SAC: 7.2 litres/min

Details: I wanted to see if the Boarfish was still hanging around Portarlington Pier, but I didn’t like my chances. I headed straight out the back and along the rockwall break of the peir. Conditions where pretty horrible, and a few boats on the outside of the pier too. Generally a pretty crappy day for diving, with little around of interest.

Camera Details: Canon 17-40mm, single SS200 strobe.

Dive Report: I headed straight for the end of the pier to where I last sighted the Boarfish. On the way I tried a couple of shots of the pylons with the multitude of feral fanworms fanning out off them.

Continuing out the back I didn’t spot the boarfish and continued along the wall. There were plenty of the common fish around, globefish, toadfish, moonlighters and old wives, with a large school of zebrafish darting around in and out of the rocks. There were also big schools of hulafish, so I tried some long exposure shots of the schools, not really getting any satisfying shots using this technique.

Some Weed Whiting nibbled away at a fishermans bait…. gee

people are so nice giving fish a free feed!

On the way back in, i took another shot of the pylons, this one with an 11-armed starfish on it:

Apr

3

31/03/2010 18.55 Point Lonsdale Rockpools

Wind: 15 knot Southerlies

Tide: 30mins before 0.52 low tide at the Heads

Bottom Type: Rockpools

Bottom Time: 60 minutes

Max Depth: 1m

Camera Details: Canon 100mm macro, dual SS200 strobe.

Dive Report: I haven’t been down to the rockpools in a while and thought it would be a good spot to try out the snoots. Aiming the snoots on snorkel is difficult as you generally don’t have the time or hands free to position the strobes accurately. So it was pretty hit and miss, but a couple of shots came out ok.

Phyllodesmium serratum are always common, and make a good subject.

A flatworm i’m yet to identify:

A cleaner shrimp portrait:

A really unexpected sighting was this crested weedfish. This is the first one i’ve seen on the bellarine peninsula. The only other one i saw was at Flinder Peir in Western Port bay.