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.
