Dive Number: 42 23/05/2010 12.27 Flinders Pier
Wind: 5 knot SE’s
Tide: 0.5hrs before 0.60 low tide at Flinders Pier
Conditions: Another great day for diving, sunny, light winds and reasonably smooth western port bay. I had no idea what the tides where doing and low tide wasn’t ideal. The water was fairly murky on the way out but out towards the end of the pier vis was good.
Bottom Type: Seagrass bedding with wooden pier pylons. Some sand patches and some structure for fish.
Water Temp: 15c
Bottom Time: 73 minutes
Max Depth: 3.9m
Air usage: 105bar/1500psi
SAC: 12.6 litres/min
Details: I’d stayed up in Melbourne on Saturday night and bought my dive gear just in case. I really wasn’t planning on heading down to the Mornington Peninsula, but i just couldn’t resist. My strobe battery was running low, which i totally forgot about until it went flat about 15 minutes into the dive…bugger…flinders is such an awesome dive too!
Camera Details: Canon 17-40mm , single SS200 strobe (with little battery power)
Dive Report: My first photographic subject was the Flinders pier icon…the weedy seadragon. The first one i came across was a wee juvenile weedy, and i took quiet a few photos of it, not knowing that my strobe was quickly running out of battery life.
When the batteries ran out i had two options…head back in and get my spare battery out of the car…or conitinue on and try some ambient light shots. Laziness won! I find it makes you change shooting styles when you dont have strobes too, so you get the creative blood pumping. A massive school of bulleyes seemed like a good subject.
When another diver swum into frame it completed the shot and came out as on e of my favorite photos of the dive.
I went out the back of the pier and came across about 4 cowfish busily feeding on the seabed. This was my main target species for visiting Flinders, so i was spewing i had no strobe battery left. I decided to turn it on anyway, dialed down the power and crossed my fingers, trying to not waste a shot. I managed to get about 4 strobe bursts, which was enough to get a couple of keeper cowfish shots.
With the strobe battery well and truly flat now, i spotted an adult Weedy Seadragon out over the seagrass, so i tried for some silohette shots against the sun. I couldn’t nail the shots i was after but a couple came out ok.
Here’s one in B&W:
