Dive Number: 70 25/07/2010 15.30 Blairgowrie Pier
Wind: 10knot SE.
Tide: 1.25hr before 0.91 low tide at the Heads
Conditions: Topside weather was near perfect for diving, light winds and not a cloud in the sky. BOM predicted westerlies, but it seemed like it swung around to SE’s which suits Blairgowrie down to a tea.
Bottom Type: Sand base with pier pylons and steel wall.
Visibilty: 6-7m
Water Temp: 12c
Bottom Time: 99 minutes
Max Depth: 6.2m
Air usage: 190bar/2750psi
SAC: ???? litres/min
Details: On a near perfect day i headed over on the Ferry to meet James Peake (JimSwims) for a dive at Blairgowrie to hopefully find some of the mythical Tassled Anglerfish. We met up with Lincoln(Link) as well and headed out to the end of the pier to start our dive. There was some serious pressure put on us by a 5 year old girl, who would not leave with her parents until she saw us get in the water. I obliged, only to hear the dreaded buzz of my leak detector on entry. After heading back to the car to clear out the water, swapping lens and swapping ports, we were on our way again. Once in the water for the second time, there were critters everywhere, and i soon realised i hadn’t put my lens on Autofocus… god damn it! it was just one of those days…great dive though and we saw plenty of “Tangler”, i even managed to get some shots that approximate being in focus.
Camera Details: Tokina 10-17mm , single SS200 strobe
Dive Report: After abandoning my sigma 17-70lens due to the leak, i went for the fisheye, and mixed with having no autofocus, i couldn’t get any shots of all the cool macro subjects we saw..ring-backed pipefish, pygmy squid, blue-ringed and pale octopus, nudi’s, scorpionfish and lots of others. My focus was fixed, so it was just shoot, alter my distance and hope…i didn’t nail the focus of any shots, so most of these are horribley oversharpened…so excuse the noise! A noisey tassled angler shot is better than no tangler shot!
OK..lets play spot the anglerfish (Tip: its towards the middle…look for the pink lips, and dont be distracted by the seastar!)
Find it? Here’s a shot in a less cryptic pose:
Here’s a different one (we saw..um..7 all up i think)..nestled in some sponge:
I got a bit to close at one stage, and it took off further up the pylon.
A silohette shot:
Jim goes in for a closer look (er..pose):
There were other critters around to photograph..like this mosiac leatherjacket:
And a bit of Spider crab action Jim couldn’t get enough of:
But then back to the Tassled Anglers.
Jim finds a Blue-ringed Occy on the wall to photograph:
