Sep
27
Dive Number: 358 27/09/12 Collendina
Wind: ???
Tide: ???
Conditions: Average
Visibilty: 5m
Water Temp: ??c
Bottom Time: ??minutes
Max Depth: 6m
Air usage:
SAC: ???? litres/min
Details: Ordinary…surgey with a sand filled water column curteousy of the Barwon River.
Camera Details: Tokina 10-17mm, 2 X YS-D1 Strobes
Photos:
Sep
23
Dive Number: 357 23/09/12 St Leonards Pier
Wind: ??/
Tide: ???
Conditions: Not the best
Visibilty: 6m
Water Temp: ??c
Bottom Time: 60minutes
Max Depth: 3m
Air usage:
SAC: ???? litres/min
Details: Just playing with Stinky.
Camera Details: Tokina 10-17mm, 2 X YS-D1 Strobes
Photos:
Sep
22
Dive Number: 356 22/09/12 Chimney Rock
Wind: NE
Tide: ???
Conditions: Dirty surgey water…dark and nasty.
Visibilty: 3m
Water Temp: ??c
Bottom Time: 40minutes
Max Depth: 22m
Air usage:
SAC: ???? litres/min
Details: A scary dive..repositioning the anchor caused me shortness of breath and a less than quality occy in place of my primary made me feel panicked with an inadequate delivery of air. Mixed with strong surge and 3metres vis this was a nightmare dive….but a good learning experience all the same.
Camera Details: Tokina 10-17mm, 2 X YS-D1 Strobes
Photos:
Sep
16
Dive Number: 355 16/09/12 16.53, Blairgowrie Pier
Wind: Light
Tide: Ebb
Conditions: A bit of current, but clear water
Visibilty: 10m
Water Temp: 12.4c
Bottom Time: 45minutes
Max Depth: 5.5m
Air usage:
SAC: ???? litres/min
Details: Testing the new YS-D1 Strobes for macro..second dive. Time was the enemy as i was running short of light to safely get back to queenscliff in the boat.
Camera Details: Tokina 10-70mm, 2 X YS-D1 Strobes
Photos:
Sep
16
Dive Number: 354 16/09/12 15.49, Blairgowrie Pier
Wind: Light
Tide: Ebb
Conditions: A bit of current, but clear water
Visibilty: 10m
Water Temp: 12.4c
Bottom Time: 50minutes
Max Depth: 3.6m
Air usage:
SAC: ???? litres/min
Details: Testing the new YS-D1 Strobes for macro..dual strobe macro is tough!
Camera Details: Tokina 10-70mm, 2 X YS-D1 Strobes
Photos:
Sep
15
Dive Number: 353 15/09/12 16.02, Popes Eye
Wind: Light
Tide: Ebb
Conditions: Calm surface, but strong ebbing tide
Visibilty: 7m
Water Temp: 12.4c
Bottom Time: 55minutes
Max Depth: 10.0m
Air usage:
SAC: ???? litres/min
Details: Second dive at Popes. I usually find Popes abit ho-hum, but i really enjoyed this dive. Spent lots of time hassling a cuttlefish. There’s always plenty of fish at Pope’s..even in winter.
Camera Details: Tokina 10-70mm, 2 X YS-D1 Strobes
Photos:
Sep
15
Dive Number: 352 15/09/12 13.51, Symonds Channel
Wind: Light
Tide: Slack
Conditions: Calm
Visibilty: 8m
Water Temp: 12.4c
Bottom Time: 62minutes
Max Depth: 11.1m
Air usage:
SAC: ???? litres/min
Details: Andrew Newton kindly shared some marks to a site in Symonds Channel of a sponge garden dive. I’d just got two new strobes, so it was going to be a fun dive to test them out. It was a really interesting area with mounds of sand covered in sponges with patches of ascidians, hydroids, etc..not much fish life around by it would be a cracker of a summer night dive. The area seemed like it would be perfect for cryptic critters like frogfish. We saw a small weedfish, but not a lot else fish wise. An interesting dive though.
Camera Details: Tokina 10-70mm, 2 X YS-D1 Strobes
Photos:
Sep
12
Dive Number: 351 12/09/12 12.08, Charlemont Reef
Wind: 25knot northerlies
Tide: high
Conditions: Northerly Swell off shore pushing the Barwon outflow over Chimney Rock
Visibilty: 5m
Water Temp: 12.4c
Bottom Time: 39minutes
Max Depth: 11.1m
Air usage:
SAC: ???? litres/min
Details: The winds were blowing a fierce northerly today, which had the affect of not only squashing the southerly swell, but creating a northerly offshore wind swell. We headed out in Chimney Rock direction getting sufficiently drenched everytime we hit a wave that showered us in water. As i fiddled around with the GPS the wind was pushing us further out to sea. Once i thought i had the GPS functionable i fired up the motor again and we were joined by a couple of Dolphins riding the bow. This then turned into about 5 dolphins, then quickly 10, and all of a sudden we had 20 dolphins swimming around the boat. I put the boat into nuetral and we watched as the dolphins played around the boat. We geared up in a hope they would stick around and allow us to swim with them, but they were off as soon as we hit the water. An Albatross didn’t seem to mine though..i swam within centimeters of it and it only gave me a slightly baffled look. Back in the boat, we started heading back in, and were again joined by the large pod of dolphins, who were obviously bored and just wanted to play with the boat…not us! I snapped away off the boat and the dolphins passed by without a care. We ended up spending about an hour with them, and eventually decided it was time for a dive. They rode the bow all the way back in again…magic!
Due to the wind, we headed close to shore and the sounder was showing a hole dropping from 10m to 20m. It must have been a sounder glitch since there was no 20m hole. A nice kelpy dive… but dirty vis and surgey. I spent most of it looking at my dolphin pics. ;)
Camera Details: Tokina 10-70mm, SS200 Strobe
Photos:
Sep
9
Dive Number: 350 09/09/12 13.22, South Channel Fort
Wind: Light
Tide: Slack
Conditions: Nice Day
Visibilty: 7m
Water Temp: 11.6c
Bottom Time: 41minutes
Max Depth: 11.9m
Air usage:
SAC: ???? litres/min
Details: We decided to do the second dive at Shortlands Bluff and on arrival the streams had stopped. We jumped in and circumnavigated the small island, exploring old jetty pylons on the other side of the island. About 3/4 around, the flood kicked in and it was a matter of clinging to the rocks and dragging ourselves back to the boat. Chris had a better idea and climbed up the rocks and walked it. I was still tsting my split fins to see how they perform in strong current! ;) They passed…good swimmers, but not the best for stability for photography. Believe it or not, this was a rare dive that i didn’t take my camera.
Camera Details: None
Photos:
Sep
9
Dive Number: 349 09/09/12 11.22, Blairgowrie Pier
Wind: Light
Tide: ???
Conditions: Nice
Visibilty: 10m
Water Temp: 11.6c
Bottom Time: 59minutes
Max Depth: 5.0m
Air usage:
SAC: ???? litres/min
Details: Chris finally got a new drysuit, so i convinced him Blairgowrie was a good spot to test it out…then we could find some Tasselled Anglers which he keeps on missing out on. We found two and heaps of nudi’s around too as usual.
Camera Details: Canon 60mm, SS200 Strobe
Photos:
Sep
8
Dive Number: 348 08/09/12 15.53, St Leonards Pier
Wind: ???
Tide: ???
Conditions: Horrible
Visibilty: 1m
Water Temp: 11.2c
Bottom Time: 36minutes
Max Depth: 3.7m
Air usage:
SAC: ???? litres/min
Details: Worst conditione ever! 1m vis is if that…i couldn’t even see if there was anything around. I came across a dumpling squid on the way in(i actually got lost..at st leonards!) but thats about it. This was mainly a dive to test out some split fins.
Camera Details: Tokina 10-17mm , SS200 Strobe
Photos:
Sep
2
Dive Number: 347 02/09/12 14.45, Chimney Rock
Wind: Mortherly
Tide: High
Conditions: Nice
Visibilty: 10m +
Water Temp: 12.0c
Bottom Time: 49minutes
Max Depth: 21.7m
Air usage:
SAC: ???? litres/min
Details: Near ideal conditons for diving chimney rock. The swell was flat and the visibility was the best i’ve seen it out here..the only problem was, i was feeling very seedy from a big night before. The conditions were too good not to dive though, so after messing around with stupid smartphone GPS’s we eventually found the site and headed down. Lots of jellies midwater on the way down, and we started exploring the gullies and overhangs. Lots of Rosy Perch kept us company and a whiteear buzzed around the zooanthids. A lone Port Jackson Shark was sitting on ledge and i turned around excitedly to point it out to Hyeonji. I only shortly after realised this PJ was the “guard on duty” to a cave FULL of Port Jackson Sharks!!! There were at least 30 PJ’s, criss-crossing each other as far as the eye could see into the darkened cave. I’d seen 7 PJ’s in a group before and that got me pretty excited, so 30+ was a wet dream. I’m not sure i nailed photos of the event, but some came out ok. I sat out the second dive and took photos of Albatross, and watched as a seal buzzed Phil and Hyeonji on their saftey stop. On surfacing they were overjoyed that the resident seven-gilled shark had given a good show. Chimney rock turns on the goods again!
Camera Details: Tokina 10-17mm , SS200 Strobe
Photos:
