New Years Diving 2012 5/1/2012

Happy New Year !! It certainly has been from a diving perspective thus far, with the bad weather from Xmas disappearing the sea conditions once again allowing boats on the water and the sun shining.

Sunday

The ANU Scuba Club (ANUSC) was stopping over for a couple of days on their way back from a blown out trip to South West Rocks over Xmas. For the first dive, on the assumption that anything in close would be churned up by the recent swell, we went out the Outer Entrance Bommies. The water was very clear on top but by the time we got to the bottom, we ended up with 3-4m Vis. The water was warm at 21 degrees and had plenty of particles in it and clearly churned up. The highlight of the dive was the Crest Horn Shark (Crested Horn Shark) which was hanging around despite the warm water. The diving on the Outer Bommies is always good, plenty of nice reef structure, fish and macro life. Despite the ordinary vis, everyone from the ANUSC agreed that this had been the best dive of the trip thus far !

For our second dive we choose one of my favourite spots on he coast, The Pinnacle. The Vis was about the same as out at The Bommies and we managed to anchor a little off The Pinnacle in the boulders which initially had me disoriented. The highlight of this dive was the large Yellow Ridged Ceratasoma (Ceratosoma flavicostatum). The nudibranchs on this dive were very plentiful indeed, certainly all the common local species, plus Loring's Chromodoris (Chromodoris loringi). There were plenty of fish about.

Monday

Monday was all about doing a couple of dives on the ex-HMAS Adelaide. I have not dived the Adelaide since the ANU were last in town back in October. I was quite amazed at how much the site has developed in this time. The hull of the ship is now covered in growth, including Ascidians and Bryozoans. There are fish on the Artificial Reef that I do not commonly encounter on the local reefs, eg. Spotted Grubfish, Mosaic Leatherjacket and Crested Morwong. The wreck is now home to many Cephalopods and it is clearly drawing species and holding them there. The whole wreck is covered in schooling Yellow-tail Scad and given the location, the the bait fish, I am sure that the Australian Salmon (Arripis trutta) and Kingfish (Seriola lalandi) are not far away.

The Vis on both dives was 3-5m, with average Water temperature was 20 degrees. On the second dive we hit thermoclines and patches of water at 16 degrees which was a shock to the system !

Diving this week has reinforced my thinking that this is a good site to dive every 6 months or so in order to watch the changes. I can't wait until the blue water arrives to get a better perspective of the ship under water.

Tuesday

With the guys from the ANU Scuba Club back in Canberra, Jane and I decided to take our boat out. Our first dive was at Foggy Fish. A very nice dive but the warm water stopped at about 20m down, replaced by 16 degree water !! The Vis was the best we've had in our recent diving at ~8m.

On our second dive we tried to tuck around behind the Skillion out of the North Easterly that was blowing, and dive at The Slide. We dived on the reef edge in the Sponge Garden and seemed to drop in on a nudibranch orgy in progress. It has been a while since I have dived in this area and had forgotten how good the sponge gardens are here. The highlight of the dive was a small patch of Magnificent Hydroids (Ralpharia Magnifica) we came across. Temperature was 17 degrees and Vis ~4m.

Wednesday

The North Easterly was still blowing and the swell up a touch up on Wednesday morning so we decided not to pound out against it for too long in the boat and do 5 Mile as a first dive. The water certainly had a green tinge to it, gone was the blue we had seen since the end of the Southerly on the weekend. We hit the bottom to be greeted by bone chilling 15 degree water. It was relatively clear on the bottom with ~8m Vis and we had a nice dive. We found a couple of rocks that seem to have ropes tied around them. I am not sure what these would be, whether that are discarded moorings, or anchor/fish trap ropes that have been entangled in the rocks.

Our second dive was on 2 Poles. There is always plenty to see at this site and I was very happy to see the site still covered in Gorgonians. There were plenty of fish and nudibranchs around as well. Vis was ~4-5m and 16 degrees.

A good start to the diving year !!