Dive Number: 131 30/01/11 14.41 , Beach 10B – Friendly Bommie
Wind: 10-15knot N’s
Tide: 10minutes after 0.22 low tide at heads.
Conditions: Nice flat northerly conditions, until the end of the dive where it had turned to SE’s and some surface swell was building. The current was considerable but not unbearable in the water
Visibilty: 10m
Water Temp: 20c
Bottom Time: 118 minutes
Max Depth: 9.7m
Air usage: 200bar/3000psi
SAC: ???? litres/min
Details: The sea was looking nice and calm and i was getting sick of cottage, and wanted to try somewhere new. I was tempted to dive Shortlands Bluff, but the current tides made for fast streams and i was too early for slack. I thought i’d try the carpark between Shortlands Bluff and Cottage. Its marked as Beach 10B, but i actually entered via the next sandy track towards cottage. My explore dives work as follows; swim out for 10 minutes and see where you end up. If its looking promising keep going using the rule of thirds with my air. So i headed out and soon saw a ray/shark that saw me before i saw it. It was either an eagle ray or an angel shark..i didn’t get a good look..or photo. I followed it for a while, but it never settled. It swam across undualting rocky ground with sparse cover in about 5-6m. It progressively got deeper with no change in terrain..no bommies or significant reefs of any sort and i was wondering if i was going to find anything of interest. I then came across some interesting sand dune country, with large barren dunes akin to land dunes, rising from 10-9m up to about 4 m. It was quite a unique terrain…but barely any marine life in the area. I was around 500m out from shore at this point, out to the south west, and the current was getting strong. I started heading back in north easterly, thinking there wasn’t any significant overhangs out there. Then out of no where, a mixed school of fish appeared over some legdes in about 4-5metres. Herring cale were going crazy over the kelp covered tops of the ledges and zebra fish and wrasse circled above. I dropped into a little oasis of great ledges, deep overhangs, gutters and swimthroughs in about 8-9m. The fish were very tame and friendly (hence why i’ve dubbed it Friendly Bommie until i find out otherwise) and large moonlighters were fearlessly just hanging out under an overhang. Lots of LJ’s, bullseyes, a cuttlefish and the star of the show, a cowfish. (i’ve never seen one over this side!) I’m not sure if it was becaus ethe rest of the dive was so dull, but this was some of the best reef in the bay i’ve dived on. But of course, i found this right at the end of the dive with little air left, and my strobe cord was playing up, randomly flashing and not triggering the strobes consistently. So i’ve vowed to try to find this bommie on the next day of calm conditions, and make sure my setup in in good shape.
Camera Details: Tokina 10-17mm , dual SS200 strobes.
Dive Report:
