Dive 28 – St Leonards Pier

By pfuller

Apr

12

Dive Number: 28 10/04/2010 15.49 St Leonards Pier

Wind: 15 knot westerlies

Tide: 1 hour before 0.36 low tide at Geelong

Conditions: Water was reasonably clean but vis wasn’t specatular. Surface water was nice and still and a setting sun provided amble light beams throug the water.

Bottom Type: Sandy bottom with peir pylons

Visibilty: 5-6m

Water Temp: 19c

Bottom Time: 85 minutes

Max Depth: 3.8m

Air usage: 105bar/1500psi

SAC: 11.1 litres/min

Details: Thought I’d continue on with the wide-angle fisheye and take some scapes at St Leonards. The Vis wasn’t the best, but I was surprised how little backscatter you could eliminate with a well positioned dual strobe setup.

Camera Details: Tokina 10-17mm fisheye, dual SS200 strobe.

Dive Report: First up i found a Ceratasome Brevicardum, so i though i’d try some close focus wide angle. I couldn’t get a good composition but this shot brought out the colours nicely.

I’d never noticed this old wheel before:

Globefish hide under the ecklonia kelp hanging off the pylons, but they can still be seen from side on!

Of course, once they know they’re spotted, they head for another pylon.

A school of hulafish always hangs out in the same place near the weed covered breakwater.

Masses of baitfish lit up spectacularly in the sunlight penetrating the water

No kids around today, but this is a high danger area of being landed on when they bomb in the water. They exit from this ladder… i’ll have to try to capture the expressions of coldness on their faces in the next few months as the water temperature drops.

A small smooth ray lay in the shallows as i exited.

Here’s a bit of an impressionistic photoshop manipulation of the interplay of light and fish that was going on during this dive:

Dive 27 – Cottage by the Sea

By pfuller

Apr

12

Dive Number: 27 10/04/2010 12.05 Cottage by the Sea

Wind: 15 knot westerlies

Tide: 1 hour before 0.57 low tide at the heads

Conditions: Mostly dark and overcast day with occasional patches of sunlight. Fairly surgey and low visibility.

Bottom Type: Rocky reef ledges

Visibilty: 4-5m

Water Temp: 18c

Bottom Time: 102 minutes

Max Depth: 8.1m

Air usage: 190bar/2700psi

SAC: 12.9 litres/min

Details: After some fin strap issues that required some gaffa tape magic to fix, I had the dreaded ‘hotshoe adaptor’ problem I had a few weeks ago…so much for me checking these things out before heading down to the dive site! Anyway, after I got underwater things went well but the vis wasn’t the best. Sometimes bad conditions pay off though with more creatures out and about feeling more protected by the bad vis.

Camera Details: Tokina 10-17mm fisheye, dual SS200 strobe.

Dive Report: After descent I was greeted immediately by a young cuttlefish that was out from beneath the ledges and frolicking around the seagrass.

Moving further along, I spotted the big old cuttlefish i saw a couple of weeks ago.

He wasn’t happy this time around and spat some junk at me..well..into the water anyway. He then went into the posture below, waggling his tenticles at me in some type of intimidation display…it worked!

While he was doing this ANOTHER small cuttlefish approached ,and he wasn’t happy about this eaither and quickly advanced towards the smaller cuttlefish. Look how dark and angry he looks:

I decided to leave this guy alone and took a few pics of the youngster that was keeping its distance:

He soon became intrigued with the camera and couldn’t get enough of the reflection.

You usually dont see cuttlefish out in the segrass, but it made for a great shoot.

Moving on, i started looking under the legdes, and the resident blue devils showed up:

Schools of tiny bullseye’s fill the black voids of the caves.

Gorgonians fan out from the ledge tops:

And colourful sponges layer the walls.

A cottage dive is never complete without an Old wive shot.

Dive 25: Portarlington Pier

By pfuller

Mar

29

Dive Number: 25 27/03/2010 13.11 Portarlington Pier

Wind: 15-20 knot Southerlies

Tide: 1.5hours past 0.87 high tide at Geelong

Conditions: The water column was full of sediments as i’ve come to expect at Portarlington Pier. Apparently caused by the mussell boats emptying their sump. Visibility wasn’t all that bad though, but it’s the biggest muck dive on the Bellarine Peninsula. No surge or current and flat surface conditions, the day was overcast with low ambient light making it dark under the peir and hard to achieve focus.

Bottom Type: Mud/sediment covered bottom easily stirred up, with pier pylons.

Visibilty: 4-5m

Water Temp: 22c

Bottom Time: 80 minutes

Max Depth: 4.3m (outside peir) Generally 2.5 m

Air usage: 70bar/1000psi

SAC: 8.5 litres/min

Details: I created another funnel snoot for my second strobe so thought i’d attempt some dual strobe snooting. This was a very difficult place to experiment, since any contact with the bottom clouded the surrounding water, and the critters weren’t very keen to have snoots stuck in their face. The biggest highlight (and shock) was seeing a massive Boarfish near the start of the breakwater. The first one i’ve seen on a shore dive, and not a place i would have expected to see one!

Camera Details: Canon 100mm macro, dual SS200 strobe with funnel snoots.

Dive Report: Swimming out there were large schools of whiting in the shallows. I was looking for some small macro subjects to try out some snoot photography, but everything i approached wasn’t very cooperative. Blennies, although very curious, just dont stay still long enough to position the strobes. So i had to remove the snoots to photograph this blenny, not a great shot, but it was a quiet day, and its all i got! Is thier one in the bottle?

I spent way to long following around this fish, but it just wouldn’t stop. I had to fire off this shot just to get an ID shot of it…i think its some type of gunnard. It half flies, have runns on the ground with little feet under its wings…strange cirtter!

There were a few Stinkfish around, but they kept diving down holes as i approached. I decided to call off the snoot photography and headed out the back of the pier, where i’ve never been before. There were about 200 11 armed starfish all stacked side by side, on a gentle slop into deeper water. It was kind of creepy, so i moved on pretty quickly and around the back of the breakwater. Out of the rock crevices came the first fish that was actually happy to see me..a Boarfish! WTF!!! At Portarlington??? I would never have believed it if i hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. Its a fish i’d recently been trying to find a shore diving site to see it, but submitted to the fact that its a deeper water fish and i’d have to get to Pope’s eye (or perhaps Boarfish reef :) to photography one. Of course when you see such great unexpected monsters you always have a macro lens on, so i had to make do with a few head shots.

It was a very freindly fish and swam around me a number of times before dissappearing. Apparently this species is too friendly for its own good which makes it an easy target for spearfishers with no spirit of adventurer..probably the reason i’ve never seen one on a shore dive.

I also read that Boarfish are one of the only fish that feed on Brittlestars. I’m guessing this is how it came to evolve such a bizaar nose and mouth. Brittlestars are very common under the rocks around Portarlington, so i’m guessing they were probably very common around here and are just overfished. I assume they could use thier nose to get under rocks and pull out the brittle stars, and the lack of Boarfish in the area, is why the populations of brittle stars are so big.

Dive 23: Cottage by the Sea

By pfuller

Mar

29

Dive Number: 23 25/03/2010 12.29 Cottage by the Sea

Wind: 10-15 knot Northerlies

Tide: 15minutes before 0.24 low tide at the heads

Conditions: Vis was bad with very milky conditions. A bit of surge around too and some current. Generally fairly aweful conditions for photography.

Bottom Type: Sandy bottom, with large reef overhangs and ledges.

Visibilty: 2-4m

Water Temp: 20c

Bottom Time: 124 minutes

Max Depth: 7.8m

Air usage: 200bar/2800psi

SAC: 11.5 litres/min

Details: Very dissappointed with the conditions and i was expecting better based on the weather. The critters that turned up though made up for the bad vis. Two Cuttles, Two Seadragons, Two Blue Devils, a Port Jackson Shark, a rosy wrasse, a Trevalley, a large strange cod thing i’m yet to identify(maybe a Beardie???) and some very colourful and curious leatherjackets.

Camera Details: Tokina 10-17mm fisheye, DUAL SS200 strobe.

Dive Report: This was a very milky dive, and it really tested out my dual strobe technique. Instead of making it more versitile, it made things a hell of a lot more complicated, and i missed some killer opportunities because i had my strobes wrongly positioned. With a single strobe you can have the strobe up high at 12 oclock, and despite uninteresting flat lighting, you can still light your subject and get a decent shot. With dual strobes though, theres a precision in positioning thats very dependent on the distance from camera to subject, and when you have a subject that moves from 1 metre to basically right in front of the dome in a matter of seconds, its almost impossible to get correct light coverage at all distances. Especially when the vis is bad, you have a wide angled lens on, and fish insist on kissing thier own reflection in the dome port. So after an amazingly close encounter with this Leatherjacket (that usually keep there distance), i was disappointed not to nail a shot of these nicely coloured Leatherjackets. Initially it kept its distance in the confines of the rock ledges.

But once it spotted its own reflection, i think it either couldn’t resist its own image, or maybe thought someone was moving in to its territory.

He really couldn’t have got any closer than this…

But of course had a crack at eyeballing the dome as close as possible.

This Leatherjacket eventually had enough of me, and took off. I continued under the ledges and thought to myself, “gee i’d love to see a Port Jackson Shark”…literally seconds after the thought entered my head, i spotted a large shark sitting deep under the ledges… A Port Jacko! My first..i was excited! ; ) He was tucked under only about a 60-80cm ledge making it extremely difficult with a tank to get in close enough for a descent photo. I knew from what i’d read that these sharks weren’t aggressive (and i’m not sure if they even have carnivorus teeth), but to get a descent photo i’d be blocking off his exits if he got freaked out, so it wasn’t the most comfortable if situations. Lucky for me when he was getting a bit unnerved by my presence, he just swung himself around and went deeper into the cave. Such a beatiful creature though, i’m looking forward to seeing more.

I continued on, and spotted a single Trevally darting around.

More colourful Leatherjackets turned up, this time a Horseshoe LeatherJacket:

Under the same ledge was a Rosy Wrasse..a new fish for me on a shore dive.

I came across another fish i’d never seen…i think it might be a Beardie:

A gorgonian-scape:

A Goatfish fossicked in the sand outside the ledges:

My air was getting low, and a Weedy Seadragon showed up, so i thought i’d have a quick go at it, but i didn’t have long to mess a round.

A second Seadragon appeared, and they were momentarily in the frame together…not a great pic, but unique to have two together.

Dive 22: Pilots Peir, Queenscliffe

By pfuller

Mar

29

Dive Number: 22 25/03/2010 11.17 Pilots Peir

Wind: 10-15 knot Northerlies

Tide: 1.5 hour before 0.24 low tide at the heads

Conditions: Strong current running from north to south. The water column was full of sand making visibilty atrocious.

Bottom Type: Sandy bottom, with scattered reef..

Visibilty: 2m

Water Temp: 20c

Bottom Time: 21 minutes

Max Depth: 3.0m

Air usage: 30bar/400psi

SAC: 13.4 litres/min

Details: I’ve never had a lot of success at Pilots Pier, with strong currents always running. This was no exception. I decided to head out to the bouy to the right of the pier and drift towards the bouy to the right. I followed the drift to the shallow rock shelf off shortlands bluff but the sand in the water just made this dive not worthwhile.

Camera Details: Tokina 10-17mm fisheye, single SS200 strobe.

Dive Report: There were a few scattered bommies with a school of about 20 zebra fish around, and the usual wrasse. It was generally shallow, crap vis, little life and a bit dangerous from boat traffic and strong currents. I dont think i’ll be shore diving this area again. Maybe a boat dive on slack at some of the known reefs near shortlands reef is the way to go.

Dive 21 – Ozone Wreck

By pfuller

Mar

23

Dive Number: 21 21/03/2010 16.00 Ozone Wreck

Wind: 20-30 knot southerlies

Tide: 2.5 hour before 1.00 high tide at Geelong

Conditions: Strong southerlies blowing all day with a hint of westerlies kicking in to. Wind was a 20knot southerly in the evening, making Portarlington the only reasonable choice, however i checked out St Leonards Pier on the way, and there was too much sidewards water movement from south to north, so ended up at the Ozone wreck which is protected slightly from southerlies by a nearby point.

Bottom Type: Sandy bottom, with scattered metal and wooden wreck artifacts.

Visibilty: 5m

Water Temp: 21c

Bottom Time: 86 minutes

Max Depth: 3.6m

Air usage: 100bar/1400psi

SAC: 10.4 litres/min

Details: This was my first dive at the Ozone wreck, and conditions weren’t ideal, so i was sure what to expect. I’d only snorkelled here maybe 2-3 times in the past, and the waters had always been mucky and i wasn’t overly impressed with what i’d seen freediving. To my suprise when i entered, the water was fairly clean. There were a couple of spearo kids out, but it was generally a pretty quiet, cold and windy evening.

Camera Details: Tokina 10-17mm fisheye, DUAL SS200 strobe. I’d recently come across a cheap SS200 strobe, but hadn’t yet got a second strobe arm. I thought i’d bring it on this dive and hand hold it, so i rigged up a quick method of attaching the strobe to my harness to carry around with me.

Dive Report: On decent i was immediately impressed by the size and scope of the Ozone wreck. The structure of the paddle steamer wheel lets a lot of light penetrate it.

Beneath the wheel is a couple of old boiler tanks. A few fish hung out here, and a small ray.

Out to the north lies another wreck, The Dominion. It consists of a series of wodden uprights that formed the hull of the boat.

A small collapsed room-like structured area had some amazing light filtering through it, so i tried some high ISO long exposure shots, but i didn’t really pull it off.

Overall i really enjoyed my first ever wreck dive!