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 24: St Leonards Pier

By pfuller

Mar

29

Dive Number: 24 25/03/2010 16.11 St Leonards Pier

Wind: 10-15 knot Northerlies

Tide: 1.5hours before 0.21 low tide at Geelong

Conditions: Slight chop on the surface on a relatively low tide. Visibilty wasn’t very good, but i was planning on macro so didn’t really mind.

Bottom Type: Sandy bottom, with pier pylons.

Visibilty: 4m

Water Temp: 22c

Bottom Time: 103 minutes

Max Depth: 3.3m

Air usage: 105bar/1500psi

SAC: 9.3 litres/min

Details: This was mainly a dive to try out a funnel as a snoot on my SS200 and see how hard it was to work with. It really chewed up the light, but aiming wasn’t as difficult as i would have thought.

Camera Details: Canon 100mm macro, single SS200 strobe with funnel snoot

Dive Report: This was a dive to enter the wonderful world of snoot photography. Its time consuming, frustrating, and kind of annoying, but i can see that it will be worth the practice. I got a few snoot shots in on this dive, but nothing that blew my socks off. I can see the possibilities though.

My first subject was an anemone..a sucker that can swim away from me. I didn’t experiment with different angles, and was just happy to get the light on the subject initially. Maybe some sidelighting skimmed across the face of the anemone would work nicely next time.

Finding it not overly difficult to get the aiming right, i quickly moved on to fish. I spotted a lizardfish which are usually stay pretty still. The snoot really made his eye pop, and gave some nice reflections.

Sand Gobies are everwhere at St Leonards and also make good close up subjects:

The snoot was taking up a lot of battery power, so i took it off and took some general snaps of smaller fish.

A Toothbrush Leather jacket:

A fish thats really common at Cottage, but i’ve never notcied it at St Leonards..a Bullseye:

Some Hulafish:

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 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!