This morning while Lisa took the dogs for a walk a message came back to indicate the water was most definitely snorkelable. I was however feeling a little weary from a great climbing session the day before and my body was undecided. When she got back she told me that she had even seen a ray in the water, which made me wonder whether I should give it a go. So after packing the girls off for catch-up with friends in Bunbury I took the short stroll to the crest of the hill from where a perfect pancake ocean came into view:
There are still heaps of people in the caravan park, which has made the last few weeks pretty busy on the beach. Worse still our end is where car access is allowed and you have to watch out for crazy city folk careering down the beach with no regard for others. Today however there were very few people down “our end”, and as I stepped on the beach I could already see the familiar shape of a ray. So I didn’t wander down to my usual spot but jumped straight in from the access track and followed the little cowtail stingray along the shallows for a bit:
After a while I left the ray and headed out to deeper water. There was no swell and most of the weed from days gone past seemed to have moved on or more likely settled out. It seemed easier to find a few colourful gems, ones that have so far this season been relatively hidden in the murkiness. I’m not entirely sure what this is but think it may be an ascidian due to the holes through which water is pulled in and ejected out, allowing the particles (food) in the water to be filtered out. I’ve see them quite a bit but never really investigated what they are, and it is proving a tad difficult to pin ithem down:
I was pleasantly surprised to see a few more fish, although I had to look hard. These Western Gobbleguts are beautifully camouflaged and it is not until you see one and tune your eyes in that more appear. There were over twenty in this shoal although a good number of them spied me sneaking up on them and simply slipped further into the weed. It is certainly good to be able to see a bit more life out here and it makes me keen to get out more frequently, as I’ve been a little slack on tyring this last week:
In addition to the one decent sized shoal of larger fish, I found more shoals of baby fish not even a centimetre long. They are almost completely transparent, except for their vital organs. I was happy to also come across this fire-brick star or red biscuit sea star, it’s scientific name being pentagonaster dubeni. I don’t see too many of them here, but when I do they are easily recognisable by their striking pattern of brightly coloured plates separated by thin pale coloured lines:
As I came back in it was impossible to find a way round the stingers and they managed to clobber me pretty hard. Um maybe that is why the beach was not quite as busy as it has been? No matter if they keep the people away that’s fine with me. Once you swim out to the deeper water these jellies usually disappear, and now there are signs of things settling down the trip out and back in will be worth the pain:
Sandbagged 