On the morning of Christmas Eve the waters were looking inviting. Just a few days before our part of the world will be engulfed in madness. On Boxing day there is a mass influx of tourists visiting the area and it can last until the end of the school holidays, right till the end of January. During this time more 4WDs are parked on the beach, gazebos are set up, boats and jet skis hoon about in the shallows making snorkelling hazardous. So while it is still quiet I took advantage of having a personal beach, shared only with silver gulls and western terns:
I have been experimenting with how to get through the stingers. During calm days they have been hovering near the beach, and there are two solutions. One is to swim very slowly and they actually move out of your way. However, there is no guarantee that they don’t use a pincer tactic and get you from behind or the side. The other is to duck dive and go under them, which comes with a much higher degree of success. This morning the duck dive worked a treat and soon I was over the reef poking about to see what I could see:
Unlike previous seasons, this time I’ve seen a globe fish almost on every snorkel. They are very observant and tend to duck into a cave or weed to get away. However, having cornered the unfortunate one above in a nook with no weed I took a quick snap and moved away. I also couldn’t resists including the following image of the common purple urchin. The clarity and light today was really good providing a really crisp image of the banded colours in the main spines, with small black bristle like spines covering the body:
I also found the tell-tale signs of someone’s antenna poking out of a cave. I have not found a crayfish for a while. Earlier this season there were loads of boats out, as everyone scrambled to catch them for a feed. Then just a week back we spied a commercial operation dropping pots out, so my hopes of finding one was low. This fella seemed to have avoided capture, or more likely it was an undersized one and hadn’t been caught by some bogan who doesn’t care about such matters:
My next find was a biscuit sea star, quite different from the more well-known sea stars as it has stubby legs that don’t look anything like limbs. They grow to the size of a biscuit, approximately 5cm and this one was only an inch tops. The pattern looked so intricate and delicate, a bit like a stain-glassed window with the putty between each fragment of colour just visible. After picking it up for this image it stuck to my hand and I had to very slowly encourage it to let go before putting back on the sea bed:
In such good conditions it is easier to spy anything that may be trying to hide in the weed, there was a bit of swell moving the weed to and fro but not by much. I saw the tail first, which is a giveaway but then the head appeared as the weed swayed the other way. I couldn’t resist and had to get down there for a closer look. I came across this creature on my first snorkel at Peppy Beach back in 2006’ish I picked up by the tail not knowing what it was. That time I was lucky and it was sleepy, as I let go it slowly swam back under the weed:
Commonly called a Wobbegong this is a Carpet Shark, of which there are twelve species. From the colouration I’m going to take a stab and say that this is a banded Wobbegong. If I’m right then they can grow to two and half meters, but this one was only a meter long. They are not considered dangerous, but will go for you if provoked. I’ve heard their teeth point backwards, so if they latch onto you, and you try to wrench free, it will be at the expense of your skin and flesh. Luckily this one was OK with me checking it out:
As I went back to shore I disturbed this blue swimmer crab, it had a start before taking on its defensive position of pinchers stretched out as far as they go to make it look big and menacing. As soon as I gave it some room it used its two paddles, that stick out of its rear, to rapidly swim away from me. I did head back in the water on Christmas morning but the swell was up and the water was murky, Craig and I then headed out later that day and got smashed by the stingers that like everything else were not visible in those conditions:
Sandbagged 