The old stomping ground

The last day of the long weekend and in view of the beach having been crazily busy on Sunday, we thought it would be safe to head out this morning without the crowds.  Sure enough the plan worked like a dream and today Rongy and Alana tagged along, with Lisa and I.  It was always going to be a short dip due to other things that needed doing, but that didn’t deter us.  Having got over my little bogging incident we ventured back on the beach past the point, as Rongy was very keen to check the area out:

Not far out and the fish and rays were out, Rongy also spied a Heteractis Malu or more commonly called a Malu, Delicate or Sand Anemone.  I’ve seen three in all my years of snorkelling here, and today I doubled that.  Much as these look like harmless creatures they are in fact carnivorous and any small creature that happen upon them, such as fish, crabs or snails, will be paralysed and then drawn into the mouth at the centre of the disk to be digested:

I drifted off leaving the three of them to watch the myriad of fish that were about including Wrasse, Pomfrey, Leatherjackets, Sweeps, Morwongs, Globefish and many more.  The visibility was good and the ocean bed below was like a garden in bloom.  I didn’t chase any fish and was content to simply drift along checking out the ground that varied from flat sea grass, shallow reef covered in kelp to deeper crevices with sandy bottoms:

My patience finally paid off and I spied one of the creatures I had been hoping to one day stumble across.  An octopus was on the sandy bottom, obviously focusing on something which may well have been a prey.  I stayed very still, knowing that this very intelligent creatures will quickly disappear if it saw me.  It was of course inevitable and it slunk under the weed and rocks, then despite looking around all over I was unable to locate it again:

After that I started duck diving and getting more adventurous by going into caves and through swim throughs.  There are usually fish lurking in these areas but the light is not that great and as such getting a good image of them is hard.  I did however find this creamy coloured sea star, the shape is similar to the Echinaster genus of sea star but I’ve struggled to find any info on ones that are this colour, most being orange or red:

Today the water was pancake, a tiny swell but not a ripple on the surface.  The car was far, far way on the beach and while it is hard to say I reckon we were close to 200 meters out.  Despite being so far out a ridge of reef provides a great playground that goes from at surface to 5m deep in a short few meters.  I worked my way round this area looking for more ledges and crevices to see what I could find:

Under one I found what I think is a Cup or Barrel Sponge.  There are many sponges but they all have the same basic structure.  An organisms that has no tissue or organs and is effectively a body full of pores and channels.  Like a chimney they take water in from their base and it is piped through these channels to be ejected out of the top.  Filtering out food particles as the water goes through these channels, while oxygen is absorbed and waste products ejected:

It was great fun diving up and down checking out the area and not really being too fussed with taking images, however soon the allotted hour we had available was coming to a close.  Rongy was already out of the water and the girls were heading in so I made my way back trying not to get distracted and taken of course by the many sights that there are too see out here.  The area impressed Rongy and Alana them and it sound like may be keen for a revisit next weekend:

We got home, with no issues driving off the beach this time, and after a quick freshen up went about our errands.  As Lisa and I were driving back from Busselton late in the morning the ocean looked flat and clear.  So when we got home, much as I needed food, I was pondering whether to go down to our local beach.  It felt like I hadn’t been here for a very long time, and seeing it was so convenient to be able to walk down I decided to get one last quick dip in:

The water was still very clear but the surface wasn’t flat anymore and I bobbed up and down.  This area felt deeper and far more exposed than past the point.  That said it still had some nice areas and I again took to going up and down to see what I could see.  The above Golf Ball Sponge, yes it really is called that, drew my attention.  The image shows the intricacy of the internal structure of sponges, but something else caught my eye:

The above image is the after-image and the before-image is below.  My guess is that this is a Feather Duster Tube Worm, as you can no doubt guess rather than force the water through its body to collect food these allow the water to simple flow through the fine filaments making up the feathers.  Despite the natural water movement it doesn’t take much human (or animal) created movement to spook them, and they very quickly retract back into the tube shown in the image above:

I spent a lot of my time looking very closely at the weed checking for signs of Pipefish or Sea Horses.  We have on rare occasions found their desiccated bodies on the beach, but as yet I’ve yet to find a living one.  Having been told they are very hard to spot I don’t fancy my chances.  At least this afternoon when I was looking for them there were plenty of shoals of small fish to distract me, such as what I assume are young Gobbleguts:

I was about to head in when a cuttlefish drifted below me, and just like when I saw the octopus in the morning I froze.  Another intelligent creature that belongs to the class of Cephalopoda, which includes squids and of course octopuses.  I was hoping it would get curious and come to me, as I have heard they can.  But instead it slid into the weed changing colour as it did, and disappeared from sight.  I tried to find it again but once it was under the weed it was an impossible task:

Eventually after an hour in the water and a total of 6 to 7 hours of snorkelling during this long weekend I headed back to shore.  Roll on next weekend and fingers crossed the conditions are good again.