With two weeks off from work, a hot week leading up to Christmas and encouraged not only by the conditions down at Moses Rocks where I climbed yesterday, but also at our local beach that I had checked out on my return from the climb, I decided it was time to break the ice (or more truthfully the surface) and go for a dip. The tide is very low at the moment and the sandy beach seemed to be so much wider that it has been the few times I ventured down here during winter and spring, when I accompanied Lisa as she took the dogs out for a walk:
Being the first dip I decided on the local beach, allowing me to walk down. The beach was empty bar two cars and a boat trailer. A small vessel was traversing close to the coast and a string of white buoys lay in its trail, no doubt they were hoping to lure a few cray into their pots. I left them to it making a mental note that I should head to one or more of their pots as I got ready to get out of the water to see if they had caught anything. But for now I walked in the opposite direction to my usual point of entry. Dipping my feet in the water as I went it felt warmer than I had expected:
While the water felt warm for my feet, the first plunge felt a little cool. Once under and with the need to swim out a little way before I got over the weed and reef, I was soon feeling comfortable. On the shoreline I had spotted a few stingers, and my heart had sunk a little. But they were hugging the shallow shoreline and I didn’t encounter anymore until I was on my way out and literally a feet away from the shore. The territory felt familiar and it was a welcome sight as were the faces that popped up to check me out. This included the expected Banded Sweeps and various Wrasses, but even a solitary McCulloch’s Scalyfin (above):
I wasn’t going out with any great expectations, after last year’s snorkelling further north past the Capel River mouth I thought today would feel a little bland. But I was pleased to be mistaken, several school of Australian Herring (Tommy Ruff) spotted me and circled me for a while before heading on their way, and there was a also a small school of Western Striped Trumpeters (above), which seemed content with me swimming alongside them for quite a while. Being a low, low tide I ventured out a bit further than I sometimes might and finally spotted some long white antenna:
The above is not the best image being a little blurry, but you only get one shot before these guys scurry back under the rock shelf. Unfortunately this was my one and only shot, as I didn’t find any more. While I have mentioned above how some people were putting out their cray pots, I have just read that this is in fact an incorrect name. Crayfish are a freshwater crustacean, while the marine creature we hear so much about at this time of year, due to their abundance relatively close to shore, both in the water and on the plate is the Western Rock Lobster:
Now is the season when the fishers are out collecting their bounty of Western Rock Lobsters, maybe that is why I wasn’t lucky enough to see another one. I did however see plenty of other treasures including a squid, which I knew if I made any moves to follow would sprint off. So I let is cruise past me and as it slowly disappeared I diverted my eyes back to the sea bed. Here I found Sea Squirts, Sand Gobblers (most likely the Herrmann’s Sea Cucumber variety) and a wide variety of sea stars, including the one above which I believe is a Cushion Sea Star. The mosaic pattern on it that merges in with the limestone rock is pretty stunning:
There were also plenty of sea urchins to be found and the one above almost escaped my attention. The thick chucky spines of the this Pencil Sea Urchin were coated in the same filaments covering the reef, making it near impossible to see. But I’m not sure if this is the Western Slate-Pencil Urchin, which I usually find. The main body does not have that familiar deep red but seemed more brown in colour, and all my trusty books and sites have not helped me find out if it is a different sort or not. As I was watching all these creatures, I spotted a pair eyes watching me as they were bobbing from side to side:
The Purple Sea Urchin next to this Octopus might give you an idea of scale. It was not very big, but bigger than the unlucky one I spotted at Moses Rocks that the crabs were feasting on. I don’t actually think the one from yesterday is same species as this one. My guess is this is an Octopus Tetricus, but from what I have read it is only found in New Zealand and Eastern Australia. So this must be the closely related species that is stated as being found in Western Australia, but I can’t find a name for it. Regardless of that I do like the common name of the Octopus Tetricus , being the Gloomy Octopus due to its droopy and sad looking eyes:
I was starting to cool off by now, and as I popped my head up I saw that the craypots or more correctly called lobster pots had all be taken out and the boat was being loaded on the trailer. My chances of finding one of the pots and getting an image or two was gone, along with any lobsters that had been unfortunate enough to have been lured into the pots. It was time to head back to shore and my last find in the weed was this Western Smooth Boxfish (above), acting like a vacuum cleaner and sucking off the sediments covering the leaves of the sea grass. I didn’t disturb this one and instead drifted above towards the sand bay:
Rather than head straight to shore I swam sideways over the rippled sand, back towards the car access track which I use to get onto the beach. This area provides a seabed landscape that is contrasting to the rocky reef and weedy areas over which I had spent most of my time today. You also never know what you might find in these more open waters and today it certainly paid off when I stumbled across this beautiful Southern Fiddler Ray, which was very close to the maximum size you might find at just over a meter long. It had been a magical first snorkel, but after 45min I was getting cold so as this fella headed back out to sea I headed back in to shore:
Sandbagged 