In view of not seeing too much off the local beach I headed to another section of the beach on Monday afternoon, still within Peppermint Grove Beach but requiring a bit of a car journey to get there. Wave Walk offers a narrow and very shallow reef right off the beach, after that there is an expanse of sand before the next deeper section of less featured reef. It seemed fairly quiet in the water but I did happen to come across a school of Western Pomfred, being my first sighting of these pretty fish this season. These ones are relatively small at only a couple of inches long, as they can grow up to ten inches long:
I also came across a solitary Southern Reef Squid, it didn’t seem overly phased by my presence but stayed a healthy distance away. These guys are intelligent creatures belonging to the cephalopod class, which includes octopus and cuttlefish. Like these other creatures they can change their colour and can do so to match their surroundings or do so when feeling threatened. They grow up to 50cm long and are usually found in small schools of less than 10, also being nocturnal while I have seen them during my daytime snorkels it is not often and they are usually pretty flighty:
As I double backed I came across not just one but five of them, ranging in size from fully grown to approx. 20cm in length. If they were really threatened they would be gone in the blink of an eye, but instead they drifted off and when I stopped looking at them they came back to me. At times swimming right under me, but they didn’t like it too much when I duck dived down to swim next to them. Over the sand they became translucent and then once over the weed they changed to a beautiful bronze colour that almost looked fluorescent with a striking blue line outlining their body:
It felt so remarkable to have been allowed to spend about 10min with the squid that I have included a couple of videos. Eventually they seemed to have had enough of playing with or was it observing me, so I headed a bit further out to the deeper area. There wasn’t too much to report. That however is not why I have included an image of a Sand Anemone, which I have done several times over the years. The reason being is that they always seem fake looking in the pictures, the tentacles being almost too prefect looking instead like a fine painting:
Today I was considering heading back to Wave Walk to check out what life might be there in the morning. However, on Boxing Day our freezer decided to die and as such we had to empty all that festive food and organise a new freezer. You might think this would be an impossible task late on Boxing Day. But a short hour after we had finished emptying it, to avoid any damage to the new floor as it all defrosted, we had bought a new fridge/freezer. Even better it would be delivered on Tuesday, and they would take the old ones away to be recycled. Not bad considering the next two days were a Sunday and then a public holiday:
Why is all this relevant, well early today we got a message to say they would arrive between 9 and 11 and as such I opted for a local beach snorkel instead of driving off. So it was that as Lisa took the poodles down for a walk I joined them until we had reached the beach. On the way down we got to watch a flock of pelicans circling above us. As Lisa wandered off I put my head once more underwater in search of more finds. There have been a few fish that I have fleetingly seen, sadly being skittish I’ve yet to get any half decent images:
Above is one of them, a Magpie Morwong, and while the image isn’t great I seem to be a little hooked on QuestaGame. So with a few images from all angles except a good side on one I was pretty happy. It was just enough to add it to my collection. The other one is below and it is a Southern Scalyfin, this one tends hide in caves and will aggressively protect its home. Despite being just a bit bigger than the fish it still did its best at scaring me away, with short fast movements and not realising that if it just stayed still for a short while I would leave it be:
The positive about QuestaGame is that I get to verify my finds, most of which I have been able to successfully identify. I have however made a couple of recent errors both of which were in the post: https://sandbagged.blog/2020/12/23/swimming-for-play-and-work/. The first was the large fish that I came across near the Capel River mouth. I thought it was a Tailor but I now know it was in fact a Samson Fish, which seems so obvious now. The other, which still doesn’t seem that obvious is the ray I found while diving with Rongy. I guessed a Spotted Stingaree but it is a Circular Stingaree. The former is not known to come this far up the western coast, but I have to say both look very similar to me:
On this dive I also came across something that looked quite unique. I’ve not seen one of these before and despite asking a few friends, consulting with my books and google I am completely stumped. The above might be a number of creatures or plants, but I have not been able to narrow it down. The eight arms are of equal length and it looks like it may have a mouth in the middle. Hopefully the images I got will be good enough for the experts to identify it for me, and I’ll keep you posted. As I headed back to shore I spied a young Southern Fiddler Ray, after which I got out shivering and headed back to prepare for the fridge/freezer delivery:
Sandbagged 