Trying to focus

Seeing I had bouldered on my indoor wall on Wednesday and then climbed at Welly Dam before work on Friday, I had already decided that I needed to rest up from climbing this weekend leaving me two whole days to get some snorkelling in.  Geoff and I were hoping to go in for a dip and kept an eye on the conditions, Friday night and Saturday morning the wind was lousy so we opted for a Sunday dip.  However, after a busy morning of domestic chores on Saturday I checked the forecast and it looked like the wind would drop soon after midday:

Drop it did and the water went pancake, with only ripples hitting the beach.  With optimism I went in only to be greeted by a pea soup visibility.  Not a huge surprise, as it needs time for the sediment and weed to settle out.  Seeing I was in the water I went for a look anyway.  My only find of note being two spawn masses from the Giant Troubridge Head-shield Slug, a slug that feeds on other burrowing slugs and eats them whole.  How do I know this you may ask, well I came across the same sack like discovery off Higgins Cut a few weeks back and managed to get it identified on QuestaGame:

I lasted 20min in the water as it just wasn’t worth staying out any longer.  Sunday however was another day, and with light winds all night a nice low tide I felt like my optimism might be better placed today.  Even more so as we had decided to head past The Point, where the reef is full of weed with less sand about to be stirred up.  It was the first time I have driven on the beach this season, heading down past the Capel River mouth.  We went quite a way passing a few vehicles, the masses have all left due to school going back tomorrow (in theory):

I say in theory, as just this afternoon it was announced that the school holidays would be extended by a week, due to a lockdown coming into effect.  Regardless of that all the tourists were gone, the caravan park looks almost empty and the beaches are thankfully once again quiet.  Geoff, Nana, Gav, Moni and Lisa and I headed out today, and we were not disappointed.  The water was flat, wind was gentle and water was clear.  Just 30m off the shore and we were greeted by beautifully coloured weed:

The low tide meant that much of the reef was close to the surface, there are crevices that you can follow into the main reef.  They open up with caves below, and I went in and out of these in the hope of finding something interesting, stuck and unable to easily escape my lens.  Nothing was about, just like I have said in previous posts it seems life had not truly started to come out on the reefs, at least not in the numbers that we experienced last year.  After a while the ever faithful Banded Sweeps appeared, and one by one I spotted other fish both young and mature:

Some in large numbers such as the Herring others isolated such as the Herring Cale.  There were also lots of Bell Clapper shells littering the small sandy areas in-between the reef.  At night time these shells, or more correctly the creatures that live inside them move about the floor leaving a trail in the sand, as the large home is dragged along.  Keen to see if I could find one of the inhabitants, I went down checking them out and was in luck.  The claw and a couple of legs from a Hermit Crab poking out from this one, and quickly retracting when it realised I was watching:

With no new fish to report below is an image of a striking bright orange Velvet Sea Star.  Most sea stars I’ve found are red or orange in colour, not just the velvet but also mosaic and biscuit sea stars, and this makes them easy to spot.  The small sacks protruding from their bobbly skin, I’m told are like gills and assist with oxygen exchange.  Like fish they extract the oxygen from the water, a reason why taking these creatures out of the water is fatal for them:

The fish that I spied in good sized shoals were Herring and Buff Bream, these would spot me and go round me.  Then came along a large shoal of more sleek slivery looking fish, probably a thousand of them or more, and they were heading right for me.  The school of White Trevally hung about unafraid of me and when I ducked dived down they circled me, only to continue on a more linear path as I went back up to the surface.  Never seeming to be in a rush to get away allowing me lots of time to interact with them:

The six of us had seemed to go in different directions, Gav and Geoff were ready to nab a feed if they could.  Catch bags and spear guns at the ready they scooted about duck diving up and down checking all the hidey holes.  Rock lobsters were about, the long white antenna sticking far enough out to be seen from above gave them away, but they were hiding just deep enough in these rocky shelters to escape Gav and Geoff’s clutches.  Even when Gav went back to the beach to grab his scuba gear allowing him to stay down longer and try that bit harder:

Lisa stayed close to shore, not usually one to go out to deeper water.  Moni and Nana followed the boys for a while before going solo.  While it may seem a little rude of me not to stick with Lisa, she wouldn’t have ventured out as far as me and in truth once you head is under water you really don’t communicate all that much.  I did pop my head up occasionally to see where the others were and they were scatter about and usually far away, I was alternating between checking out the deeper water then heading to the reef:

Above I spied a very well camouflaged fish, with just its head poking above the weed carefully watching me.  Hoping to sneak up on it and get a better image I was disappointed as it darted off, only allowing me a very quick look at the body shape and colouration.  My guess is a Rainbow Cale, the same type of fish that got away from me near Canal Rocks.  I’m was little surprised with the length of time I seemed to be spending in the water and the amount of ground that I was covering that I hadn’t managed to find too many other new fish or creatures:

With the water clarity I got some great images of Buff Bream, which seemed to follow me round almost as much as the Banded Sweeps, despite them keeping a healthier distance than the White Trevally.  I also came across this very beautiful and curious Juvenile Moonlighter, this one being quite young.  You can tell by the very distinct black dot with a yellow band round them, at the bottom and top of the anal and rear dorsal fins.  As they get older the bottom one fades first and then eventually the top one also disappears:

With all the sheltered areas round this reef I found quite a few juvenile fish, but these ones were the most prolific.  I came across them several times in large numbers, and haven’t seen them off my local beach.  The deep abdomen with a body that tapers off to towards the tail, a relatively large eye and prominent dorsal fin makes me think they maybe young Bullseye.  Quite different the juvenile Gobbleguts in my last fishy post, including having an orange spine.  It is hard to get good image of small and transparent fish; the camera focuses on the background:

I had the same issue with this small creature, which was transparent for most of its body.  I almost passed it by, but it looked a little different.  As I watched it, this 1cm long animal looked to have five stegosaurus like plates sticking up and seemed to compress and then extend itself in a manner to allow it to propel its way through the water.  I watched it for a while, even taking a video in which it was even more of blurred.  Definitely one for me to have checked out by others, and I’m not even going to try and guess what it was.

My fingertips were finally starting to tingle and looking up everyone else was back on the beach, some had been there for a while now.  Heading in I saw a flick of a tail and after searching the area I spotted the familiar head of a Wobbegong, or a carpet shark.  I’ve seen them before but this is the first one this season, he came out of the weed and swam to a more secure place allowing me a great look at the markings making me sure it is a Spotted Wobbegong.  It was then time to get out after my longest snorkel ever, having spent 2 hours in the water: