After a fun session of climbing at Castle Rock, Tomski, Jaime and I walked back to the car and as we walked I pondered whether the water conditions made it worth jumping in for a snorkel. It was hard to say as there looked to be a bit of swell, but the only way to really know was to jump in. So back at the car the three of us swapped our climbing gear over with our swimming gear and trouped back along the track. Jaime didn’t have a mask but said she was content just having a dip, while Tomski and I were keen to put our heads under the surface. We were greeted by clear waters and an underwater landscape full of colours and textures:
Immediately I spotted an unusual looking Combe Jellyfish that looked tubular, above, and as I watched it anchovies darted in all directions. I’m not sure why but the water here seems to be so much clearer than it is at my local spots off Peppy Beach. Maybe it is because it located on the outer edge of Geographe Bay, so it doesn’t get the same swells and currents. Or maybe the coarser sand, on which a small Sand Flathead below was perfectly camouflaged, takes more turbulence to get stirred up? Whatever it is I was pleased about it today:
As I swam between the boulders and looked at the walls for interesting finds, I spotted these Blue Throat Ascidians. While they look like plants they are animals and are closely related to vertebrates like us. They have a circulatory system, digestive system, heart and other organs. And while they don’t have a backbone and ribs, though it looks like it through their transparent bodies, they do have a long nerve running the length of their body in the same way our spinal column does. Amazingly, despite being only a few centimetres long they can pump a hundred litres of water in a single day:
Rounding the headland of Castle Rock there are a pile of jumbled rocks forming slabby surfaces. I spotted an area with five or six of the following fish. My first thought was a Threefin, and while they are not that these Western Jumping Blennys are placed under the category of Threefins in my fish book. They can and do at times come out of the water and can hop across wet rocky surface keeping near the water’s edge. Being in shallow water I was able to sneak up on them and capture a few images, but as soon as I swam below the surface they hopped, skipped and jumped away:
There was an abundance of fish hugging the rocky coastline. We spotted Old Wives, Trumpeters, Buff Bream, Herring, Anchovies, Zebra Fish in big numbers and also many more in smaller numbers. The individual fish that seemed to stand out and caught my eye were these striking black and yellow stripped fish. They stayed in sheltered post and lurked under the rocky overhangs. This image of these Stripeys isn’t the best image of got of them, but I really like it due to the colouration of the rocks and the watchful eyes, of a Zebra Fish and unidentified fish, on me:
Out in the open water it was hard to know where to look, fish swam round us in all directions. Duck diving down made them move away a bit but they soon drifted back towards us. Below the image of these Tarwhine, with a sole Buff Bream , was the view that was all about us. I tried to capture the abundant numbers and variation of fish in video but while the water was clear it wasn’t good enough to allow the camera to pick the required detail up more than five metres away. Needless to say Tomski and I were very happy to have made the decision to jump in:
There were so many other fish to report, plenty that I have not as yet seen off our local beach. But there is only one more that I wanted to include. We both spotted it lurking under a boulder, with just a fraction of its tail visible. Duck diving down it didn’t seem perturbed by our curious gaze and interest, merely lounging about on the edge of the boulder in the shadows. We left it to its hidey hole and drifted off. Once we started to get cold we retraced our path, and on the return trip I stopped to see if this fish was still about:
It was and this time it lazily swam out from under the boulder and seemed to move in numerous directions allowing me a view from every angle I could ask for, before then lazily heading back under the cover of the boulder. I thought it was a puffer fish of some sort, and have narrowed it down to a Spotfin Porcupinefish. These fish can grow to 75cm and I’m guessing this one was just over 50cm. They can inflate their rotund body if they feel threatened but despite us swimming right next to it, so close my camera wouldn’t focus and I could touch it, it refrained from putting on a show:
Sandbagged 