While Lisa has been bobbing in the water off our local beach all winter with the Peppy Plungers, I have refrained from doing so. So while in recent weeks she has come back from her Saturday bob saying it was warm, I really had no idea what to expect. Usually I don’t swim with the fish until December and looking back there have been a couple of years when I went in earlier, but it has then been mid to late November. I was today being encouraged by the beautiful clear waters I’d recently witnessed off the Meelup Regional Park coastline:
It’s a forty five minute drive, and I had already made my mind up that I would make the effort to head out and jump in. The road doesn’t follow the coastline meaning I didn’t catch glimpse of what the conditions were like, until I quite literally rolled into the Gannet Rock carpark. It is a little further north along from Castle Rock where I frequent the most, and have snorkelled quite a few times. It is also a bit further north from the very popular Meelup Beach, and I was hoping to avoid the crowds of what seemed to be a busy weekend in terms of tourist:
I picked it right and the carpark was relatively quiet, more than could be said for the water. Like my last few trips here it was a perfect slight swell, at only 0.9m, which would normally be great. But the moderate easterly winds resulted in the waves rolling onto the shoreline sufficiently high to murky up the water. It’s one of the risks of driving that bit further, and admittedly not checking the conditions properly before leaving. Rather than waste the driving time I kitted up and went in:
It is fair to say it felt like a bath, aided of course by my wetsuit. Making me wonder if I could have got away with an October swim with the fish. A testament to the short lived spring and early hot weather that we have experienced. And further proven, as if it is needed, by the terrible wild flower season and pretty ordinary orchid hunting this year. I have given up on the latter, as have my fellow hunters from the office. And while today’s water was a tad murky, it is at least promising that the water is ready for this fair-weather snorkeler:
While the water column was filled with varying amounts of sand, as the sets of waves eased and then built up again I still spotted heaps of fish. Many species that I recognised and many I didn’t, way too many to list. Perhaps the variety and number of fish was due to the conditions, and they were sheltering in the shallows. I’ll definitely have to come back here in calmer conditions to see if that is the case. But also because the clarity made it pretty undesirable to snorkel right round the prominent rock on which many gannets were perched:
I couldn’t resist the first fish image of Weeping Toadfish (Torquigener pleurogramma). Being the fish my dad so nearly got to see, when we helped him have a bash at using a snorkel mask on his last trip out to see us. Being terrified of the water he did really well, but while these fish were right at his feet in the shallows his emotions took over, and he can’t recall seeing them. I also liked the above image of a singular Giant Creeper (Campanile symbolicum) huddled together with a bunch of Turban Shells (Turbo torquatus):
It was as if these molluscs were sheltering. Waiting for the water to settle, but I am sure they had just found a spot to rest for the day seeing they are nocturnal grazers. What I thought to be a jellyfish of some sort, shown in my fourth image, is in fact linked to molluscs but not those shown above. Being an egg sac from the small predatory Conical Sand Snail (Conuber conicum), in which you can see thousands of tiny eggs. These egg sacs are up to five times bigger than the snail that laid it, having swelled up by absorbing water after being laid:
While feeling like a bath I came out after approx. half an hour with not even a hint of feeling cold. The sky above had like the water become murky. Clouds and quite possibly some smoke haze from distant bushfires, blocked out the sun and that combined with the mobilised sand made the decision for me. The three to one ration of journey to snorkelling time wasn’t ideal, but I’m still pleased I made the effort. So now on my desk the orchid books have been replaced with my fish and reef books:
Sandbagged 