My work days have been a bit all over the shop since I returned from the UK, and I found myself working from home on Wednesday this week. which is unusual. And even more unusually I found myself joining Lisa for part of her morning routine, when she took the dogs down the beach for a quick run on the sand. It is not often I join her when working from home. When she goes down I have already spent a good one to two hours working, by which time my mind is singularly focused on what I need to do:
I find it hard to switch off when I know I will soon have to get back into the same frame of mind. This would normally result in me not being fully in the present. Thereby not giving the sensory delights around me there just due, and of course not paying attention to Lisa. Today, however, I made a concerted effort and relished the morning hues coming from the horizon and being reflected off the ocean and wet sand. Meanwhile, Lisa was busy chatting away to another beach walker, being one of her fellow Peppy Plungers, leaving me in my own world:
The ocean looked reasonably flat with the near waters looking clear, and I started to believe Verity. She had suggested that there were still good swims to be had this season, and that I should not be putting my snorkel gear away just yet. Providing evidence of this from her recent swim at Woodman Point Almo Jetty up in Perth, which I have to say has some very beautiful marine life living on its piles. The swell back at our beach was up about 1.7m, but the winds were light and the surface of the water belied what lay beneath:
So mid-afternoon when my brain was just about fried, I pulled the snorkel gear out of storage, suited up, and wandered down. Still trying to convince my mind that it was worth going in. It only took a few quick strokes before I was in two to three meters of water and all I could see was pea soup. The above image was taken looking up, after I ducked dived down. It was so bad that I struggled to find my local reef. Every so often I could see the surface below slightly darken, but each time I went down it was just a heap of sea wrack:
Still I couldn’t find the reef proper. Popping my head up to get my bearings based on the landmarks and my distance from the shore. It made no sense, I am sure I should have been right above it. Due to the conditions I didn’t see the point of going further out, or was it that I didn’t dare. But did keep going down mostly just to watch the sea wrack being washed back and forth along the sea bed. I also spotted a circular rock, about the size of a football or as they call them here soccer ball, and that too was being rolled back and forth:
Every time I looked up the surface of the water seemed to be relative flat. All I could think of is ‘beware of the under toad’, as the water beneath the surface pushed me this way and that. Eventually heading for shore where I was bowled over by a series of bigger waves. At least I saw one Western Smooth Boxfish (Anoplocapros amygdaloides), a live one and not just a carapace. It felt like the waves were pushing me out and saying ‘give it up’. I did however go back later, but only to watch the sun go down. This time my snorkel gear will stay stowed away:
Sandbagged 