Aussie Diving 16 - 30 December

[Gudge]

I took my RDO today for my birthday and went diving. It was back to Bundegi Reef again and this time I used the Canon 100 macro and concentrated on fish portraits. Here are four of my favourites:

Coral Trout:

Big Eye Trevally:

Sergeant Major:

Anemonefish:

 

[burna]

Stunning shots as always Gudge.

Happy Birthday & Merry Christmas.

You can breathe easy now that cyclone has disappeared!

 

[OzMarineBoy]

Beautiful photos Gudge. Will have a look at your website! Thanks :cool2:

 

[Sas]

Last night I got out for a night dive at Mornington, we had quite nice visibility and the water was 18-21C so lovely temperature for cooling down from the 38C air temp.

Moonlighter

Mosaic leatherjacket

Ornate cowfish

Flatheads

 

[jaycee]

Wow! All the photos in this thread are amazing. I hope I can learn to take some as good as these one day.

Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
John

 

[Gudge]

We got out for our traditional Christmas Day dive today. Back to Bundegi Reef again and this time I was setup for super macro with my 100 macro on a 1.4X teleconverter plus a Canon 500D close-up lens. Here's a few from the dive:

It's cheesy, it's a cliche and it's corny but here's a Christmas Tree Worm (in vaguely traditional Christmas colours) taken on Christmas Day:

Bicolour Blenny:

This Striped Triplefin isn't having a very merry Christmas with an Isopod in its mouth:

Coral Hermit Crab:

Flabellina exoptata:

A brand new species of flatworm we've never seen before:

 

[Gudge]

The weather God's smiled on us on Boxing Day and we went over to the eastern side of Exmouth Gulf and dived a couple of our secret spots. I had the 100 macro/1.4X teleconverter/close-up lens combo on again and was chasing tiny stuff. Here's a few shots from the dives:

Whip Coral Goby:

Tip of Feather Star arm:

Gymnodoris rubropapulosa out hunting for another nudi to eat:

Glossodoris atromarginata:

 

[roby jeff]

amazing and superb shots every body
happy new year
rob

 

[Gudge]

We hitched a ride out to the Muiron Islands on Sunday with Exmouth Dive Centre and got a couple of dives in. Unfortunately the dive conditions weren't the best and with visibility only about three metres and my rig set up for wide angle there weren't a lot of pictures taken and none of them are fit for public consumption. Today we were back at Bundegi Reef inside Exmouth Gulf for one dive and I was set up for super macro with the 100/1.4 teleconverter/close-up lens on again. There were no new and interesting critters today so I just played around with getting as close as I could to various fish and critters and trying to catch the tiny details. Here's three shots:

Lionfish Eye:

Hypselodoris bullockii gills:

Moridilla brockii rhinophores:

 

[Sas]

I just got back from three days of diving in Mt Gambier for my CDAA Deep Cavern Course. Anyway, it went really well, had a ball, and really loved the caverns + sinkholes I dived (oh and I passed too ). We got to dive Gouldens three times, which only had about 1.5m viz (or 0 if anyone touched the silt ), but it was still fun as I was learning lots of new skills such as line laying, how to use doubles, how to work as a team when cave diving, and also we did a bunch of stress tests like having our masks stolen or regs stolen, or both together, and then reeling in the line (I didn't jam it once! ). We also dived at Kilsby Cave, which was incredible! 50m viz and beautiful shafts of light coming down the cave from the opening. On the last day we dived there again and at a place called Little Blue, which we were expecting to be crap because of the algae that grows in summer but we had 10m viz and got to check out all the rubbish like cars on the bottom. I had a great time with my buddy who I met on the course and we hope to head back there soon

Here are some pics!
Me on the climbing workshop - some places you need to climb down cliffs to get into pretty much

Me laying line at Kilsby

Ascending at Kilsby, see the sunbeams!

Deco (I'm second from left)

My buddy at Kilsby, this was at about 36m, you can see the pontoon really well

Sunbeams at Kilsby - this is hitting the bottom at about 24m

Me after a dive