Aussie diving - April 2012

[alcina]

What a fabulous start to April! Honestly, just the fact that I was out diving made it fabulous but added bonuses of warm water (29C!!), blue relatively clear 15-20m viz and more marine life than you could imagine made it super fabulous!

Had a nice baitball with some mild feeding frenzy yesterday, not as crazy as the day before but looks like more baitfish are moving in to the site so hopefully the next few weeks will see even more action. Tons of small white tip reef sharks, big fat olive sea snakes, tons of turtles, an explosion of teensy anemonefish joining their larger buddies, big schools of pretty much everything and more angelfish than I've seen in a long time (and we're never short of angelfish). Ningaloo Reef is totally going off right now (and the whale sharks are abundant & cooperative, too!)

Blizzard Ridge, Lighthouse Bay: Sunday 1 April, 2012: Viz 15-20: water temp 29C:

I'm so hoping to get out again later this week, but it's the busiest week of the year here so not sure there will be any room for little ol' me! fingers crossed

 

[TSandM]

Both great photos -- I love the sea snakes, but then again, I love snakes in general.

But the lighting on the second one is really superb. Fun to look at, and thank you for putting them up!

 

[ferris213]

Fantastic shots again Alcina, the bait ball sounds great. One of the best dives we ever did was spent inside a huge one at Byron Bay.

Cook Island turned out to be a great dive. 10m vis and about 24deg. Not too much big life but there was lots to look at. The highlight for me was a tiny yellow box fish about 15mm long. Easy nav around the site too, one of the few dives where the mooring line was right where I left it...

Petunias, I have no idea how you find stuff like that anglerfish in the other thread... I couldn't find something that size on my desk, let alone the ocean! Just awesome. You two make me want to buy a camera.

 

[shortdivemedic]

Beautiful Pictures
Its on my list

Cheers
Michael

 

[Nitro91]

i got spirit of freedom next week )

 

[bowlofpetunias]

Fantastic shots again Alcina, the bait ball sounds great. One of the best dives we ever did was spent inside a huge one at Byron Bay.

Cook Island turned out to be a great dive. 10m vis and about 24deg. Not too much big life but there was lots to look at. The highlight for me was a tiny yellow box fish about 15mm long. Easy nav around the site too, one of the few dives where the mooring line was right where I left it...

Petunias, I have no idea how you find stuff like that anglerfish in the other thread... I couldn't find something that size on my desk, let alone the ocean! Just awesome. You two make me want to buy a camera.

I feel naked without a camera in my pocket! I am delighted with the Canon S95 after using the 2004 version of Sony Cybershot for nearly 8years. I still carry the Sony.. or convince my poor hard done by hubby and dive buddy to put it in his BCD pocket as a backup.

Honestly it is amazing the results you can get with a simple camera system. I don't use strobes or extra lenses.. just the point and shoot. The whole idea is to capture images that reflect the dive so when you can't dive you can relive the experience. I would recommend you get a simple camera system and just play with it! IMHO taking pics is not a competition... I enjoy shots that show what the dive is really like (poor viz and all) so I get to dive vicariously with people in places I would never get to be able to do in real life.

The secret to finding stuff is to move slowly and look for things that move differently from the growth.

We got two dives in this weekend... Friday at LaPerouse.. went looking for the little angler but couldn't find him. I did find the little Orangutang spider crabs that I located a couple months ago. We thought they had moved on but apparently they were in hiding.

This Nudibranch seems to be laying eggs

This young octopus didn't want to play

---------- Post added April 7th, 2012 at 06:26 PM ----------

I love little surprises like this.. here is the original shot.. I was trying to get the nudi in the midst of the growth. I just liked the shot. When I came home and looked at the shot... I saw what looked like claws....

Here is the subject I was trying to capture

Here is the little scene stealer

---------- Post added April 7th, 2012 at 06:34 PM ----------

Even ordinary things like this tube worm are amazing when you look at them closely. I haven't worked out how to use zoom so I just try to make sure the photo is in focus and do a bit of cropping later for the detail
Original

Cropped

There are some of the little claws in the original shot here too. I am not quite sure what they are.. some type of shrimp obviously. These little discoveries have got me thinking. I wonder what would happen if you just randomly took shots???? I may have to try that concept in the future

---------- Post added April 7th, 2012 at 08:57 PM ----------

Not great video but it shows the site from today, the Dusky Whaler Sharks and the fishlife

 

[alcina]

bowl - such neat things you are finding!!

Got out for a single dive yesterday at Blizzard Ridge, Exmouth, Ningaloo Reef and it was great! Viz was 15-20m but tons of food in the water so a little snowy; temp was nice & warm Had a huge roughback ray and a 8+ foot nurse shark tucked up in a cave together - got some OK photos of the ray but then he started to swim around so I followed him and when I went back, the shark was gone I had an extremely foggy mask most of the dive and had set my lens incorrectly so didn't have my act together for shooting much at all LOL But it was an awesome dive. Hoping to get out today again and can't decide whether to leave the 10-17 on or pop on a macro...decisions, decisions!

My buddy Simon with a batfish as we were headed back to boat

School of threadfin pearl perch

 

[bowlofpetunias]

Love your shots Alcina! A few stills from our dive at Shelly Beach, Fairy Bower
Playing with the light. There are so many boulders and ledges to look under and into

Unusual to see a Moray at this site. He was so well hidden and I couldn't cox him out. Wound up sticking my camera into the crevice where I thought his head was and trying to guess when it was in focus and take the shot. Didn't turn out too bad under the circumstances. This is one trick you couldn't use with a big camera or with strobes attached lol

Wobbies are a common sight here. I have only ever done one dive here without seeing at least a couple of them!

A lot of the dive I just tucked my arm into fish's arm and we let the surge/current take us where it wanted. So nice and relaxing. A few times other divers zipped by and we could hear the guy with the scooter long before we could see him! Most of the time there was just us, the current, the fish and the song of the seacreatures.

 

[alcina]

Looking good!!

I got skunked today - headed out, alarm went on the boat, yup there's a problem - only a 10 minute fix, but my friend had to be back at work this afternoon and we didn't have time to drag the boat into town for the fix, drag it back to the boat ramp and get out for a dive today. Sucks big time. Oh well, guess I can work today instead of tomorrow and hopefully get out tomorrow when I was meant to work!

 

[bowlofpetunias]

Sorry to hear that Alcina. Hopefully you will get out tomorrow... I tried to convince fish to go diving today.. conditions not encouraging so he wasn't keen... stayed home and did housework and yardwork instead. Tomorrow I don't work but I am volunteering at the Australian National Maritime Museum then the rest of the week working Oh well most of the week I will be doing Mentoring and co-training. Hopefully it won't be too busy at the Museum and I will have some time to review the course I am doing on Wed... I haven't taught that particular one for quite a few years.