Crystal clear water and light winds.

A solitary dolphin breached the surface less than a paddle’s length away.

It breached again once more for a sideways look at us and dived out of sight.

After work, we walked around Cape Schank.

Will those trees still be saplings we are old and bowed? Will we have to plant another generation before it is our time to pass on? It’s an amazing thing to be part of the birth of a forest. A few days of digging, lugging water, mulching and feeling the soft dirt in your hands and then those tiny plants will turn the water and sunshine and years into majestic canopy and trunks. Insects, spiders, birds, and humans shall all find shelter from the sun and rain beneath their arms. One day we might hold hands, read books or sleep beneath them. One day our conversation might be ‘ Do you remember when those trees were knee high?’ I believe that land ownership is an illusion. But we can be stewards.

I wonder how the old trees feel, feeling the tender but insistent roots of the young overlapping with their own?

This photo was taken last Saturday. I was very excited by the cute blob creature, even though I had no idea what it was (beyond being a nudibranch), because I’d never seen one before. Ross was kind of underwhelmed… he looked at it swum away, came back, took this pic of me and then hung in the water waiting for me to finish. After the dive, Martina who was also diving at the same site, was excited to hear that we’d seen one as she had been looking out for one for ages.
Yesterday I emailed the photo to Wendy, the Reefwatch Victoria coordinator at the Melbourne Museum, to try and get an ID. This is the response I got:

“This is very exciting Nicola. Bursatella leachii is the name of your hairy sea hare. It is has not been recorded in Victoria – origins are South Australia and Western Australia. It is common in South Australia where it is collected for medical research. If  possible, would you be able to collect it for Bob Burn who is a Research Associate here at the Museum.He is working on  an Atlas of Opisthobranchs.  He happened to be here today and was very excited by your photograph as there is no Victorian record of the species in the collection. Liz can bring you some ethanol in a jar tonight (at the pub) if you don’t have access to it. “

I saw Liz later that evening and she said that everyone at the museuem was much excited by it. So NYAH! I was right to take twenty shots of the little hairy blob!

Blue-ringed octopus, Rye Pier

Thursday night (Dec 29th) Ross and I picked up dive gear and headed down to the beach for the New Year. We did a couple of fantastic dives. Friday night we dived under the Rye Pier and saw heaps of seahorses, dumpling squid and sand octopus and also, the highlight of the week, a blue ringed octopus. The next day (New Year’s eve) was extremely hot and after I exausted myself trying on a few new semi-dry suits, we snorkled, jumped off the pier, wathed the rich kids with their jet-skis and lazed on the beach until it was time to go back to the beach house and drink champagne ;)
New Years Day rained hard all afternoon, but we spent an hour on the Portsea reef, where the highlight was a stargazer that wriggled its way to freedom from under Ross’s knee allowing us to get a couple of good photos!

Stargazer, Portsea

I also got a chance to try out my Christmas present (a rod and squid jigs). We caught three squid. The first two we brought onto Portsea Pier at the exact same moment… although Ross’s emptied its ink-sack onto his face before it hit the deck!! We stuffed the squid at home the next day with dilled rice and baked them in chopped tomatoes Greek style. Yum.