nicolaoutdoors » reefwatch

Reefwatch

nicola — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 01:00:09 +0000

On Saturday I participated in another ‘Reefwatch’ underwater survey. It was at our usual site, but this time we saw much better fish life than the previous dive. In fact we saw several species I have never seen before. One of the prettiest sights was a huge Eagle Ray ‘flying’ along at quite a clip with a shoal of juvenile fishies of various species keeping pace and sheltering from other predators in his wingspan :) It was exactly like the school scene from ‘Finding Nemo’ :)

Great Victorian Fishcount

nicola — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 00:31:38 +0000

Saturday morning I dived to count fish, part of the Great Victorian fishcount. It was a good day to be by the ocean: in the city it reached 37C and smoke from the bush-fires was oppressive, pushed in by a scorching north wind. Even at the beach we could hardly see the next peninsula across the bay. The dive was good (water temps up to 17C :-) but not many fish to count possibly because of the wind direction and the low, low tide. Bt we did see a GORGEOUS octopus.

Sunday temps soared up to 41C before dropping 10C in half an hour as a cold South Westerly blew though mid-afternoon. It came just early enough to get some Christmas baking done :)

Take care & have a good week. I am leaving for Vanuatu in the early hours of tomorrow.

Flinders Reefwatch

nicola — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 23:24:30 +0000

Last Saturday we dived the pier at Flinders. It was a Reefwatch dive, so counting sea-life for the Reefwatch Project at the Melbourne Museum was the main reason for the dive. But the visibility was amazing, making perfect conditions for non-macro photos of the pier structure.

Back under the water

nicola — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 04:43:52 +0000

Trevally under Flinders Pier

I’ve not dived since May, so finally getting back into the ocean again was good.

This was a shore dive and also a marine-life survey (for Reefwatch Victoria) so underwater slates and cameras (for counting and identification purposes as well as capturing the aethetics) were in action.

The dive site was Flinders Pier, known for having a very large resident sting-ray, which did a few passes and completely dwarfed us. Flinders in a shallow dive (max 5m), and so is nice and long and easy. A perfect dive after a break. Apart from the ray, the highlights were a spectacular nudibranch and several weedy sea-dragons loaded with eggs.