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I went diving again on Friday the 30th, these were the final two dives of the year. Year 2011 ended up being a great diving year, hopefully 2012 will end up even better!

First we visited Mornington Peninsula and did a shore dive at Mornington Pier. It was bit crowded near the pier and we ended up with quite a few spectators. The dive was decent enough, with quite a few different fish species and lots of rays. Unfortunately visibility wasn’t too great, but at least I had my macro lens so the photos from the dive ended up quite ok. There were plenty of fishing lines (and some swimmers) in the area so one had to be careful while diving. Even so, I ended up with one hook stuck in my drysuit’s right shoulder. Luckily I didn’t notice any leaking, so the hook probably didn’t penetrate the suit.

After Mornington we moved on to Flinders Pier as we had some visitors with us who wanted to see weedy seadragons. Unfortunately, conditions there were pretty terrible for diving. While the tide was higher than last time, visibility was really bad (maybe 3 meters) with lots of particles in the water. There was a significant swell as well, which made diving pretty annoying and any attempts at macro photography almost impossible. We did end up seeing several seadragons, though, so the dive wasn’t a total loss.

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On Christmas Eve we went diving to Rye on the eastern side of the Heads some way south from Melbourne. After some initial problems and even a minor accident with our boat, we finally got into water and started heading out. Weather was good for a change, warm and sunny with occasional clouds.

The first dive of the day was a scallop dive near Rye. The goal was to collect some scallops to eat on Christmas. Not really my cup of tea, but I decided to join anyway. We visited several different spots, unfortunately the area where I did my dive was quite poor on scallops and I only managed to gather a few during the 30 minute dive. There were plenty of sea stars though and right at the end I did see one rather large stingray as well. Luckily the other areas we visited were better, and some of the divers came back to the boat with their bags full of scallops.

The second dive of the day was far more interesting, we took our boat to Chinaman’s Hat to check out a local seal colony. There used to be an old WW2 military installation at the same spot (the original Chinaman’s Hat) which the seals adopted as their own. Some years ago it was replaced by a new structure built specifically for the seals. The area around the structure is quite shallow, max depth was around 5 meters.

There were plenty of seals in the area, both lounging on the platform and swimming in the water. While cute and playful, adult seals are quite massive and it was advisable not to get too close to the structure as seals like to jump off it. During the dive we saw plenty of seals playing with each other. There was a relatively strong current which kept taking us away from the platform, luckily seals like following divers so we had at a least a few with us for almost the entire dive.

In addition to seals, there were also quite a few crabs in the area. Apart from the strong current, the conditions were quite favorable and there was plenty of natural light. While shooting against the light was not really optimal and the seals rarely wandered too close to us, I still managed to get some ok shots.

After the dives we spent the rest of the afternoon at the MUUC shed. While some people had to leave early due to Christmas commitments, the rest of us stayed at shed opening the scallop shells and getting the meat out. Frankly bit disgusting work and I was happy to leave most of it to more experienced people. I did return home with a small box full of scallop meat though.

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The Fish Count went nicely enough, I had a great dive at Flinders Pier on Sunday, saw plenty of Seadragons and got a nice t-shirt for the effort. Unfortunately conditions were not quite ideal for the dive, tide was low and there was a light rain as well. This led to a quite poor visibility in the shallow water along the pier (max depth was only 3.4 meters!).

Apart from the visibility, it was a very nice and long dive. The divers were split in buddy teams and each team explored different area along the pier. As the goal was to count the fish (in rough numbers: few/several/lots), we progressed really slowly. We followed a simple routine, move forward a bit, then stop and wait a minute or two for the fish to come closer to us and count them. A really relaxed affair and a good way to learn to identify the local species. We took our time too, total dive time was 77 minutes. Still had plenty of air left at the end.

We saw quite a few different fish species, but the definite highlight of the dive were the weedy seadragons. There were plenty of them right under the pier and we ended up seeing more than a dozen. Easy enough targets to photograph too, as they move quite slowly and don’t seem too afraid of divers. I had my camera with me and took some photos while my buddy was marking down the fish counts on a slate. I should have brought the macro lens for this dive, as the poor visibility and particles in the water made anything apart from close-up shots difficult. Still, I managed to get some decent shots of the seadragons, they are odd-looking little things!