Flinders Pier and Rye Pier

Today I headed out with Alex and Joey for a day of shore diving, this also gave me a chance to test my new lens. We did two pretty nice dives during the day, dive sites were Flinders Pier and Rye Pier. We ended up skipping the night dive though, as seas got quite rough in the evening and wetsuit divers were getting pretty cold from chilly weather and occasional light rain. No big deal, we’ll do that at a later date.

First dive was at Flinders Pier, we were there pretty much only to take more shots of weedy seadragons. We hit high tide pretty nicely, so far so good. Unfortunately there was some swell and visibility wasn’t that great, but conditions were still much better than last time. It took a while to see our first seadragon, then we started meeting more of them and finally there were lots around us. So lot of targets to photograph, though swell made things bit tricky at times and I’m still waiting for that perfect seadragon shot. I brought my 60mm macro lens for this one as using the new fisheye would have been kinda pointless when only interesting target down there was the seadragons.

Second dive was at Rye Pier, the site was bit of an unknown and we didn’t have a clear picture of what to expect. Spirits were little low as we entered water as people were feeling wet and cold after some rain. Things changed underwater though, it was a really superb dive and we ended up seeing lots of different stuff. We met lots of seahorses (first ones for me!), several crabs doing cool stuff and even a large stingray. I missed the last one, but all in all it was a very nice dive with lots to see and great conditions; vis was good and there was no swell. It was easily the best shore dive I have done in Victoria so far.

Most of the cool stuff we met in Rye was quite small, so my Tokina was bit wasted on this one. I did get some nice wide-angle shots of divers and the pylons though, so it wasn’t a total loss. Really need to do a second dive there with a macro lens though. Even if the lens wasn’t a perfect match for the site, it definitely has great potential with good subjects as long as vis is at least decent (like on this dive). Using strobes with the lens can be quite tricky though, it’s very easy to get hot-spots with a lens as wide as this. And my efforts at close-up shots didn’t end so well, but that’s at least partially caused by the fact that I don’t have the zoom ring yet (found a cheap one though and already ordered!), so I was stuck at the widest setting of 10mm for the whole dive.

Definitely bringing this lens along for all dives with a good chance of seeing some bigger stuff!

• 2012-12-18 Portsea Pier

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