St Leonards Pier and Steeles Rocks

I haven’t had much chance to use my macro lens recently, so it was nice to do a couple of simple shore dives with Joey on Wednesday. This time we headed to Bellarine Peninsula as we were hoping to do Barwon Heads Bluff as the first dive of the day. Unfortunately sea conditions looked bit rough as we got there and we decided to stick to the more protected dive sites inside the heads instead.

First we headed to St Leonards and did a pretty nice pier dive there. It’s pretty comparable to Rye Pier, with plenty of interesting species and lots of macro opportunities. The lone seahorse we saw was pretty good at avoiding the camera, he kept hiding between kelps and always turning away from us. The ones I saw over at Rye were much more cooperative! Fish life under the pier is quite rich and we ended up seeing several shrimps hiding in various holes as well. And there’s quite a bit of junk down there as well, from old tires to tennis balls. While it was little windy on the surface, conditions underwater were quite good and I ended up with some quite nice seahorse and fish shots.

The second dive of the day was at Steeles Rocks near Portarlington. We didn’t really know what to expect and the dive ended up slightly disappointing. Most of the area we explored was very shallow and not nearly as interesting as St Leonards. There were quite a few rocks and hard corals but not that many fish. Luckily we ended up seeing several Fiddler Rays and one of them let me get really close and personal for some nice macro shots.

In addition to actual diving itself I’m starting to get my gear together for my first tech course. I’m probably starting with combined TDI Advanced Nitrox and Decompression Procedures for some longer bottom times and bit deeper dives. I already found a pretty good deal for an used Dive Rite Transpac and Rec Wing, now I just need to hunt for the rest of the needed gear. I haven’t been in water with the Transpac yet but hopefully I have a chance to test it during the weekend.

• 2012-12-08 Rye Pier

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