Date: Saturday 9 July 2011
Location: Blairgowrie
Divers: Sally, Michelle, Keith, Rob, Peter, Andrew, Simon, Adrian
Water Temp: 11 C
Visibility: 5-7 m
Depth: up to 6.2m
Wind: Westerly about 20knots
Even though the wind was blowing and the clouds haven't left all week we still managed another good dive Saturday. You may be reading this report thinking not another Blairgowrie dive report. They are many spots we can dive around the bay however conditions always dictate where we end up. Blairgowrie consistently give us 5-15m vis, easy entry and exit, always the best surface conditions and most importantly offers the best marine life. Last Saturday was another example of this. With a strong westerly ripping across the bay Rye Mornington south road were all bad or wiped out. The boys dived flinders on Wednesday and the vis was bad so this was the best option.
With the marina positioned like it is we giant strided into flat calm water with no surface chop or current to worry about. As soon as we descended we dropped onto a couple of pipefish trying to make like blades of seagrass to avoid predators. As we moved down the pier we spotted several sea horse, 11 armed sea stars, pygmy leatherjackets, octopus, goatfish and a large school of sandy sprat(small shiny silver baitfish. These sprat are what I reckon the stargazers feed on, they lay buried in the sand waiting for the spratt to come near them. As we rounded the pier and headed west, we came across a couple of vercos nudi's, also a southern fiddler ray with a white Nudi hitching a lift. Several big bellied sea horses on pylons and down on the sand including one that I haven't seen. This one was a small reddy brown colour, sorry the pic is not that good. We had a good dive and yes it was cold, let's face it anyway you call it 11 degrees is cold. However if you wear socks, gloves, hooded vest's you can still have good dives. We did 6.2m for 58 minutes, no one got out of the water blue and like always we were diving seeing cool stuff having fun. It beats sitting at home facebooking, sitting in a coffee shop or watching a movie.
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