131209 Seaway wind dive

Seaway dive, 22 degrees, 3 metres visibility, annoying boat traffic, lots of fishermen.
Strong northerly winds were blowing 18 knots, the tide came in at about 3metres per second, that is ripping. So, I changed my plans and started my dive a bit later and from the beach. I covered a few hundred metres - and what a coincidence exited at the midsection entrance (normally not used as an exit because it is hard to find). Dive time was a bit over two hours and I was freezing cold in my 7mm wetsuit.

Any dive is a good dive. But this one was certainly one of the poorer dives. Only 6 branch species found. This is very surprising for this time of the year. The plants seem to die off and be covered in sand and other growth. It is basically brown in brown again. Every passing and speeding boat causes a black out under water. The visibility reduces from 3 metres to half a metre. It seems that all commercial water tank trucks use the Seaway to fill or unload their water. Would be interesting to study the effect on the branch population. Probably small quantities with minor impacts but still...

There is not much to say about the dive. A toad fish fell in love with me (or thought I was lunch) because it followed a long stretch along the way.

Here are the stats:

Bullina lineata	12	3	Seaway SW Wall	2	3	22
Goniobranchus albonares	13	9	Seaway SW Wall	3	3	22
Goniobranchus aureopurpureus	22	9	Seaway SW Wall	1	3	22
Goniobranchus daphne	18	1	Seaway SW Wall	3	3	22
Goniodoridella sp. 1	10	10	Seaway SW Wall	2	3	22
Hypselodoris obscura	45	4	Seaway SW Wall	4	3	22

(Name, size, numbers, site, depth, visibility, water temperature)

So, the very good news is that Goniobranchus aureopurpureus is established at the moment. What a beautiful branch.



A few Hypselodoris were cruising around too. One was down in the deep (4 metre) sand and had a parasite.

Bullina lineata

Anemone

Goniobranchus daphne

The 'Branch of the Seaway', Goniodoridella sp. 1 is looking healthy, is active and mating.

A sponge

Goniobranchus albonares were the best visible branchs, quite a few around too. Here an interesting detail of their colouration. Never noticed that the orange margin consists of dots (Photo is a crop).