Leafy Sea Dragon diving at its best at the old Rapid Bay Jetty!
Denise and Ron drove down to Rapid Bay today, to meet up with another one of Diving Adelaide’s instructors, Grant, to have a look under the old Rapid Bay Jetty! While Denise stayed on the shore with our shop puppy Miles, stunning visibility (it doesn’t get much better at Rapid Bay than it was today with about 15 metres vis) awaited Grant and Ron under the old jetty! We went in for the first dive just after twelve o’clock, while most of the other divers there were having their surface interval (awesome timing as it was nice and quiet under the jetty – we only came across one other couple on the way out)!
We went through the T-section and turned right to look for the leafy sea dragon and within five minutes Grant had spotted it in the debris that you can find right after the T-section. After taking a few photos and some video on the GoPro, we continued the dive to the end of the right hand side of the jetty before we turned around to head back to shore. There was quite a lot of new debris under this section of the jetty, which will make this part of the jetty even more interesting in years to come!
Apart from a few nudibranchs, some massive crabs, a porcupinefish and a few other little things, we didn’t see much on the way back and after 72 minutes we were back on dry land! After a quick surface interval to swap the tanks over we went in for another and this time turned left at the T-section. The jetty seems to be breaking down even faster on this side with massive new pieces of jetty everywhere! This left side is generally less interesting than the right side of the T, but with these new pieces of jetty under there, it may very well become just as interesting as the other side in a few years!
On the way back in we encountered a big school of squid (about 15 of them) right next to the old jetty, which made for another good video subject! The second dive was slightly shorter than the first one (about 64 minutes) and I was happy to be wearing my Scubapro drysuit, as the water temperature was about 16-17 degrees.
Great to see that life is still exploding under the jetty with massive schools of fish at the T-section and on the left hand side and a leafy sea dragon that has just fathered quite a few baby sea dragons on the right hand side! Obviously we had to celebrate these newborns, so on the way back we made our usual pitstop at the Victory Hotel for a few post-dive drinks under the blue skies!
Have a look at the photo album of this dive on Facebook: Facebook Album
Watch the video of our dive on Youtube: Youtube Video
