The weather was just too good to ignore. Perhaps this would be the last warm day of summer? It was still 21 degrees by sunset and tomorrow’s temperature was forecast to plummet. The wind was still a brisk northerly so I chose a night snorkel at Teahouse Reef in the middle of Ricketts Point. Here the reef to the north offers shelter from any residual wind chop, which is always a pain when trying to take photos (you bounce up and down and focusing is hard). The lower the tide gets though, the calmer it is inside the little bay. For the most part I swim in no more than about 30cm of water.
Searching at night
I got some lovely new torches this year and they have a red light setting. This time I did almost the entire swim searching with them (when I fire the camera, they flash white). While you don’t see colour for searching you do see movement and texture. Most animals can’t see it, so if you go slowly, you encounter some interesting behaviour. At one point a snapping shrimp was hunting and I saw it enter a hole and ‘kick’ a shell out with its powerful punch. A few times there were widebody pipefish out hunting in the open. There were lots of Black XX nudibranchs and XX fish (at night they parade around with their colourful dorsals open).
Dumpling Squid
As my night snorkel at Teahouse Reef went on it just got better. It wasn’t until about 90 minutes had past when I found my first Dumpling Squid (Southern Bobtail Squid). What I kept seeing turned out to be lots of tiny Pygmy Leatherjackets. The squid appeared in sand patches around the reef, which is similar habitat to where we saw them at Quiet Corner recently. But then on the way back to shore, I came across the largest one I’ve ever seen, among the seagrass about 20m from shore in about 10cm of water. By the time I got out it had been two hours!
With the weather set to turn 14 degrees and blow southerly for a few days, this might be the last chance for a while.
