25-04-09

After a very surgy dive at Cape Banks we seek the relative shelter of Botany Bay. A cuppa beside Bare Island watching divers struggle into the water on what looked like a very high tide. Then across to anchor reef to see if we could find the pygmy pipe horse again. This would be my first dive with my new camera and twin INON strobes. The camera is a Canon IXUS 980IS which I got from Sea Optics along with the housing and second strobe. The viz was poor indeed. With the anchor secured at the top of the reef we headed over the the edge of the reef, dropping down and past the deteriorating anchor. Around the end following the reef we come to the rock where the pygmy pipe horse was. Wayne spots it again. We take a heap of photos, taking turns. The viz deteriorates and while I am taking pics of Wayne has moved on a few metres. I could not see him, despite the strobe spotting lights and the flashing strobe on his BCD, and he was less than 3m away. As a second dive on air our deco limit was coming up fast so we high tailed it back. Took several sweeps of the reef to find our anchor but then after we released it we were moving so fast (driven by the wind) that we felt we could easily end up too close to Bare Island before we were back in the boat. Wayne hooked the anchor back in and then we made a leisurely ascent back.