April 28 was the last day of a week of rain.  When I woke it was still raining off and on but I headed out to Foreshore drive anyway.  It was lightly drizzling but Botany Bay looked almost millpond and we were going to get wet anyway.  Put the boat in an around the container wall and across to our anchor point.  We anchored directly over the reef and the anchor took first time.  Given it had been raining all week and the tide was going out we did not expect much viz.  Our mission was to replace the slate that we had placed on the reef near the admiralty anchor. 

What luck, right beside the anchor an octopus was out in the open.  It slunk away to the nearest crevice but then stopped, maybe sensing that I was not a threat.  Wayne had headed in a different direction so did not see the occy.  I spent a few minutes with it. While it was quite curious it did not reach out to touch my offerings.  After that I dropped down to the sand to locate the admiralty anchor and place the slate.  To our surprise there was a "No swimming Shark" sign there.  Michael McFadyen, a regular visitor here, had placed it early April,  a reference to the apparent sightings of a Great White near here.  I used a cable tie to place my new slate just above the shark sign.  There were schools of old wives, yellowtail, one spot pullers and pomfret here so we got closer to them.  Stumbling over a giant cuttlefish we played with it for a while. It sat quietly, flashing at times, raising it's 'arms' and touching our outstretched hands.  Back to the reef we explored the many channels and gutters.  A boar fish hung under a crevice, we have seen this one before seeming to be a permanent resident now.  The viz was good at about 10m.

The advantage of doing this reef from a boat is you can spend a lot of time on the reef.  In our case 70 mins (plus 3 mins safety stop).   This was on 35% Nitrox.  Doing this from shore you lose about 20 mins getting there and back.

We did not see any sea dragons which is unusual, but there was plenty of other fish life.

octopus	slate & sign	Michael's little satire	Visitor's "book"	fish etc
rock cod		friendly cuttle	striking a pose	nice cuttle
signs	bones (there are a few of these)	another bone	crevice	long snouted boar fish
larger cuttle	another crevice		same cuttle	fishing rod
crevice fish	Wayne	our anchor. Note the weights.	cuttle eggs	rusted anchor
another anchor at the other end of the reef

This site was last updated 28/10/11