Technical Ecstasy

Well we done double duty today with some wide angle on the new special bit of main wall we found last week. It didn't quite go according to plan of course with a stupidly strong Northerly current causing havoc. You know you're on a hiding to nothing when the current is strong enough to fold the arms back on your rig........

Insert strong current here

However we did manage to grab a few shots before having great drift dive back down the wall to the shore, so it wasn't all bad.

Some great photo opps on the wall despite the crappy current

We weren't disheartened however as the night time is the right time for some of the good stuff and even though it was still a little surgey (if that's even a real word), it was a corking night for macro.

Here we go, dive, dive, dive!

Within the first two minutes we had some excellent finds. I found a lovely pair of tritonia hamnerorum and a bristleworm hanging out on a seafan which was a real challenge to shoot given I was bouncing off of every piece of rock thanks to the conditions.

They could be spelling out my initials. If I were called A reverse J.......

A couple of metres away Jill found another bristleworm on another seafan but something incredibly small waving around on top of the fan clinging on for dear live was the smallest striated seahare. I couldn't get a shot of it as the seafan was flapping around like a loose sail.

At this point the little seahare gave up the fight and let go, landing straight onto my hand! I had to grab a shot of him before I carefully put him back in a more secure position.

He's so cute and tiny. I will call him Bert

So the first five minutes of the dive proved to be a real score for some super macro work. There a were also a good number of gobies and blennies hanging out in the current not to mention a few banded jawfish looking happy as usual. Not.

No, I've never seen a happy jawfish either........

There were loads of arrow crabs hanging around as well with quite a few getting into some serious scuffles with legs and claws flying everywhere. Either that, or it was some serious foreplay.....

"Come on, put 'em up! I ain't afraid of you!"

We had some monstrous channel crabs scuttle past us as well, one of which was missing a couple of legs. I assumed he was a marine veteran.......yes I know my jokes never improve.
We also had the good fortune to find a long horn nudi scuttling about on a sponge. 

Unfortunately it was about this time the blood worms started to come out in vast numbers and cause real headaches with obscuring the shot. I got a half decent one but not the real show stopper I was looking for. Maybe next week............

We were also fortunate to have a number of yellow spotted rays some of which were more than happy to follow us around for a bit and have their picture taken. Which was nice.

So friendly

By the end of the dive, the blood worms were just making it impossible to get some shots in so it was time to call it a night but not before we got buzzed by a squadron of squid which was a nice way to round of the evening. 

And on that note, Who held the baby octopus to ransom? Squidnappers! Boom-Boom! I thank you!