Ricketts Point shark hunt.

Dive Number:  118
Location:  Ricketts Point
Date:  29/12/10
Max Depth:  6m
Dive Time:  70mins
Temp:  18C
Visibility:  6-8m
Time In: 11:30 ish
Tide:  High 08:41, 0.9m
Thermal:  5mm Semi-dry
Weight:  18ibs, too heavy.

Managed to sneak in a quick dive at Ricketts Point before starting work at 1500 which was great. Our mission was to locate the shark gutter where the Port Jackson sharks like to hang out which involved a very long surface swim.

On the swim out I noticed that the algae was withering and seemed to be dying off. Maybe it is the time of year or the water temperature, not sure, but there still was a lot of colour and fish around. Of course, I forgot my camera! After swimming around for ages Phil eventually located the shark gutter and we started our dive.

We followed the gutter along it full length and saw stingarees, scalyfin, sweep, leatherjackets, garfish, morwong, hula fish all very tame and not particularly fazed about us at all, but there were no sharks. Where were they? There have been heaps of them here lately.

I also saw 3 velvet sea stars, heaps of biscuit sea stars, a few (Ceratosoma brevicaudatum) nudibranchs and so much colour in the soft corals. I could have taken HEAPS of photos! After reaching the end of the gutter we turned around and swam back looking with desperate hope for a PJ shark and I just happened to catch a glimpse of a tail sticking out from under a ledge which looked Port Jackson-ish. I stuck my head under the ledge and was face to face with a juvenile Port Jackson shark about 1 metre long. Yay!

We finished the dive with a lazy swim back to the beach. Great dive, wish I had remembered my camera. :(

Ricketts Point

Dive Number: 105
Location: Ricketts Point.
Date: 29/10/10
Max Depth: 3.8m
Dive Time: 25mins
Temp: 14C
Visibility: 6-8m
Thermal: Drysuit
Weight: 27lbs
Another place where off-street parking is expensive ($3/hour between 8am-8pm) and again you have free parking out on Beach Road but I'm not sure if there's a limit.

This site is shallow with quite a long swim out to divable water.

The plan was to try and find the Port Jackson sharks which have come back for the summer and love to lie in some of the gutters. Phil assured me he knew where these were, we just had to surface swim around for a bit to locate them. (My fins are suited to going slow and are killers when surface swimming.)

We must have swum around for 30 mins or so without success before finally giving up deciding to just have a dive. Total dive time was therefore only 25 mins, again concerns about parking putting limits on maximum time.

There were a few fish around, I saw a few small snapper but they were too fast for me to photograph. I did manage to find a few Fiddler Rays and skates, urchins and some interesting ascidians.

The sea meadows looked great as did the sea weeds and sponges. I was happy with how well some of my photos turned out, so many great colours.