davemmdave's Favorites

BSAC jetty dive. This mature PJS came to investigate us from somewhere well north of the jetty and put on quite a performance, going well up the water column and doing loops and so on. Possibly agitated and in a sort of territorial protective mode, hard to say. I suppose 4 divers in a fairly close group might be considered a threat, especially as the breeding season begins on the nearby reefs. Probably less relevant were the few crab nets lying flat on the bottom, because the dodge tide seemed to have made the target crab species rather scarce (although they might be overfished at this very popular recreational fishers site, but who knows?)

Two pups playing with my 'diver below' float line near the main breeding colony beach during one of my first attempts at entry from shore for a scuba dive with several buddies . Divers not towing lines of any sort loved their enthusiastic welcoming play and so did I till I dawdled untangling my float line from my flippered feet in the gentle low surf of crystal clear waves(waves less than half a metre in height , beyond which lay an oily calm bay with grass algae and scanty sponges on sand and rubble bottom and patches of low to medium reef. And this was a tame shore dive yet still fantastic!).
As I got myself sorted and with help from another 1-2 nice snorkelers on the team, I found myself going nowhere then backwards as these two and perhaps a few of their mischeivous mums found the line irresistable fun!!
NB this dive trip was with the S.A. Museum's Waterhouse Club on the One And All sailing vessel. Karen Gowlett-Holmes was responsible for the dive team(safety, site choice etc) and the focus was on marine invertebrates. Other members focused on pinniped counts, the Island's terrestrial ecosystems(including botany, birds, reptiles, mammals etc),and a few took photo transects at trigg points for comparison with those on record from similar trips to the Island over many decades.

Possibly. During a short stroll in Anstey Hill RP, where I have not been as far as I'm aware for many decades, I was surprised to see this one specimen of a medium, erect shrub that was unfamiliar to me.

Relaxed and essentially unfazed by our and our vehicle's presence as we pass by at walking pace. Has chosen the perfect resting place, protected from the strong cold wind and warmed by the sun whenever it broke through the clouds and occasional showers.

Perhaps unnecessary clutter on inat but all images are of the one small bit of Sea Nymph, as the only evidence of the otherwise buried wrack in the mid to lower littoral zone. Most of my Sea Nymph submissions from this particular outing (18th August) are from the upper to mid beach and were loose bits, or in some cases thick clumps (uprooted during gales) loose on the sand, not buried.

Kessell Road ponds in a hired red bird hide, no camouflage required when territory is the issue. They took time out for a bath and came back, wet feathers in some pics. There’s a timber bird hide for sighting the water birds i.e. Aust Coot, Black Swan, Pacific Duck.

Plenty of these jellies drifted by on the weak tidal current and were easy to see in the good viz (horizontal viz ranged from 6 - 10 m). Size varied with bell diameters from ~5 to ~20 cm ,and some trailing long tentacles, others with tentacles fully retracted.

Submerged view in 1st 2 pics ,high tide at twilight into night via snorkel from shore. 3rd pic shows entry point prior to entering the water and 4th pic just shows the view landward (approximately due westward) as I was entering .Not your most salubrious choice of snorkel sites, but as I've always said, there's always something worth looking at wherever you snorkel from shore in this State of South Australia.
[Note that the camera's clock is still needing adjusting,it is set about 4-5 hours ahead of true local time ,but I'll get around to adjusting it within a few years no worries :) ]

Adult catching the late afternoon sun. The warren is roughly halfway between this geological site of national significance and the rudimentary AWD vehicle car park at the end of the access road.
FTR we saw many, many wombats in and around Hiltaba during our few days spent there (and the great majority were alive despite my recent postings of several road killed ones, which we saw outside the boundary of the actual Hiltaba Nature Reserve, while driving to our accommodation late afternoon).

Port MacDonnell. Shallow limestone reefs and substrate which lowers wave energy. Small rocky bay surrounded by reef. In rock pool and among rocks at medium tide on inter-tidal limestone reef. Rocky headlands with small sand pockets.

Interesting encounter in interactive terms. The subject seems unfazed by the proximity of the Southern Keeled Octopus (doesn't prove that this Octopus species never eats Crested Pipefish, but maybe they usually don't, and pipes generally wouldn't rate highly in protein calorie density cw many other readily available prey in the habitat they often coexist in).And in the background is an Ikeda genus worm, which FWIW seemed reluctant to retract even when I got much closer (there were a few such worms feeding during this dive and I suppose they were doing so at a time of low predation risk;tide almost fully out and relatively little fish activity, also middle of day with improving water clarity inside the platform reef).

The subject is on the L in image 1, but the initial impression of the 2 adult Leatherjackets kissing is illusory (eg see image 2). The likely reason for their being so close to each other in this open essentially flat terrain, with occasional fairly tall Scaberia aghardi plants scattered around, is that they're queued, or competing for cleaning, by unknown hosts. The hosts are probably using the taller corkweed plants as stations, although some of these taller seaweeds have clusters of low black sponges around the base, which could also suit the hosts (unseen/uncertain++,although there are glimpses of juvenile Blackspotted Wrasses. FWIW the only Moonlighters I saw in close proximity were adult. But lots of potential hosts would ply their trade in this habitat, including certain shrimps which are very hard to see). I'm further swayed towards believing that this corkweed plant (and some of the others in this area) is a genuine cleaning station because of the behaviour I witnessed for the lone and very mature Short Boarfish that was loitering in the same area:- for my account of its behaviour please see the comments under the Short Boarfish observation (already submitted but further comment yet to be added).

This goatfish stayed very close to the octopus despite two divers with cameras showing much interest for several minutes.
(As an aside, image 3 includes my buddy, who was kindly assisting me, refreshing my awareness of the important basics of buddy diving, as a prearranged mutual part of our dive plan. I'd been doing mostly solo dives at relatively safe sites like this,for so long, that I realised I might have become a potential liability for future buddies:)
I presume it was getting scraps from whatever the Southern Keeled Octopus has been eating, scavenging little crustaceans worms and molluscs disturbed by the cephalopod,or both.

Hopefully I got this right.4 Pics(all slide scans) from one or 2 dives at same spot. All(Editing:-debatable in images 2 and 3 ,which I should not have included, but as they show the general habitat I'll leave them in) include at least some bits of Macrocystis but with only the 1st being exclusively that genus. In the 4th,the back-lit fronds above the purple wrasse are Macrocystis. From memory Cape Jaffa had the most westerly outlier of giant kelp known at that time in SA. Plenty of bull kelp and other large canopy browns at that very high energy dive site but some of these plants were far longer,and distinctive indeed when the very long main axes streamed back and forth in swells. There were only small 'patches' of it,so I'd not be surprised to learn its locally extinct by now(thinking about the Tasmanian east coast scenario). Presumably M angustifolia. [Old slide scan image.Date approximate and for later editing per dive logs]

Typical line-up of adult Old Wives. On rising tide and when in relatively open areas, where predation risk is higher, they probably adopt these formations as a defence strategy. (I've previously speculated in detail on this topic, in an old MLSSA journal article, FWIW).

The same individual that I photographed on my last dive at Rapid Bay jetty, almost certainly. And after seeing it again on today's dive, behaving rather warily, after a short interval it reappeared coming fast in my direction, with a freshly captured Blackspotted Wrasse prey in its mouth. It was being followed by several decent size wrasses including at least one male Brownspotted, but the happy harlequin vanished into a hidden den where it presumably consumed its meal at leisure. I also noticed the female Striped Sea Louse on the Harlequin Fish, a sign of the times it would seem.

We've still got a veritable plague of these resident on the property and they mostly concentrate their burrows and runs around the periphery of the one poorly maintained but auto irrigated lawn. However nearby human residents continue to report good numbers of these native rats, and the rear slope of the North Dunes continues to support a large population. This large male approached me quite boldly while I was seated in a plastic chair on the lawn, and it was clearly inquisitive, not unaware of my presence.

Tentative at species level but undoubtedly the correct genus. Image 1 is cropped from Image 2(RHS),which explains the very limited image quality!
Snorkel from rocks at Bull Ring Bay.
Although not unexpected, I found it interesting that an adult Stigmatopora genus Pipefish was rafting aka hitch-hiking on a drift Posidonia blade so far from the mainland.
I also believe this is a Gulf Pipefish, whose common name would be inappropriate in the context of this observation, but that's just nitpicking by yours truly:)