Fairlight, Saturday 3rd November 2007

Dive no. 279 63 minutes, 9.1 metres max depth, water temp=20 degrees.

The weather was cold and it had been raining heavily across Sydney the night before, so the dive seemed anything but propitious. Dive 2000 DM Dave Young led me and a motley bunch of clubbies, including the ever-faithful Liz Brodie (now an old salt after her 200th dive the week before) and as soon as we’d plunged in off the rock shelf west of the pool and beach we were surprised that the vis was fantastic - much better than I’ve ever seen in the numerous dives I’ve done at Fairlight. The water temperature was a comfortable 20 degrees too so we were in for a great dive, as Fairlight is critter heaven, with numerous rock formations, overhangs and amphitheatres full of sponges, nudis and various fish, including some tropical species! On this dive there were plenty of rock cods lying on barrel sponges and some great nudibranchs, plus the usual morwongs, gropers, surgeon fish, yellowtail, parmas, etc. On the eastern end, near the swimming pool, there were some interesting tropical fish and Dave reckons there’s hard coral there as well. We also saw a small cuttle and a small giant cuttle. Liz has seen turtles here but I’ve never been lucky enough to see one of those magnificent reptiles south of Fish Rock. We surfaced after about an hour and everyone was suitably impressed and pleasantly surprised by the good conditions.