THE BARGE AND ONE MILE BEACH 14 June 2008

The boat from Action Divers at Tuncurry was waiting at Forster Marina.
Ten divers loaded up and headed out to the barge. This was used when they built the Forster Tuncurry Bridge however not sure whether it was sunk accidentally or if this is what they do to barges past the use-by date. I was buddied with Suzanne the co-ordinator of GLUG and a marine biologist as I was the “new girl”. Suzanne would take photographs while I would record the fish and plant life on a slate.
The water was blue and pleasantly warm and I was totally surprised at the fish life. We spotted a large lionfish, butterfly fish, male and female grouper, maori wrasse, rock cod, old wives, leatherjackets, pipefish, nudibranchs, sea stars, bullseyes, catfish, morwongs, ascidians and small stingrays. Half way through Suzanne handed me the digital camera so I could contribute to the fish identification data. The depth was 29.3 metres so our bottom time was 19 minutes with a 5-minute decompression stop.
On deck we looked at the photos and had coffee and a biscuit and changed tanks whilst travelling to our second site, which was One Mile Beach gutters. At a shallower depth of maximum 13.1 metres the dive was not as pleasant due to the surge. When I did not know the name I simply drew a sketch indicating colours and shape. One I particularly liked was the herring cale, which is elongated and dark coloured with an iridescent blue along the fin. Suzanne again handed me the camera half way through however I found taking photos in the surge a challenge so concentrated on stationary life such as nudibranchs, sea stars and ascidians. This was a great idea until Suzanne spotted a boxfish, which darted in an out of the kelp, which meant I took several lovely photos of kelp. After 40 minutes we ascended, did our
5-minute decompression stop and climbed back on board.