Little Seal & Skeleton Rocks

16-09-2012 Members of GLUG present:- Isabelle Strachan, John Connolly, Greg and Anita Toland After a week of good weather and westerly winds blowing at Forster the group was hoping to have relatively good dive conditions. We were picked up from Boat Harbour at Seal Rocks just after 9am. The trip out with Nick was a bit rough once we passed the protection of Sugarloaf Point with a roll coming in from the South. Our first dive was a Little Seals. We anchored on the western side near the whitewash. When we descended the anchor line there was a 2.5m female GNS right in front of us. We managed to take a few photos but alas the visibility was very poor and we didn’t manage to capture any of its markings. We laid out the transects in a North South alignment and only found an old listening device rod which was successfully retrieved. We were actually surprised to see so many good size drummer and bream and snapper cruising around the rock. There were heaps of wrasse and the usual bullseyes and heaps of one spot pullers. The fish seem to be building up in numbers very quickly as a result of Little Seals being in the marine park. The best part of the dive was the magnificent whale song which accompanied us the entire dive. We managed to stay in for 35 minutes before we retreated to the boat for a hot soup as the water was a chilly 16 degrees. After a move to Skeleton Rock and a change of tanks we were back into the cold conditions. Again the visibility was very poor with heaps of plankton in the water. We carried out our four 25m marine debris surveys at a depth of 10 and 15 metres. We found nothing along the transect lines or on our roaming search. We managed to circumnavigate the bommie and were treated with the sighting of the resident large loggerhead turtle. Anita Toland