Night diving on the North Wall at Coogee
Night diving on the North Wall at Coogee
Wednesday 18 December 2019
Once again looking for somewhere not regularly visited for the night dives, the wind direction and swell coupled with an eye on the webcams at Fremantle harbor and Trigg somehow brought the North wall at Coogee into the crosshairs. Not a spot I’d done as a night dive so it was an instant choice. Three adventurous and Christmas shopping adverse divers came along and we were soon heading into surprisingly +7m viz as we cleared the short stretch of shallows and dropped quickly down to 5m.
Progressively dropping down to 8m we passed a Bobtail squid, large Bailer shell, blue starfish, fanbelly Leatherjacket and Bluespotted Goatfish along the way. Numerous mating Seahares joined end to end were busy about their business and I was surprised at the amount of budding coral heads dotting the rocks.
The rock wall had some wonderful caverns and produced some excellent sightings of Redlip Morwong, Talma, huge Cobbler and some impressively large Western Rock lobster. An 90degree turn out over the sand produced a less familiar species of gurnard to the Red Gurnard of the previous week in the smaller and more modestly coloured Spiny Gurnard. A double take on what looked like strands of seagrass turned out to be a pair of Port Phillip Bay Pipefish.
Whilst lying on the seabed photographing them I became engulfed in pink wriggling little worms and fearful of them ending up in my ears, didn’t hang around too long, but regrettably also had to cut short several more photo calls of another pipefish, gurnard and Pebble crab due to their plague like proportions creating blurred spots in many of the photos. Heading back to the wall and out the way we came in passing an Octopus and inquisitive Port Jackson shark, we surface to near flat and windless conditions after a warm and thoroughly enjoyable dive topped off with Christmas cheer all round. Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and happy and peaceful 2020.
