Port Stephens’ second Covid-19 Lockdown was in force throughout October but at least I could go solo diving and happily the underwater recovery from the March 2021 local freshwater floods continued. Still it was obvious that it would be many years before small marine life would fully repopulate the shallows, but at least increasing plant life now offered more shelter, there was generally good underwater visibility and plenty of medium sized marine life to see.

One dive was particularly good. I used a Fly Point eddy created by the incoming tide to slingshot me up-current to happily photograph Coral Banded Shrimp, Eastern Rock Lobster, a Mosiac Moray Eel and Crested Horn sharks, all way east of the dive site entrance. As I then drifted westwards in the slowing current back to the Fly Point entrance, I was startled to see a large ray, much bigger than any I had seen before in local waters. It was a rare visitor. A Pink Whipray. I immediately wished I had a fisheye lens rather than a 17-70mm DX lens! This ray looked to be about 3 metres long, maybe 1.5 metres wide. I could see a single serrated spine at the end of its long tail and assumed that this spine was venomous. It occurred to me that an upside to not having a fisheye lens was that in order to get all of the ray into my shots, I had no choice but to keep my distance from the ray. And that serrated spine!