Malcolm Nobbs

2017 gave me some wonderful Sydney underwater photography opportunities. In May Mick Todd and I dived at Shelly Beach, Manly hoping to see juvenile Dusky Whalers put in their annual appearance and I was lucky enough to get some close passes. Later the same month I dived West Side and Isolated Reefs at Bare Island with Tomas Mitchell and then a day later a double dive at The Steps in Kurnell National Park with Andrew Trevor-Jones. If you have read any of my previous Sydney posts you will know how highly I rate critter spotting experts Tomas Mitchell and Della Ross, Andrew now shares that same pedestal. So much so that after my dives with Andrew I vowed never to dive with him again unless I wore a contact lens for close distance vision and had a focus light for my camera.

All of which was a waste on our next dive in September. With just one metres visibility for a drift dive at The Monument, Kurnell National Park I did not bother taking a single photograph. But in November our luck was in with photographic opportunities galore at The Steps (two dives) The Monument and the Leap. Andrew’s knowledge of these sites must be unrivalled and for me this was a double pleasure, not only a chance, with Andrew’s help, to get some decent shots of Sydney’s best macro subjects but also my first dive at The Leap, a site I had heard of but never dived. This must be Sydney’s best site for Weedy Sea Dragons and I certainly saw plenty. My camera was set up for Pygmy Pipehorses not the much larger Sea Dragons so I really must return to The Leap one day with a bigger lens.