Frev decided to hire tanks from Sunreef and go and try a Nudibranch dive at La Balsa Park near the mouth of the Mooloolah River in the harbour. High tide was 1.4m at 12.24pm so the timing was excellent. We saw a few Nudis, the highlights being the images below.
Visibility was pretty good at a minimum of 10m. It was the first time using our inflatable 'diver below' float, it was unbalanaced and kept flopping over so the flag wasn't very useful. I had just tied it off to the railing of the stairs into the water, next time I think I'll find a way to take it with us as we go.
The Nudi above is a Purple Flabellina (Coryphellina rubrolineata) (iNaturalist entry here.) I'm reasonably happy with this photo which has been cropped and edited in Lightroom.
And the gorgeous creature below is a Hypselodoris Obscura (iNaturalist entry here). I feel I should have positioned the flash closer to me to avoid the shadow in between me and the creature. By the way, it was moving fairly quickly when I got the pic, way quicker than I would have imagined. I estimate that it was between 8-10cm. I was surprised that it was so exposed out in the open as I would have thought it would get eaten quickly, I guess the bright colours discourage peckish fish.
While the dive was short at just under 30 mins, I did still enjoy it immensely and look forward to more of these shallow shore dives here at La Balsa and other locations. The short duration and shallow depth meant that I only used 50 bar of pressure which is just great.