Seadragons under Flinders Pier

About the site

Flinders Pier is a long, shallow dive out off the eastern side of the Mornington Peninsula. Because it’s on the opposite side of the Peninsula to Portsea, Rye and Mornington Piers it can be a good dive when the wind is blowing the wrong way. It’s also known for very reliable sightings of the weedy seadragon population that lives there. The pylons and under-pier area has kelp and seaweed, which turn to seagrass as you swim off the sides. You do have to watch out for fishing line, as it was busy up top with fishermen while I was there.

About the dive

My plan yesterday was to make some great shots of the seadragons, which was why I chose Flinders for the afternoon. While I’ve occasionally encountered weedies on other dives in Victoria, I would be very surprised to finish a dive at Flinders without seeing one. Over the course of a swim to the end and back I reached a max depth of 4.5m so there was lots of time to try a few different angles. It was also a nice checkout dive for my brand new yellow Otter, which performed perfectly. I have no idea why I’ve been avoiding boots on my drysuit all this time – they’re so much easier.

About the shot

Flinders Pier was my very first dive with this camera set up (three years ago!) and while I got some shots I thought were great, my skills have improved a little since then. I also did a dive here over winter hoping for good shots, but the vis was terrible and the surge made life hard. It was a chance to practise with these weird looking little creatures under less than ideal conditions and I think that practise paid off yesterday.

While the weedies aren’t as small as some traditional macro subjects, they also aren’t big enough to fill the frame when I’m using a 14mm lens behind a big dome. Instead of trying to get close-up face shots that the camera setup really isn’t suited to, on this dive I focussed on shots that take advantage of the best attributes of this lens. The extra wide angle perspective, great depth of field and close focussing means I could get really close to each seadragon while still seeing a lot of background in the shot. This means the shots give a sense of the animal in its environment rather than isolated from the world.

I particularly like the first shot above as it shows the soon-to-be father hanging out under the pier pylons. The second guy here was a smaller juvenile without eggs, who I found just skimming over the top of the seagrass bed. The green against blue pattern of the seagrass against the ocean gives a nice background for the strange shape of the seadragon. The seadragon fills a small part of each frame, showing them off as a small part of a big underwater world. Including the surrounding weed gives more information about their lifestyle under the pier. Both shots also include the surface, adding texture to the blue ocean half of the scene. It was a very successful photographic dive.