Frozen fingers at Fairlight

After a week with next to no rain the Harbour was looking unusually clear. However my lungs were not feeling usually clear on Saturday morning. I got up at silly o clock to take Rowlf for his long walk and had a bit of a clearing hoik. Green. Lumpy. Yuk. The water at Fairlight looked clear and I was feeling OKer by the time I got there wiht a coffee onboard...but there was a little pressure in my ears as I walked down the steps behind Manly aquarium. But my ears were clearing and having removed the nighttime lung-gunk I had not built up a new coat of green stuff. Maybe I'd be able to get in the water...

Sal took the in-pool duties at the kids' morning swim. I was having a break from Harrie's 30minutes of whinging through her lesson. As well as the rest my ears got  I also avoided getting chilled. Once the kids were back home and asleep I grabbed my wetsuit, mask, fins, snorkel and charged GoPro (I learnt that lesson before) and headed back to Fairlight.

It has been a little while since I was last in the water and it was noticeably cooler. I slid in and headed out past a returning paddle boarder. He said the water temeprature was about 16 or 17 degrees - chilly in a 3mm - and that he has seen an eagle ray while paddling about, which gave me hope that the water was as clear as it had appeared from the shore.

It wasn't. There was a reasonable amount of particulate matter in the greenish water. Compared to what I usually expect from Fairlight the visibility was OK, but it was nowhere near my (unrealistic) expectations. Regardless, I was glad to be back in the water. The first few minutes were spent getting my mask to fit without leaking, reassuring myself that the GoPro was working and taking my first couple of tentative I-really-hope-my-ears-clear dives. The ears were fit for purpose, the GoPro was faithfully taking some very ordinary pictures and the mask stopped leaking. All good.

I headed for the rocky drop behind the pool and tried to find some spots were there was enough light to get some pictures. I clicked more in hope than anything else. The GoPro does not do a great job of stills in lowish-light, and with no screen you can't tell what you're getting. I've not used it enough to have an instinctive feel for what I'll get. In some regards it harks back to the days of film, albeit with the capacity to take a few thousand shots instead of 36. I swam through some gaps between rocks, went low to shoot into the sun. Nothing was really grabbing me. Had I been with my normal camera I'd have started looking for macro subjects but with the GoPro I was a bit stumped.

There was a dive school bobbing about at the top of the rock shelf. It didn't look like they would be descending any time soon and I toyed with the idea of swimming under them and taking a dangling legs picture. I was a little bit further out than the school and decided against them as a photo subject as soon as I next put my head in the water. There was a school of around 40 kingfish, mostly around 1m long. They were clearly circling me. I clicked a few shots while trying to move myself and the camera around at the same speed as them. After they'd circled me 4 times I dropped to the sand and then came slowly back towards the surface, hoping to get a nice silhouette shot. They were, of course, gone. I kicked myself for not switching to video (metaphorically; it is quite difficult to kick yourself while wearing freedive fins.)


With the kingfish gone I was once again without subjects. Again I thought about the dive school, but as I looked around I saw some bubbles off to my right and decided I would instead head down to see the divers who were sending the bubbles up. There were two of them and one was trying to take pictures of a scorpoionfish that clearly scared the shit out of the other, cameraless, diver who went into a comical reverse as the fish swam his way. I waved hello, took about 20seconds of video of them and then went on my way, thankful that I was tank free. I took a couple of self portaits of myself, which was a signal that all inspiration had gone and it was probably time to get dry.

I was getting a little cold by then. I dropped to the sand in front of the rosk shelf to see if I could find the small shipwreck. It is as photogenic as it is elusive; I failed to find it. With a rapidly deteriorating ability to press the shutter release I decided it was now time to head back to shore. My fumbling hands-not-really-working attemps to remove my fins were probabaly quite amusing to watch. I'd lasted 45mins, which was about 15mins more than I thought I would.

Back at the car the coldness took a hold; all the while I'm in the water I feel quite cold but it is once out that it starts to hurt a bit. Bloodless hands and feet go yellow - not a great look. But it passes quite quickly, and while I was rewarming I could take a look at my pictures, thanks to the recent firmware update for the GoPro and the update of the Android app I have on my phone. Unlike the water clarity, this time my expectations were met. Few of my pictures even managed to get to mediocre.

You wind some you lose some, and really the pictures are a bonus; the real prize is getting back in the water.