Sunday morning sea-dragons.

What a fantastic morning of diving at Old Man’s Hat (Part of Sydney’s North Harbour Aquatic Reserve). As we descended, we had the usual murky visibility that’s common along Sydney’s North Head. However, as we reached below 15 meters, the water cleared to the best viz I’ve seen at this location.

There’s something I find very magical about this dive site. I think it has something to do with the low visibility in the first 15 meters that blocks out a lot of light and makes it quite a dark place. Once you reach the bottom, it has a sort of constant twilight vibe. The bottom sits at about 25 meters. It’s sandy, with rocky edges that give life to beautiful and colourful soft corals.

Of course, the most magical things to see on this dive are the weedy sea-dragons and with the visibility as good as it was on this dive, I couldn’t be happier with the shots I got.

In total I think we saw 5 weedies. A couple of the males were still carrying eggs with one in particular carrying a lot of eggs. (This guy was obviously my favourite to photograph!)

I find it’s often good to try and shoot upwards underwater. It creates an interesting perspective that makes the animals appear larger than life. This can be challenging with weedies as they tend to stick very close to the bottom (in amongst the weeds, no surprises there!). Luckily on this dive, not only did I manage to get some good angles, but there was also very little seaweed between my lens and the sea-dragons. I hope you enjoy these photos as much as I enjoyed shooting them.