Diving with Dragons

 Diving with Dragons- In Search for the Weedy Sea Dragon

What the heck is a Weedy Sea Dragon? 

    If you are reading this article you probably know what they are, so feel free to skip ahead. If not keep scanning this section. Weedy sea dragons are in the same family as pipefish and sea horses (Syngnathidae for those fish nerds). They're native to Australia and found from Geraldton in Western Australia along the South Australian Coastline to Port Stephens in New South Wales. See more here.

    They use their long snouts to suction feed on little crustaceans and mysid shrimp in the water. Just like in sea horses the females will create the eggs but the males will brood them raising them until they hatch. They're remarkably poor swimmers so they're susceptible to storms and rough water, but they can be found in shallow areas. Our dives never went deeper than 12 feet when we were there. 

Here is an example of the long snout that allows them to suction up little critters in the water column

    Weedy Sea Dragons have been on my wishlist for a while now. They're found in many places but one of the best I have heard of is on the Mornington peninsula south of Melbourne. Mollie and I headed down there for a few days of diving at the Portsea pier. 

Dive and photography setup

Dive information 

Environmental protection: 8 mm equivalent, hood,  gloves, and booties recommended. This was appropriate for drysuit diving. 

Tank: 12L (about 100 cubic foot equivalent)

Dive time: up to 1.5 hours or so depending on your air consumption

Depth: down to about 5 meters

General recommendations: Portsea pier- light south/southeasterly winds, two hours before low tide (we dove way before that and still had excellent conditions), look for small swells (use the Nepean heads as a location/weather station).

We rented our scuba gear at the Scuba Doc. This company also has an excellent dive map of the area around Port Phillip bay. Although the weedy dive is not a complicated one, having the local knowledge of the dive shop was huge. We saw weedy sea dragons every day while other dive groups came up empty handed. They also helped with recommendations on where to dive based on the weather. For our trip we dove Portsea on an incoming tide and Rye Pier on the outgoing tide. Willy weather was the app recommended to us to use however we found it to be about the same as other weather apps. For both piers you want to watch the swell. October-January are the recommended times if you want to see the sea dragon males brooding eggs. 

We got a little cold so we averaged two dives a day, but if I came back and did a drysuit, 3 dives a day would be no problem. 

Photography setup

Camera: Canon R5, Isotta Housing

Lighting: 2x Inon Z330II with custom beam restrictors

Lens: 8-15mm fisheye, one dive with a 1.4x teleconverter

It was recommended that I dive this with an 8-15mm fisheye. Due to the nature of fisheye lenses you're typically diving it at 8 or at 15mm. I need to 3D print a zoom gear for when I use the 8-15 with my teleconverter. When shooting with my 1.4x teleconverter I was aiming for an 18 mm equivalent focal length. The weedy's vary in size but are large enough for a fisheye lens. The zoom ability would've given me more creative opportunities but for those closer cropped shots, I liked the teleconverter. On days where there was sun the normal fisheye gives excellent results. 

Diving in Victoria is definitely a test of your skill with strobes. Although sometimes backscatter is unavoidable, you'll want to take some time to experiment with your strobe position here to reduce distracting backscatter. Although, I will admit for coldwater diving the visibility overall was very good, because you're so shallow and there's often a small surge, backscatter annoyingly shows up at some point when you're not ready! 

This was shot with my 8-15 mm fisheye with 1.4x teleconverter. Shot at equivalent of a 19mm focal length. Backscatter removal was applied here ( I prefer it that way). Settings: 1/50th, f/20, @19 mm ISO 200

A regular fisheye shot at 15mm gives more opportunities for environmental shots, especially when there's sun. I've never been a fan of the super fisheye shots at 8mm but that doesn't mean there aren't some cool opportunities here for that. 1/200th, f/20, @15 mm ISO 200

Other notes: 

I used beam restrictors on my strobes which I will eventually write an article on. A lot of photographers use diffusers, but I've had mixed results with diffusers in murky water. It was recommended at some point that you use beam restrictors (to narrow your beam of light and reduce errant particles from being lit. Overall I found my design to be useful for both wide angle shots such as these as well as medium macro (70mm or so). 

In the future I'd like to visit when the males are brooding eggs. I also think this dive is excellent for the KRL-09s as I'd like to dive it again and focus on macro images of these guys. Although they're not small, it would be great to get some detail shots of their fins, eyes, snouts but also use the wide angle conversion for CFWA shots. 

 Here are examples of the restrictor I had printed. Still some tweaking to be done but I'm happy with the results overall. 

How to plan your trip

Airport: Melbourne

Accommodation: Booking.com or find a hotel nearby

Dive gear rental: Scuba Doc

Portsea Pier: Location on google maps

Car rental: Europcar

Overall it was a very easy trip to plan on our own. We only spent a few days on the peninsula however with better weather I easily could've spent a week diving here (dive rentals are not cheap however so be aware). Although Australia does have public transit, we found it easiest to rent a car. It's something I would love to do again. Hope you enjoyed this write up, feel free to reach out with any questions!