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"First day of spring greeted us with great conditions for the planned Mistaken Cape dive, light to moderate southerly winds making for ideal conditions for an assault on the Cape. I last dived Mistaken Cape back in 2006 and after numerous aborted attempts over the last year or so I was looking forward to the opportunity to finally dive the Cape again.

For the dive we had a small group of keen divers which included Pax, Eric F and myself, we met at Sorell to pick up the boat and then made our way to Triabunna, which would be our departure point for the dive. We had a comfortable ride across Mercury Passage and down the outside of Maria, after around 45 minutes on the water we arrived at Mistaken Cape. As expected conditions off the Cape were affected by the moderate southerly breeze and 1-1.5m southerly swell, on setting the shot line on top of the large bommy off the cape we found a strong current was running from north to south, not particularly ideal conditions but manageable. We decided to run a one up two down scenario providing live boat coverage in the tricky conditions.

I volunteered to run the boat for Pax and Eric and dive solo. Pax and Eric geared up in the relative calm in the lee of the Cape, donning their twin side mount tanks, I ran them out to be dropped off on the shot. Arriving at where the shot should have been it had disappeared, they were happy to jump in on top of the bommy and continue on with the dive. Once the divers had descended below the surface I headed off to locate the shot, I eventually found it drifting around half a mile south of the Cape, with the buoy and shot recovered I redeployed it on the bommy this time it held. Pax and Eric surfaced reporting a great dive with a maximum depth of around 50m with Pax suggesting vis was around 15m. With Pax and Eric in the boat I geared up for my dive in my back mounted twins and deco gas. I was particularly looking forward to the dive, I was keen to see if the dive had changed thinking maybe in the six or so years since I last dived the Cape that maybe the long spined urchins had got stuck into it creating barren areas.

I was dropped off on the shot line, the shot took me down on to a craggy looking spire and into a narrow ravine between the spire and the main bommy, the descent was hard going as the current was rushing directly up through the ravine and was quite a battle to make it to the bottom and out. At the entrance to the ravine the current was now pushing south along the face of the main wall. Briefly looking back up the ravine from 30m towards the craggy spire was a spectacular sight, the ravine was lined with sea whips and sponges, vis to me looked to be at least 25m. I made my way along the face of the main wall drifting with the current in around 35m, as I made my way around the southern side of the bommy the current dissipated and I was able to settle down and take in the grandeur of this dive, looking down, the reef sloped away bristling in sea whips, looking up butterfly perch schooled around with the sun bursting through in the distance. I did not venture much deeper than 35m given I was solo and happy to stay out of the full flow of the current. I was pleased to see very few long spined urchins and the reef looked to be as I had remembered it, with large sponges and sea whips dominating the reef below 30m and the main wall glowing with the huge mats of golden zoanthids carpeting it. With my planned bottom time running out I made my way up the wall to do a bit of decompression. The top of the bommy was lush with thick kelp snapping back and forth in the strong current, here the wrasse activity was frenetic, I don’t think I had ever seen so many wrasse in one area, above them a small tight school of mackerel moved about. I shot my DSMB to do my 15 minutes of accrued deco in relative comfort drifting in blue water. On surfacing I was promptly picked up by Pax and Eric in the club boat. It was great to see this magnificent dive was as I remembered it and pleasing to see very few urchins other than a few stuffed into cracks and no sign of any urchin barren formation.

During the surface interval we sounded out a few possible locations for a second dive in the large bay immediately north of the cape. I was able to get hold of some detailed swath mapping data of the area which showed some interesting features that looked to be worthy of diving. We settled on an interesting bit of reef 1km around from the cape and around 200m off shore which rose up from 40m to 16m, and dropping off very steeply on the inside. As the site was well sheltered, we decided to anchor the club boat and all three of us jumped in for the dive. This was a very interesting dive, we found ourselves descending down on to the back of a ridge running north south with the eastern side sloping down at a moderate gradient, but the western side formed a shear wall from the top of the ridge down to the sea floor. I made my way around to the western side and found the wall was carpeted in a wide diversity of colourful invertebrate life including zoanthids and sponges and a large school of butterfly perch mixed with a few vividly coloured bright pink and purple rosy perch flowed down over the wall. Looking down at the sea floor below, it looked to be dotted with numerous small boulders carpeted in sponges running out away from the ridge, I made my way a little way along the wall and was soon joined by Pax. With bottom time running out and creeping into deco we made our way back to the anchor line for our ascent. Back in the boat we all agreed this was a great dive and worthy of further exploration.

With the anchor hauled we made our way back to Triabunna to end a very successful day of diving
"
By James P

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