MACRO WORLD OF THE HMAS BRISBANE

After three years on the bottom the former Royal Australian Navy destroyer HMAS Brisbane is now pulsating with marine life. On a typical dive you can encounter stingrays, gropers, schools of kingfish and trevally and many other pelagic and reef fish species. However, a close look between all the corals, anemones, sponges and algae that decorate the ship will reveal a wealth of smaller critters that now call the old war ship home.
    On most of my dives on the HMAS Brisbane I fit a wide-angle lens to my camera to capture images of the ship and the larger animals that reside on it. But on my recent dives on the ship in November, I decided to stick on the macro lens and concentrate on the many and varied species that are easily overlooked.
    It was a great day for a dive; warm, sunny, light winds and blue water. A surface chop made little impact as we headed out on Sunreef Diving Services very comfortable dive boat ‘2 Ezy’. When we arrived over the HMAS Brisbane and could see the ship from the surface, I was starting to wonder if I had made the right choice going macro today.
    Jumping in, my buddy Lisa Riley and I were greeted by a welcoming party of batfish, before heading towards the stern. The visibility was lovely, 15m and the water temperature a very comfortable 23C degrees. Lisa and I hit the sand at 26m and landed right beside a group of hermit crabs. After a few photos we continued towards the stern, seeing flatheads, red emperors and snapper. On previous dives here I had found ghost-pipefish and even an anglerfish, but the community of marine life on the HMAS Brisbane is ever changing. After finding more hermit crabs, and a few nudibranchs crawling over the sand, we ascended onto the wreck and entered the rear compartments.
    Here we found rooms over flowing with ring-tailed cardinalfish, millions of them and you could hear them as they swarmed around you. Hunting amongst them was a common lionfish that posed for a series of photos. Slowly exploring these rooms we found several well-camouflaged scorpionfish and a few colourful nudibranchs. We then headed up onto the main deck and looking for macro subjects I soon found plenty, anemones with tiny shrimps and anemonefish, minute triple fins and several blennies. I had to give up photographing one shrimp, as we were under attack by several damselfish guarding their eggs. Moving past the rear gun turret I stopped to shoot some portraits of the small reef fish – blotched hawkfish, half banded sea perch and some beautiful, but flighty, red bar basslets.
    Exploring a passageway we looked up to see two large Maori rock cod staring at us. I then found some lovely anemones and took some photos, not even seeing the tiny shrimp perched next to one until I viewed the images later. Lisa and I then slowly worked our way around the funnel. I was looking for more blennies to photograph, which occupy the old barnacles, but instead attempted to get some close-ups of a school of mangrove jacks hanging around with us. The crabs were the most difficult subjects on the funnel, as every time I got close they would disappear into a crevasse.
    For the second dive I buddied up with a group from Melbourne; Sue, Jody, Helmet, Malcolm and John, that make an annual pilgrimage to dive the HMAS Brisbane. A tip from 2 Ezy skipper Gordon sent us towards the bow, via the lifeboat wall to look for nudibranchs. Well we never reached the bow as the wall was covered in nudies – dozens of them. There was a least ten different species, including a mating pair of splendid chromodoris. But that wasn’t all as we also found a group of scorpionfish gathered on a stair, a pretty spot-fin lionfish, painted crayfish and a very brightly coloured blue striped fang-blenny.
    I then found a lovely little commensal shrimp sitting in the folds of an anemone that had eggs under its tail, and was busy trying to frame this tiny critter when Sue called me over. She was pointing at a ring-tailed cardinalfish. There are millions of cardinalfish on the HMAS Brisbane so I was wondering why she was pointing at this one. Maybe there was something behind the cardinalfish that was so small I couldn’t see it. Sue then pointed at her mouth. Puzzled I had a closer look and suddenly realised it had a mouthful of eggs. Getting shots of this mouth brooder was a little difficult as it keep darting about, opening and closing its mouth and turning away from the camera. After a frustrating couple of minutes I managed to get a few images of the fish, and later learnt that I had one good shot of the eggs protruding from its mouth.
    With the bow forgotten we slowly headed along a passageway, searching between every soft coral and sponge for more nudibranchs and other critters. I was looking for an octopus to finish off the dive, but instead found a very colourful crab, and this one stayed in a position where I could photograph it. Ascending onto the funnel we had a massive school of trevally circle around us, but I ignored them, as I noticed a white object poking out of a handrail, as I got closer I realised it was another fang-blenny. I finished the dive after shooting a dozen images of this fang-blenny with a huge permanent smile on its face.
    After two dives, two hours and two hundred images I had only scratched the surface of the potential macro subjects on the HMAS Brisbane, but now had a big dilemma for future visits to this old destroyer, do I fit the wide-angle or macro lens – Honey I think I need another camera!!!

Article appeared in Dive Log No.247 February 2009

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