Day 89.

Goat Island Marine Reserve.

“There’s never a bad day in the water, there’s just the days when you forget to leave your crap on the shore.” - Benthics.

I was feeling more than off today, and took my irritability into the water. This influenced the quality of my whole dive and reminded me that the ocean is consistent in its rules. You either adapt and fit in or it spits you out.

I was seeking out a Boar Fish after being tipped off by Kaye. The last time I saw a Boar Fish in the reserve was about 5 years ago. I’ve only seen one and it was magnificent, large and a male. Very very beautiful indeed. I was super motivated to find it. I executed an underwater search pattern guessing that he would be sitting on the sand away from the hustle of the snorkelers near the weedline. He wasn’t round the back of Shag Rock so I headed to the gully between the island just before ABC bay. And there he was. When I saw him, he was a small smudge on the bottom (it was high tide and mediocre vis), but I could see his elongated bodyline and I knew I had found what I was looking for. A small electrical charge ran through my body, I switched my gopro over to video and I started my breath cycle ready to drop down. But I didn’t relax.  I watched from the surface and saw that he was twitchy, not enjoying my shadow from above and didn’t listen to him. Kimi Werner gave a great Ted Talk called ‘when you feel like speeding up, slow down’. I wish I had remembered that in the moment. I waited till he shuffled over to the weedline and held back thinking I could drop down over a small cluster of rocks and sneak up behind the weed, but as soon as I started to descend he moved off.  Well, there went my shot, I pumped behind him for a while trying to get close enough to pick up something... any kind of evidence Id seen him, but he flicked harder until he turned around to give me a quick glance then he darted off. He was smaller than the last one, but still beautiful And I came home with an average 15 second clip of a frightened Boar Fish and some stills of this sandaggers wrasse instead.