Rowley Shoals Trip Report

[ChrisRoss 150]

Travelled to Rowley Shoals a remote dive site located 300km off-shore from Broome in Western Australia.  Rowley shoals are three seamounts in deep water on the edge of the continental shelf, our trip visited Clerke Reef and Mermaid Reef.  Clerke reef reef has an island, Bedwell Island which is permanently above high water mark and so is part of the state of WA, while Mermaid Reef has no point permanently above high water mark and so it is in Commonwealth waters.     You can only visit during Late Sept to early December each year as that is the only time when conditions are suitable.  When we went there were persistent westerlies, mostly fairly light but strong enough to create some surface chop on one day.  The trip out we were heading into the wind so the boat was rolling quite a bit at times.  Coming back there was a very light tail wind and not much swell so it was pretty smooth.  The trip from Broome took about 20 hours.  We left mid morning and arrived early the next day.

The dives apart from the checkout dive  when we first arrived and a night dive are all outside the atoll lagoon and are generally drift dives with currents ranging from mild to ripping on one dive.  Tidal range at the Shoals is up to 5m, we had up to 3.5m tidal movement on the days we were there, it was full moon the day we left and last quarter (with associated neap tides) on the day we came back.  The dive sites were all on the eastern sides of the atoll  due to prevailing westerlies, We could see swell breaking on the reef on the other side of the atoll about 4-5km away probably about 1m of swell coming in from the Indian ocean.   The East side of the atolls were only impacted by wind chop and that was quite minor, by the time we got to Mermaid Reef the winds had dropped significantly and were getting close to a glass out.

I went out on the Odyssey, which carries 20 people in 10 cabins, there were no ensuites and they had 4 bathroom/showers opening onto the dive deck.  my cabin was basic but comfortable.  Food was good and plentiful, all food and non alcoholic drinks were included, they kept a bar tab and prices for alcohol were quite reasonable.  Crew were a fun group and generally very helpful.  There was no camera table so I worked on my housing on the al-fresco deck at one of the tables , which while not ideal worked out OK, they provided an air gun hooked up to a dive bottle on the dive deck to blow off the housing before opening it up.  I was the only person with a full rig there, others either had no camera or a TG-6 or a go-pro, i bought my own cooler bag and kept the housing in there between dives and soaked it in the there as well each day.  Passed the camera in the cooler across to the tender each dive.  Crew were very careful with it and notably always grabbed it via the lanyard handle I had.   

There was a DM on board, but not really any guiding as such, it was generally - this is the site topography - the current should be running this way - but if it's not just go with the flow and pop up your SMB and you get picked up.  The thing to realise is that all the boats that go out to the site spend the rest of the year as tour boats doing trips up and down the remote Kimberley coast during winter and heading south to work out of Perth during the cyclone season.   It's basically a 2 month diving season.

We did 20 dives in total, including one night dive in the lagoon,  twelve at Clerke reef and eight at Mermaid Reef.  Dives were restricted to 50 minutes or 50 bar and a maximum of 30m, the site is a long way from anywhere and realistically if you get into trouble it is at least 6 hours before you are back on land and even then it's a 2 1/2 hour flight to a chamber should you need one.  We also did a drift snorkel from the lagoon out to open water  one afternoon, through 3 different channels.  There were 3-4 dives each day, at Clerke reef a tender was used to get to each site while the boat remained moored, it could comfortably take 20 people out to the site, though in the chop you did get plenty of spray.  The tender is left at Clerke reef for the duration of the season and at Mermaid reef we dived from the main boat and they had a tinnie in the water to assist divers as they came up if required, but generally the boat came and picked us up.  Luckily my assigned dive buddy and the other people who we fell into diving with were all very competent divers, all pretty good on air and didn't just swim off.  As the only photographer on the trip I didn't have a lot of time to work subjects so needed to lineup shots quickly, planning ahead to get the shots.   The last day had three dives and we were out of the water by 1:00pm allowing a full 24 hours before anyone flew out.

The diving was all very good, visibility so far from land was excellent but a little variable - in the mornings it seemed best with the sun behind us and was mostly 30-40m.  A couple of dives up at Mermaid reef had over 40m of visibility - guesstimated 50m.   Corals and sea fans were in great condition and plenty of reef fish.  The sites were mostly walls or slopes dropping off to between 20 and 50m at the sand.  Mermaid wall was a stunning divesite the water below the wall is 400m deep and we dived there was a ripping current, we covered 1.2km in a 45 min dive and you need to pay close attention to your depth.   Other sites went into the various valleys and crevices and caves in the reef wall.   We also did a drift in through the mermaid reef channel, quite a ride with a lot of fish and sharks to see, then explored the multiple small bommies where the current drops away.

Water temperature was 26-27°C, I dived in skins - frogskin bottoms and a 1.5mm neoprene top and added a enth degree vest to cut wind chill a little.

Out in the blue anything is possible in such a location though admittedly I didn't see a lot, we had a hammerhead do a pass and a quick u-turn just as we were descending on mermaid wall, saw some large pelagics from a distance, one dive there was a group of 20-30 reef sharks we spotted from about 30m away and we saw various sharks swim by but they were generally shy.  A couple of 1-1.5m humphead wrasse that I managed to get about 3m from and quite big schools of bumphead parrotfish, up to about 50 strong like big schools of buffalo grazing on the coral, again a little difficult to get super close, particularly shooting with a fisheye.  From the boat dolphins often came for a bow ride particularly in the morning and we had a big school of spinner dolphins one morning.  On the way up to Mermaid wall, we saw a Marlin leaping out of the water repeatedly, looked to be about 2m long.     At our mooring in Clerke lagoon, a lot of fish including some reef sharks hung out under our boat.  

The other factor was the isolation out in the ocean, we were often the only boat around, we had a couple of other trip boats in the lagoon on a couple of day, a fisheries boat called in briefly and there was a yacht there for a couple of days.  Quite relaxing be out there cut off from the outside world.  You could buy a satellite internet package - but that kind of defeats the purpose of getting away from it all.

Photographically it was all wide angle stuff, I used a fisheye, though I could definitely see a benefit to having some zoom capability, something like a WWL or for my m43 setup an adapted 8-15 fisheye.  I used my 12-40 on the first day and then switched for the rest of the dives to the 8mm Panasonic fisheye.  If anyone wanted to do this trip I would recommend taking along a buddy who will also be photographing and is unlikely to disappear on you!  

 

Who says you can't do split shots with a 100mm dome?   Our boat The Odyssey in near glass out conditions:

Soft corals quite profuse at mermaid reef

Longnose and redfin butterflyfish

Soft corals and sea fans from a dive at Mermaid Reef

Massive sea fan with soft corals on last dive of the trip

From our first dive at Mermaid Reef

[ChrisRoss 150]

Some more pics:

This one is just a snapshot taken to show just how clear the water was - I was at about 12m, the sand is in the 25m range, sun has been up for about 2 1/2 hours.  The divesite was Waypoint 3043 on Mermaid Reef - Vis was approaching 50m.

Bumphead Parrotfish

Pink Anemonefish and Dascyllus

Seafan with polyps out

Purple anthias were the common schoong rish around the reefs, seen here with chromis damselfish

Some sea fans on Clerke wall

[troporobo 237]

Great report Chris, thanks for taking us along vicariously!

[TimG 62]

Thanks, Chris. Sounds quite a trip! It certainly must count as one of the more remote locations.

[Nicool 26]

A very informative report Chris, thanks!
Photos attest from the clear viz for sure.
Given the uniqueness and remoteness of that destination, If I were to go I would like at leaat 60mins dives
Was there ability to fill Nx32 on board? Nx40?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ChrisRoss 150]

2 hours ago, Nicool said:

A very informative report Chris, thanks!
Photos attest from the clear viz for sure.
Given the uniqueness and remoteness of that destination, If I were to go I would like at least 60mins dives
Was there ability to fill Nx32 on board? Nx40?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hi Nicolas,

I would as well, but there is not much to choose from and it's air only on all of the boats as far as I know - these are not really dive boats as I said so they really offer only a fairly basic service - tanks weights dive stations and dive site locations as they only take divers out 2 months of the year, the waters close in to shore don't have any diving to speak of so it really can't support dive vessels like you get on the GBR for example. 

But it is a unique trip and worth doing at least once!

[diggy 53]

very nice wide-angle images, great lighting an d trip report.

Diggy

[ChrisRoss 150]

Hello all, I've now posted a gallery of shots from the trip on my website.  Feedback appreciated.

https://www.aus-natural.com/Underwater/Rowley Shoals/index.html

 

[TimG 62]

Nice, Chris! You make it look very inviting. The soft coral shots are super.

[ChrisRoss 150]

41 minutes ago, TimG said:

Nice, Chris! You make it look very inviting. The soft coral shots are super.

Thanks Tim, it really is a unique experience.

[TimG 62]

I bet! I thought Ningaloo was a challenge to get to - driving from Perth - but Rowley is something else! Good for you, mate

[ChrisRoss 150]

1 hour ago, TimG said:

I bet! I thought Ningaloo was a challenge to get to - driving from Perth - but Rowley is something else! Good for you, mate

no need to drive get on a plane in Perth and two hours later get off in Exmouth! 

[TimG 62]

1 hour ago, ChrisRoss said:

no need to drive get on a plane in Perth and two hours later get off in Exmouth! 

I wanted the challenge.. ;-) 16 hours on the road and I think we passed maybe 20 cars, a couple of road trains and some very lonely gas stations.....