Rye Pier Melbourne VIC Australia.
Location |
Rye Pier |
Depth |
3 to 5 meters |
Entry |
Best from the landing that's near the end as its a long pier and the water is shallow in close to the shore. You could snorkel out the first 40+ meters as this is a snorkeling trail with plaques on the side of the pier. |
Bottom |
Mostly Sand with scattered rocks and different types of patchy weed. The pilons are covered with growth. |
Life |
Squid, octopus, hermit crabs, leather jackets, cow fish, pot bellied seahorses plus more. |
Comments |
This is a LONG pier with shallow water most of its length. Best dived at slack water as the currents near the heads make it difficult to spend time looking around and taking pictures when you have to constantly navigate the pilons. All the good life is under the pier with just sand to either side. Shops open until late for coffee and pizza. |
Parking |
Free parking after 8pm around 20 meters from pier with some light over your car. Ticket parking during the day. |
Leather Jacket Rye Pier 30th Dec 2004 at Night.
This is a blue ringed octopus and is showing its bright blue rings to show its angry at being woken up at night :) The only octopus we saw all night at rye which is strange considering they call the nature trail along the pier the "octopus's garden".
Been a few Spider crabs at rye during feb 2005. The light attracted krill which gave some back scatter.
Goatfish
Cow fish
Pot Bellied Seahorse, also called big bellied. Its a male as it has a pouch and big pot. I had a captive bred pair of these for a year once at home in a tank. They are bred in tasmania at a seahorse farm.
Squid, only large one we saw and the reason why the pier was full of fisherman and rods.
Dumpling Squid
A flat head and a stingray are hiding under the sand next to each other.
This is a Johnsons Weedfish (Heteroclinus johnstoni) which are rarely seen and are also know to eat crabs which is why it was hanging around rye pier after all the spider crabs had died which is an anual event. The weedfish has the tail of a ling and the head of a flathead with tassels/apendages hanging off the front of the mouth which sense water movement. The orange eyes with black centers are replicated down the weedfish's body, I think 7 sets of fake eyes on the body as can be seen in the picture below.
