I came back to Smyth Head on March 17, 2016. I had already done a "name brand" dive outside Becher Bay (Church Island), but the wind was too strong to safely stay out there so I came back into the shelter of Becher Bay for a second dive. Smyth Head has been my favorite spot in the bay and is usually my first choice when conditions (current, wind) are bad outside the bay. This time, because of the wind, I anchored in a small pebble bay at Smyth Head instead of tying up to the rocks at the tip of the point.
Outside the small bay, I followed the sloping rocky bottom down to a series of stepped walls going down to about 95' deep. Visibility was about 30'. On a previous dive here, I remember a wall going down to about 120' deep, but today I couldn't find it. I also didn't see the schools of black/yellowtail rockfish that I've always seen here before about 70-80' deep. Years ago, the rock walls had patches of yellow sponge/tunicate colonies and small clumps of branching hydrocoral. Today, all of them seem to be mostly gone. I almost didn't recognize the area since the marine life had changed so much. There were still the patches of zoanthids that I remembered.
