In April 2019 I returned to Hopkins Island on a six-day Rodney Fox liveaboard expedition hosted by Andrew Fox. As ever, the main focus of the Rodney Fox expedition was to see the Great Whites of the Neptune Islands but naturally the Australian Sea Lions of Seal Cove at Hopkins Island were also well worth seeing.
Since I had last been there the island has been fitted with a camera for monitoring purposes and even those with approved access must now follow strict rules. These rules include: no accessing the beach, no touching the animals, no standing in shallow waters and in our case a one-hour maximum timed visit.
Calypso, our liveaboard, moored close to Seal Cove and its RIB took our group of divers into the shallows. My two previous visits to the island had produced very different underwater conditions, 10 to 15 metres underwater visibility in 2010, just 1 metre in 2011. This time it was 5 to 10 metres but the surge in the shallows of the cove made photography challenging. However, I did get some bonus time to get more shots. When our one-hour visit concluded our RIB’s outboard motor broke down and it took over half an hour to resolve the issue. I didn’t complain!