Saturday, October 31, 2009

Bass & Flinders double Dive 31/10/2009

Upon arrival we found Oak Park was swarming with surfers and the swell was up so we decided to move around to the more sheltered Bass & Flinders dive site. Our Dive Master David, warned that it was only 6-8M deep but as I've never dived there I thought "why not?"

 
Schwen's camera setup
On the first dive we had a trio buddy. My buddies were Schwen and Ben, Schwen had a fairly substantial camera setup. I was trying out my red filter lens for the first time on my camera and I am happy with the results (above).
 
Ben 
We headed due East under the fishing lines and submerged to about 5M. We swam along a rock face that was teaming with life. A large and very diver friendly Blue Groper was nudging us for food and allowing the guys to stroke him.
 
Ben stroking the Groper
He was very friendly and the one of the biggest Blue Gropers I have ever seen, we saw a smaller brown/green female also, but she wasn't so diver friendly. Here is a video of him using the red filter.

 
This video was taken using the red filter: see the video below at a similar depth using the same equipment without the filter. The colour improvement is remarkable.


We went through a swim through and took our time to look under every overhang. This was a very good dive and I would recommend it to anyone. Don't be put off by the depth there is a lot of stuff to see here.

 
Caroline
The Second dive I was buddied with Caroline. We headed off ahead of the pack to avoid the congestion we encountered in our first dive. In an overhang we found a cuttlefish, a little further on we found blowfish and Nudies. I took pics of the Nudies but they came out blurred, I will have to work on the Macro settings on the camera.
 
Nudie in a sponge

We came across a Port Jackson Shark but she scuttled away quickly before I could get my camera out. We covered a lot more distance on the second dive and turned around at 2000 PSI. On the way back we found the swim through again and came across a couple of Rays that I followed to get a picture of.

timid Ray

I lost my bearings for a while and Caroline had disappeared. I spotted her in the distance and we continued back.


Eye see you

We found an Octopus with his trade mark rubbish pile around his hole (pic above). That is his eye peeking out at me in the hole.

All up 2 very good dives. I highly recommend this site to anyone and I am very happy with the results of the red filter on my camera.


View Bass & Flinders Dive in a larger map

Monday, October 26, 2009

Wreck of the Valiant "where is it?"

Up at 5AM we went out in search of the wreck of the valiant yesterday. The Valiant was apparently commissioned in 1945 by the Ministry of Munitions. The tug was 22.5 metres long, 5.4 metres wide and displaced 72 tons. A sister ship, the Fury, was built at the same time. The Valiant was powered by a Crosley HR4 diesel engine giving a top speed of only 8 knots.

Valiant
 After the end of World War II, ownership of the Valiant passed to the Melbourne Harbour Trust Commissioners. It appears that the ship was modified at this time, with water tanks added, the foredeck lowered and equipment added to suit her new role as a fire boat. It appears to have operated out of Melbourne. I do not know much more about its history but in 1975 it was still registered to the Commissioners.

In 1981 after a complicated series of events while under tow to be scuttled, the tow ropes broke and the Valiant sank approximately one kilometer east of Barrenjoey Head. reference: Michael McFadyen Scuba Diving Web Site


We boarded the "Hoochie Mumma" at the Spit and set out on our 90 minute trip to the wreck site. What started off as promising weather soon turned into fairly blustery conditions.
 
Hoochie Mumma anchor chain, bad weather
As we were anchoring over the site the crew had a mishap that caused the rear anchor to get wrapped around one of the propellers. One of the divers jumped in to inspect and it took several attempts with hammer and crowbar to remove the mangled sand anchor from the prop.
We were the first into the water and started our slow descent to the bottom of the anchor chain. I was on 33% Nitrox and was buddies with Michelle and our DM, Sam. To demonstrate the effects of narcosis, Sam had a slate of 3 brain teasers at the bottom (~28M)which I completed in 27 seconds (on the surface it took me 19 seconds). We headed out at 45 degree (suggested direction of the wreck)using a 40 M line. No sign of the wreck and only bare sand to be seen. We did a complete 360 degree search at the end of our 40M line, still no sign of the wreck.
CO2 poisoning
We had been down about 17 mins and it was time to head back. I noticed a headache starting and thought nothing of it at the time. We stayed on the anchor line at 5M for our 3 minute safety stop and then slowly surfaced. My headache was now quite severe and I suspected that something was wrong. Upon getting back on board the boat I took off my gear and felt a strong urge to throw up that was accompanying my pounding headache. I went to the back of the boat and took some fresh air. After a few minutes I started to feel better and I got a cup of tea. I suspect my headache was caused by CO2 retention (
Headache information
) as I had been skipping breaths wanting to not be the person who ran low on air first, in fact I had returned with over 100 bar while my buddy was down to 50 bar, so I must have been breath skipping quite a bit.

Feeling better we went down for our second dive after the boat had been repositioned. The Captain said that we had drifted while the rear anchor problem was sorted out and he would now get us directly over the wreck. Second dive; I focused on continuing to breathe as I did not want the CO2 retention problem again. Unfortunately we did not find the wreck again, but we did see the concrete bucket (that was attached to the rear anchor) which we saw on the first dive in the distance. None of the other dive groups found the wreck either so our boat operator apologised and blamed new sonar and sat-nav equipment that had just been re-calibrated. He offered us all a free second trip to this or any other site that they operate to - not too bad.

One poor guy was terribly sea-sick and he looked awful on the 90 min trip back. It was cold, grey and raining. I managed to doze for about 20 minutes to ease the trip.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Cuttlefish, attention seeking Blue groper and Dylan at The Monument 18/10/2009

 
video taken with no filter - red colour is lost after 5M

Dylan my dive buddy


The Monument to the Steps and The Steps 18 OCtober 2009

The last chance to dive Voodoo for this year was called off due to the swell (2.9M max from the south so Voodoo would have been hammered) We went around to the North facing Monument and Steps dive in Kurnell National Park  and did a double dive.
The DM was Rod and my buddy was Dylan.

First dive was from the monument so we dropped off our gear and drove our cars to the top of the steps before walking back down the hill (It is so much easier without the gear).

Upon descending we were surprised to see a rapidly moving turtle closely pursued by one of our divers with a camera. It was gone so fast I never had a chance to get a photo of him. We drifted with the outgoing tide towards the steps along the way we went found a small swim through which was pretty exciting. I always am hesitant before going through a swim through but always elated once I've done it. You never know what you will disturb under there and there is always the possibility of something going wrong and getting stuck but that is the thrill of the swim through. We spotted cuttlefish, octopus and a giant cuttlefish in the rocks. I took my first attempt at a video of a cuttlefish and a very curious blue groper kept coming in to see if there was a feed available.
 We did our 3 min safety stop and I was very impressed with our navigation as we surface about 20M from the Steps. This is a great site for learning navigation as there are a few landmarks around to give you some clues as to where you are.

The Second dive was from the steps and we planned a reciprocal navigation dive heading out at a bearing of 300 degrees. The visibility was very poor on the second dive and I lost sight of Dylan initially at about 5M. Luckily he had his torch and appeared out of the murk within a few seconds. We found an octopus in his scavenger garden and he shoved a large rock out of his hole at us. Searched hard for the illusive Weedy Sea dragon but was unable to find any . I have no doubt that they were there but they blend in so well with the kelp you need a trained eye or a stroke of luck to find one.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Wreck of the Bombo - dive cancelled

The scheduled dual nitrox dive on the Bombo was canceled due to the rough weather. The storms have now passed but the seas are still 2-3m swells so the boat trip out to the site was called off.
Next planned dive is for next Sunday - shore dive "Leap to The Steps"

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Camoflaged Cuttlefish


Large Slow moving mamals- Tom


Underwater Naturalist- trumpet fish


Camp Cove 10th October 2009

3 dives today at Camp Cove as most other dive sites were closed due to bad weather. The beauty of Camp Cove is no matter how rough the conditions get it is always calm and sheltered.
There is a pile of submerged rocks, to the north of the beach, that we swam out to and descended there. We swam north and found a lot of marine life in the rocks.
The purpose of the 3 dives was to complete part of the Advanced Diver course.

Dive 1 - Peak Buoyancy:
We descended and had to swim through hoops at various angles to each other without using our hands. We practices hovering about 1-2 m from the sea bed and then we were given another 3 lb weight. We had to hover at the same height without using our BCD. It involves taking a big breath and inflating your lungs more. We then had the hoops placed at various depths and had to swim through them  and finally we were given another weight and had to swim the hoops again at varying depths  without adjusting our BCD.  The course gave me a lot more confidence and really demonstrates the effect of using your lungs as a buoyancy compensator.

Dive 2 - Underwater Navigation
We swam out to a large sand area where there was very few visible reference points. Our DM extended a 30M line along the floor and we swam the length of it counting our fin strokes. My fin stokes was 34 half strokes or 17 complete strokes. We then had to swim a 30 m square course from the direction given to us by our DM. We achieved this fairly successfully. Our second challenge was a 30mx20m rectangle course but we headed South and hit the rocks before we could complete our 30M so this threw us out a bit. Lastly we swam a 30m triangular course (adding 120 degrees at each turning point). This was the most successful of all but I think it was because we were starting to follow and trust the compass rather than our own sense of direction.

Dive 3 - Underwater Naturalist
The dive brief was to keep this to a 30 minute dive and we had to spot and classify 5 marine species each. I took my new camera and decided to photograph my results. There is abundant marine life in this area and we saw cuttlefish, blue gropers, black cod, leatherjackets, trumpet fish, squid, octopus, sting ray, and a few others that I will have to look up (black and white striped fish with yellow tails?)
We were out of the water with the dive computer showing 29 minutes so a well planned and executed dive. After 3 dives I was quite tired and looking forward to the double wreck dive tomorrow.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Weekend Storms

Big Storms in Sydney over the weekend caused most shore dives to be closed. There was diving still at Oak Park but I skipped due to the inclement weather and inevitable poor visibility due to the rainfall. Apparently we have had more rain this weekend than we have had in the last 2 months.

I received my new Intova 6 with underwater housing, cant wait to try it out. I will dive with the housing only first time to see if there are any leaks then all things being well I will dive with the camera to take some snapshots.

Next scheduled dive is Friday 9th October- location is Cape Solander but given it's ocean exposure will probably be called given the forecast.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Voodoo closed out 3 October 2009

Voodoo was canceled today due to poor weather. No diving tomorrow so hopefully Monday will be a better day.