Bare Island

Bare Island was part of the traditional land of the Gweagal and Kameygal Aboriginal tribes. In 1770, it was described as ‘a small bare island’ by early explorer, Lieutenant James Cook. It has served as a redundant defence against an imagined sea invasion and is most famous for being the location of a Biocyte facility creating a virus to destroy the world in Mission Impossible 2. It is arguably Sydney's most popular scuba diving site and has a lot to offer divers with a huge, easily navigable, reef system.

Ben and Tom with Bare Island in the background

I was DM and my buddies for the dive today were Ben and Tom. We had a group of 14 scuba divers and most were happy to go and do their own dive so I took a group of 5 on the first dive and just 1 on the second dive.

Spectacular sponge gardens are a feature of the West side of the Island

 On the first dive we found a half eaten lobster. The strange thing was that the head had been eaten and the fleshy tail had been left, very strange? We had a good look around the sponge gardens on the West side and navigated out to just past "John Merrrick rock" when we had to turn back due to air consumption of the group. Ian and Lachlan decided to leave us and carry on and we headed back

 Although the visibility was not the best the sponge gardens are still spectacular and I think a lot of divers swim past this area without really noticing the beauty - or maybe its just me being a 'sook' for sponges?

Bright colours and vivid shapes

Part of the western reef system

 All these pictures were taken on the first dive in the sponge gardens on the West side today.

Something has had a nibble at this starfish

 On the second dive I had some problems with my camera and I thought that maybe I had broken my fibre optic cable so I didn't take many pictures.

Moray eel didn't like the attention of my camera and came out to let me know

We did spot this moray eel and plenty of Nudibrancs. A big blue groper came by but decided not to hang around. There were a few spear fishermen in the water and I am not sure if they had spooked the Blue Groper but he did not want to be anywhere near us in the water and bolted as soon as we saw him.
15, spring has definitely arrived.