OWSI Lilli Pilli and The Steps

Another weekend of Open Water course with 4 students this weekend.

Daniel, David, Chris, Billie, George and me

 I spent most of the weekend with Billie and George. We found a rather large Wobbegong at Lilli Pilli on Saturday afternoon which was particularly exciting given that he was under a ledge near the entry and exit point.

Lilli Pilli has a lot to offer as a dive site if you take your time and look carefully. We found an Octopus, cuttlefish and Old Wives We fed the Bream with some Snappy Tom and a small Snapper came in to see what was going on.  We went along the net to the Pier and back along the reef until the visibility closed in. We saw Leather Jackets and heaps of fish on the other side of the net. Awesome dive at Lilli Pilli!

Day 2 saw us at The Steps, I must admit I was a bit unsure of the logistics of conducting an OW course at the Steps when I first heard about the location, 3 trips up and down the Steps seems daunting but it is actually a great site for this course. It has large sandy patches in about 8M - 10M of water for the skills and has great marine life in the surrounding sponge gardens and seaweed beds for very interesting after skill swims.
On Dive 2 of the course (the first dive of the second day) we completed our surface skills and conducted the CESA for each student then after a line descent conducted a few more skills. We went for a swim after our first fin pivot and met a very friendly Blue groper. He hung around with us for quite some time and just wanted to know about everything we were doing.

On dive 3, after our surface compass skills, we did a visual descent and we had to move along a sting ray who was sitting in the middle of our sand patch before we could conduct our second lot of ocean skills. After all the skills were satisfactorily completed we went for a swim around the beautiful sponge gardens to the east of the Steps.

On the last dive of the day we had a lot of fun with the hover in about 10M. I enjoy this skill and I think the students really get a good feel for buoyancy in the deeper water where they aren't fixated with their inflator/deflator and just use their lungs. We fed the fish again on a swim after this dive, the YellowTails really like the Snappy Tom tuna.

A great weekend with a great bunch of Students.

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