Online Dive Log

Wreck of The Tasman Hauler, Eden NSW

2012-02-02T13:48:00.000+11:00

WRECK NAME:	Tasman Hauler
SHIP TYPE:	Tug	SANK IN:	1988
LOCATION:	Eden	CONSTRUCTION:	Steel
TRAVEL TIME:	15 Minutes	DIVE RATING:	Advanced
MAX DEPTH:	30 Metres	AVG DEPTH:	19 Metres
AVERAGE VIZ:	12 Metres	ACCESS VIA:	BOAT

On 6 July 1988, the Tasman Hauler was stranded on rocks at Twofold Bay (presumably after dragging or breaking its mooring). She was re-floated and was soon after declared a total loss.

Tasman Hauler docked

The Tasman Hauler and Henry Bolte were purchased by the then Eden dive operator, Gary Becus, for $1 each. On 1 October 1988, he sank the Tasman Hauler and around the same time the Henry Bolte just south of Red Point off Ben Boyd National Park to start artificial reefs and to provide alternate wreck dives for his divers. Located only a few hundred metres apart, it is less than a 10 minute run south from Eden across Twofold Bay to either tug.

Tasman Hauler on a slipway

The above information taken from various sources (mostly Michale McFadyen's website)

We stayed with Merimbula Divers Lodge who I can highly recommend. The accommodation was "cosy" with 4 bunks to a room and 2 rooms to a unit but it was very clean and well maintained.

Jane in between dives

The boat trip out from Eden Wharf is about 10 minutes (provided by Merimbula Divers Lodge) and was quite bouncy but not overly unpleasant.

Jamie, Lin, Jen and James on board the ScubaPro inflatable

The wreck is pretty much still in tact (apart from some handrail on the top - but I'll leave that between myself, Jane, Kellie and Ben)


Jane on the main deck looking through a porthole

I think Jane experienced her first bout of Nitrogen Narcosis without realising it. At Oak Park or Bare Island in 8M of water she likes to stick very close to me. I often feel here holding onto my BCD or arm.

Jane relaxing on the rear deck

At 30M she was very relaxed and wanted to explore the vessel with an more adventurous nature than at 8M.

Jane posing on the propeller drive shaft next to the shroud

The Tasman Hauler's propeller is surrounded by a shroud that directs the thrust as the prop itself swivels so there is no need for a rudder.

A more relaxed Jane than usual @ 30M

This is a great wreck dive and the visibility was about 15M which I believe ids about average in this part of the world. It is not too difficult as it was scuttled with divers in mind so most hazards have been removed. After the HMAS Adelaide this would be one of the most complete wreck dives in NSW in my opinion.


Jane at the propeller of the Tasman Hauler (~30M deep)

It was a great trip with a great group of people. I would highly recommend this trip to anyone who hasn't yet explored the magical dives of the South Coast.

Broulee Cave. NSW South Coast Diving

2012-01-31T16:50:00.003+11:00

Australia Day long weekend 2012 and we headed down to Eden for a wreck diving extravaganza.
On the way down the coast just south of Batemans Bay is great little dive site at Broulee.
Broulee is inbetween Mogo and Moruya on the coast off the highway

You park as close to the Ocean as the road will allow, there is a small carp park at the end of the road. At the end of the car park are some steps and you head SSE to any suitable entry point. The cave location is shown approximately here.

View Broulee Cave in a larger map

This is a great little cave dive and is suitable for open water divers and above. We found a 2 meter long Wobbygong shark in the cave and he wasn't too happy with the attention he got from 16 scuba divers.

Jane gearing up!

This is a great dive and if you are traveling along the South Coast of NSW I would highly recommend a visit here.


Kellie pointing to the cave from the car park steps

16 of us on the trek to the ocean

Friendly sting ray

Not so friendly sting ray

Ben at the beach exit

The exit is on the beach and there is a nice little shallow swim around an interesting reef to get there.

Bare Island

2012-01-23T10:43:00.001+11:00

Double dive at Bare Island with Jane trying out her new Delta regulator and a Hera BCD.

Bare Island pre-dive briefing

Jane getting ready in the new car park

kitted out with all the new gear

Nudibeanc

Friendly and hungry Moray eel

Nudibranc

In between dives R&R

You looking at me?

Oak Park

2012-01-16T07:32:00.000+11:00

Double dive at Oak Park and 4 Scuba reviews, I need to get back into blogging the dive straight after to keep it up to date. Scuba review with Kat, Daniel, Wayne and Claire,
A nice dive at Oak Park unfortunately no pictures this week.
Looking forward to Eden next week!

274+

Open Water - The Connellan's

2012-01-10T16:43:00.001+11:00

Over the break I had the pleasure of teaching the Connellan family to dive. They really were very comfortable in the water and had no problems with any of the skills required for Open Water Certification.

Well done Rob. Michael and Jack (nemo)

Rob, Michael, me and Jack

Ring in the new and farewell the old at Oak Park

2012-01-08T09:48:00.005+11:00

A social dive at Oak Park today in 30 degree temperatures was an interesting experience.
Because summer is here and the beaches are full we had to park practically near Bass & Flinders and walk down to Oak Park from there.

I was using my new Aeris Epic dive computer with transmitter for the first time. This was the "NEW" I was ringing in from the title.

It took me a few tries to get the transmitter set up but once I had done it it seemed pretty straight forward and should not have presented too much of a challenge if I had read the manual correctly. Thanks to Sam who quickly got things sorted.

Down at the site I was buddied with Mike and Jody and we arranged to meet at 11 am at the stairs.
I realised when I got back to the car that I had forgot my weights again. Too much teaching open water makes me reliant on the trailer for the heavy stuff and today i didn't have it. After a full circuit of the dive block I found some weight. Luckily Mike had a spare 15lb so I used that.

Heading into the water for the first dive my fin strap broke, and in a way that I could not fix. This was the "OLD" I farewell-ed from the title.

So I asked Mike and Jody to go ahead without me given my car was >500m away. I saw Sam with the DM led group on the way out and I asked her if it was OK if I joined them once I fixed my strap. She said OK and I told them not to wait and I would find them. Oak Park is so easy to navigate that it would be harder not to find them. I trudged all the way back to the car and got my spare strap and returned.

I headed down to by Split Rock and waited for Sam and the group. While I was there I found this nice little sponge and took a few pics.

I was also visited by a curious Comb Wraisse who either thought I was too close to home or thought there may be a feed.

I met up with Sam and the group and followed them through the rest of the dive. We did find some nice Nudibranchs on the way back and I snapped some pics.

After the first dive we had lunch and a diver from another group had twisted his ankle on the way down to the beach. Sam was going to drive him to the hospital to have it looked at as he could not walk on it, so I led the second dive.

After lunch and a briefing we headed in for our second dive. I had 4 people in the group. Adrian, Rob, Kelvin and Jonathan. We headed out slowly along the reef wall and found many interesting things, Nudi's, Moray eel, Blue Grouper, Old Wives, Bulls eyes, to name a few.

Rob

Adrian

Johnathan

Kalvin

At Split rock I checked on their air and they all have over 150bar so we swam on to the second reef. As we neared the urinal Rob indicated to me that he was @ 110 bar so we turned around and headed back. We had a brief photo session to capture the moment.

All up 2 very good dives and although the visibility was only 3M Oak Park never fails to deliver a great dive.

On the new Aeris Epic:
I loved the transmitter and having my air gauge on my arm, it took a bit of getting used to but seeing your air in 1 bar increments is really a whole new world of detail. I am used to glancing at an analogue gauge and never really take much notice of the value the needle is pointing at as much as its general direction.

Also I have some great dive profiles That I am just learning to play with. Here is a snapshot, I'll see if I can animate these in the future. I was skeptical of the transmitter devices for all the old school reasons (battery loss, failure etc) but now having used one I can see the extra information far outweighs any possible data loss risk.

271+

Bass & Flinders Point

2011-12-11T18:09:00.000+11:00

Windy Point was the original destination but the surf was up and it was way too rough to attempt it. We went around to Oak Park and there was a surf competition on and the water was full of surfers. This obviously made things less than optimal so we headed to Bass & Flinders Point.

First dive, I took Lisa and Andrew who were using their equipment for the first time. I took another two gentlemen who had just met each other and my buddy for the day was Camilla.
Kane gave the dive briefing and we headed in for our first dive

The dive was fairly interesting and I do think this is a great little dive site if you don't set your expectations too high. It never gets deeper than 6 meters so this can disappoint the gauge watchers.
There are some interesting areas with a swim through near the end of the reef. We called this dive the Transgender Groper dive. We saw a huge brown groper that was just starting to turn blue. It was in the process of changing from a female to a male. I accidentally knocked a sea urchin off and the blue/brown groper wasn't sure how to go about it. It took him/her several attempts to eventually get a feed.

The second dive we went to the end of the reef and through the swim through and had a nice Little play with a curious octopus. At first he was scared and thought we were going to eat him, once he realized we were not going to eat him he decided to have a try at eating us. Lots more fun than it sounds :)

Forster Shark Dives - a conglomeration of forgotten

2011-11-21T11:11:00.002+11:00

A great weekend in Forester and the summer holiday season was quite evident with 30+ temperatures, and the beaches and restaurants full of tourists. The diving did not seem quite as good as May but the ocean is fickle and luck of the draw may be a bigger factor than time of the year.

Getting ready at Seal Rock

Blunder number one for the trip was forgetting my wetsuit. I had to hire a 2 piece 7mm with a 'Joan Collins' off the shoulder number (modelling above) covered by a crutch hugging 1960's James Bond top jacket.

Jane and a Wobbegong (carpet Shark)

Wobbegong from above (perfect camouflage)

We had two boat dives on the first day. We drove down to Seal Rocks from Forester and picked up the boat from the beach, it took about 40 minutes to drive. We went out to little rock for the first dive but the visibility was only about 4M. We saw a few grey nurse sharks and plenty of Wobbegongs. The Wobby are everywhere and the really deserve the name 'carpet shark' as they literally carpet the whole area.

Port Jackson Shark

Curious Puffer fish

We had a great night out on Saturday with 10 of us in The Aztec Mexican restaurant. The food was very nice and they had a live band playing that kept us very entertained for the whole evening.

Wobby and PJ best of friends (until dinner time)

Grey Nurse at Seal rocks - Big Rock

Day 2 was a little 'special' and is probably a dive that I will never forget for a very particular reason.
We headed out through the bar from Forester and the boat was almost swamped in a huge wave, but that was just good fun. We went to The Pinnacle but there was rag weed everywhere so we decided to go out to 'Spot A'. There was a 3M swell and everyone was starting to look very green by the time we arrived at the dive site. The DM jumped in and checked out the site and said the current was too strong for us to dive. He went down the anchor line at the front of the boat and his bubbles were surfacing about 10M behind the boat so the current was very strong. A blue water ascent would have seen us needing our safety sausages for sure.
Whilst this was happening at least 2 people threw up, Mexican food, red wine and a 3M swell are not a great combination. We headed back to The Pinnacle and it just seemed that we had been on the boat for too long at this time.

Grey Nurse

Close encounter

At The Pinnacle the DM jumped in to check out conditions and we started to gear up. Whilst gearing up another 3 people threw up and I started to feel very ordinary. I decided to get in the water as soon as possible. The 3M swell was making conditions difficult on the boat and the feint aroma of bile was starting to fill the air.

I decided to jump in and as I was filling my BCD, just before I stepped off the boat, I realized that my air was off. I quickly asked Jane to turn on my air as I was only just holding everything together at this point. With the air on I leapt into the ocean and started to feel much better. I watched several people throwing up over the side of the boat as it bobbed like a cork in a washing machine.

Eventually everyone got into the water and we decided to descend as quickly as possible because some people were feeling rough on the surface. I deflated my BCD and still stayed on the surface? I duck dived and swam down to 5M but as soon as I stopped swimming I noticed I was returning to the surface. That was when I realised that I had not brought any weight. I kept swimming down and after a few minutes found a large rock that I cuddled like a baby. I was able to continue the dive and spent 40 minutes carrying this large rock around the dive site. We saw a huge Eagle ray just meters away. The visibility was quite poor with al the weed in the water and we did hear that the other group almost bumped into a 3M Grey Nurse shark.

You looking at me?

Great Experience and a lesson learned to trust the marine forecast- When they say 3M swell I suggest doing something other than a boat dive.

265+

Simple rules to improve underwater photography

2011-07-12T22:14:00.067+10:00

Here are a few simple rules that will greatly improve underwater pictures.

Try to take the picture looking up at your subject
Try to ensure the natural sunlight is behind you
Fill the picture with your subject
Try to have your subject on the diagonal plane rather than horizontal plane
Use an external strobe or white balance do not use both or neither.
Use a photo editing software to clean up your pics (see this link for more information)

Below are some examples from my photos:

1. Try to Take the picture looking up rather than down on your subject.
The next 2 pictures are not a great example but I think they convey the principle.

Looking down from a 'diver perspective' makes the subject difficult for the camera to see against the background

Looking 'up' at the subject and contrasting the same subject against the water will improve the picture. Not a great example but it conveys the principle.

2. Try to ensure the natural sunlight is behind you it makes a huge difference to the result.

Notice the shadow is in front of the subject: The subject is dark from the camera perspective despite having an external strobe. A lot of the subject detail is lost.

Notice the shadow is behind the subject and the detail of the subject is much more vibrant. The scales are clearly discernible.

3. Fill the picture with your subject - get as close as you can and don't have too many distractions from your subject.

Family of clownish in their anemone but it could be better

I wanted to get closer but he was a very shy little fish. The subject is the focus of the picture with detail of the anemone as background.

Both photos taken of the same subject but the second picture captures the detail of the clown fish and his anemone.

4. Try to have your subject on the diagonal plane rather than horizontal plane

Great subject on the horizontal plane

Picture improved by adjusting the camera angle on the same subject to the diagonal plane

5. Use an external strobe or white balance do not use both or neither i.e. you must use one or the other so if you don't have an external strobe then you must use white balance.
White balance compensates for the loss of red color at depth.
Manual white balance will give the best results but you will need to take something white with you to perform the task at different depths and different visibilities.

Using both external strobe and white balance adds a red hue to the strobe light. The colors appear unnatural

Using external strobe too far away negates its effect. The green hue of the picture is common in incorrectly balanced pictures.

Correct white balance and no flash give improved results

6. Use photo editing software to clean up your pics (see this link for more information).

The only thing that cannot be cleaned up is out of focus pictures.
Try to ensure you are stable when taking a picture.
Always allow the camera time to focus before shooting if you have an auto focus function.

Diving Etiquette

2011-07-11T16:36:00.000+10:00

Yesterday whilst taking a group of students through diving equipment cleaning procedure I thought about the etiquette of diving. An open water course will teach all the written rules of diving but what are the unwritten rules? I am not referring to any life threatening errors that people may make but more over the way to behave around other divers in a diving community.

Whilst washing diving equipment there are some important steps to maintain the equipment in correct working order. Soaking the regulators in fresh water for 10 minutes to dissolve any salt, flushing out the BCD bladder with fresh water, drying and storing equipment out of the sunlight, all help to maintain your diving equipment. But what are the rules that help you maintain your diving community? For example washing boots last of all, after everyone else has washed their wetsuit. Not peeing in your wetsuit, or if you do have the decency to wait until last before dipping it in the tub .

Any other ideas for the 'unwritten rules of diving'? I am sure there must be many that seasoned divers take for granted that new divers would be well advised of.

Here are the pictures from this weekend

242-245

Minke Whale Expedition

2011-07-05T15:23:00.003+10:00

We boarded the SpoilSport on Thursday evening at 6PM after a nice meal with Mike Ball and the other guests.
The ship was very nice and we were heading for a 4 night live aboard adventure into the Coral Sea on the Great Barrier Reef in search of Minke Whales.

234-241

Open Water Course 11 & 12 June

2011-06-15T13:44:00.000+10:00

I trained 3 people last weekend but did not get to certify them because JJ needed the certifications.

Somrat, Vijay and Jasmina had all done a corporate DSD and came back to complete their open water certification. It was a wet and miserable weekend but we still had a good time under the water.

Somrat, Vijay, me and Jasmina

230-233

Photos from Advanced Course 5th June 2011

2011-06-05T18:32:00.011+10:00

I met a great group of people this weekend and while we started out with poor conditions for diving on Saturday morning the weekend turned into a very memorable time. There were a few laughs and lessons learned. Denise with her camera,and James with his upside down regs and back to front tank were highlights for me.
It was an awesome weekend with a nice group of people on Bare Island and up in Terrigal on the ex HMAS Adelaide. on Sunday

Here are the Photos from this weekend and the much discussed cuttlefish "porn" video from Oak Park.

Colin and Denise with Bare Island in the background

James, Kevin, Colin, Denise and Phil ready to Peak our Buoyancy Performance

Denise on the Navigation Adventure dive,

Denise- Where is the camera?

Kevin on the Underwater Navigation dive

James on the underwater navigation dive

Denise after the underwater naturalist dive

Self portrait of Phil

Denise with Bare Island in the background [MI2]

Colin and Kevin after 3 dives

James warm and toasty in his new wetsuit

Denise @ 9M on the ex HMAS Adelaide

Elizabeth joined us for the second day on the Adelaide

Elizabeth @ 9M on the ex HMAS Adelaide

James @ 9M on the ex HMAS Adelaide

Kevin @ 9M on the ex HMAS Adelaide

Here is the video I made of the ex HMAS Adelaide a few weeks ago- visibility was similar

225-229

Photos from Advanced Dive Course May 28th & 29th

2011-05-29T17:26:00.005+10:00

David and Joy

Elizabeth and Jane

Mathew and Michelle

May 28 Advanced Dive Course

Ready to go Underwater Naturalists

Michelle and Matthew Underwater Navigation

David and Joy Underwater Navigation

David and Joy

Elizabeth and Jane Underwater Navigation

Elizabeth and Jane

Giant Cutlefish

Michelle and the Cuttlefish

Elizabeth and the Cuttlefish

An amorous cuttlefish

Descending to 30M

Long way down

Test the SMB

Matthew has got the biggest SMB

Equalizing on our way down to the Centurion

Exploring the Wreck

David, Michelle and Joy at the Plaque on the Centurion

David, Jane and Joy at the plaque on the Centurion

David

Michelle

Jane

220-224

Shiprock and Oak Park

2011-05-27T09:41:00.001+10:00

First dive at Shiprock and second at Oak Park on Saturday 21st May.

I managed to get Jane out with me for a dive and she is really improving. We both had cameras so lots of photographs were taken.

218-219

Advanced diving course 14/15 May

2011-05-16T12:33:00.005+10:00

Another 5 PADI adventure dives this weekend to take 5 students to Advanced Diver certification.

Saturday 14th May, 3 dives = Peak Performance Buoyancy, Underwater Navigation and Underwater Naturalist: Sunday 15th May = 2 dives, Deep and Wreck

Ready to go at Camp Cove

Peak Performance Buoyancy starts with a buoyancy check on the surface and removal of 12lb in weight from 2 students (6lb each). There was a strong South Westerly blowing which was carrying us away from the flag so the surface buoyancy checks took some time.We descended and practiced fin pivots and then into a hover. Everyone managed to get a good hover going and then I passed them an extra 3lb weight. They has to take in a larger breath to maintain their hover, some had to adjust their BCD and after they settled into a hover I got them to return the weight to me and again watched them compensate for the weight change.
We then had a swim through some hoops at various heights, where buoyancy, breathing and fin kicking became important to complete the exercise. After that we had another hover session and practiced hovering in unusual positions. Most people had a lot of fun with the upside down hover.

Top Deck of the Hoochie Momma

Underwater Navigation dive briefing covers my favorite mall analogy and some practice on land with the compass. Natural navigation is the biggest part of this for me. Most people think it is working with a compass, which it is in part, but I think the most benefit comes from navigating by the current, light, surge, plants and animals. The dive itself consists of a 30 M swim counting fin kicks and timing. Followed by a 30 M reciprocal navigation and a 15M square navigation using the compass.

In between dive surface interval

Underwater Naturalist dives require that we identify 2 plants, 5 invertebrates and 5 vertebrates. These are usually the most relaxed dies of the day as they require little technical interaction. We have hand signals for plants, vertebrates and invertebrates and we go and explore the ocean. I always mention the importance of not feeding the marine life and can usually demonstrate what happens to Blue gropers when divers feed them- they become very lazy.

Elyse and Ryan

Sunday 15th May took us to Camp Cove to meet the Hoochie Momma for our deep and wreck dive. Because there was a 6M swell outside the heads we went to Chowder Bay for our deep dive. I have never dived here before and we had a whole group of other divers join us for their second day of the advanced course so we had 12 divers in the water in total (including Sam and I). Before the dive I gave everyone a fun size Crunchie bar to take down with them to observe the effect of pressure and colour change on it.

Long descent to 30M

I was the first down the shot line and was surprised at how sparse the bottom was when I go there - nothing but sand. But it wasn't sand as I kneeeld on the bottom I sank about 6 inches into it and found that it was pure silt. Chaos ensued as the 12 divers hit the bottom and the cloud of silt obscured all visibility. I managed to compare gauges with 5 of the divers closest to me but then we had to ascend as visibility dropped to an inky black zero. The ascent was interesting and I could see a few people were experiencing nitrogen narcosis. Elise signaled to me that she was down to 40 bar on our safety stop so I gave her the pony bottle to breathe from whilst we waited another minute before surfacing.
The Crunchie bar was liquefied by the pressure and everyone got to eat, or drink, their sugary treat after the dive.

Simon Black

We went to the wreck of the Centurion for our wreck dive. We did a standard circumnavigation of the wreck and the students pointed out obvious dangers that the wreck posed. We stopped by the plaque at 20M for a photo session and returned to the surface.

Steven Kong

213-217

Ex HMAS Adelaide wreck dive, Terrigal, NSW 11 May 2011

2011-05-14T05:07:00.001+10:00

The ship was only scuttled 4 weeks ago and we were amongst the first members of the public to be allowed to dive her on Wednesday 11th May, 2011.

We left Terrigal at 8am which meant I left home at 5am. With hindsight this was probably 30 mins too early given that I was on the Central Coast by 6:40am. It was a perfect morning although it was a little chilly but once the wetsuit was on that was quickly forgotten.

Here is my video of the first dive to some nice music.

HMAS ADELAIDE (FFG-01) was a long-range escort frigate with roles including area air defense, anti-submarine warfare, surveillance, reconnaissance, and interdiction. The Ship could simultaneously counter threats from the air, surface and sub-surface.

HMAS Adelaide in service

She was scuttled on April 13th 2011 after many years of controversy and court battles by parties with their own interests and agenda claiming to be environmentalists (not so enviro and more mental really!)

TECHNICAL DATA

Displacement 4100 tonnes

Length 138 metres

Beam 13.7 metres

Ships Company 186 (210 with helicopter crews)

Propulsion Two General Electric LM2500 gas turbines driving a single controllable pitch propeller

Speed 30+ knots

Weapon Systems 76mm rapid fire gun. Harpoon anti-ship missiles. Standard surface to air missiles.
Vulcan Phalanx close in weapons system. Two triple anti-submarine torpedo tubes for Mk 32 torpedoes.

Aircraft Up to two SeaHawk helicopters

Our skipper from Pro-Dive was Bob and he ensured all the necessary paperwork and checks were done before we headed out.

Bob pictured before the Adelaide was scuttled.

The visibility was about 5M and the wreck itself is huge. It sits in 30M of water with 2M under the sand, so you can get down to 32M inside the ship but only 30M outside. I imagine the sand line will creep up outside the ship over time.

We started about mid ship and made our way to the starboard bow. At the bow we could see her proud :01: numbers and found a small swim through (apparently through the laundry) and went through to the port side. We then headed up to the upper deck and swam back past the mast and funnel. We could see divers deep inside the wreck from the top of the funnel.

Me in the Captains chair

From the Funnel we went to the top of the helicopter deck but did not descend in order to avoid a sawtooth dive pattern. We turned back and found an anemone that has started to grow inside the bucket on top of the helicopter hangar.

We turned back and did a blue water stop for 1 min @ 9M and a safety stop for 3 min @ 5M. We headed back to shore, only a 5 min trip, to get our second tanks and take our 1 hour surface interval before the second dive.

At 10 am we headed back out for our second dive and I took photographs this time. I was using my new Intova 12M pixel camera, new slave flash and new wide angle lens attachment.

Lindsey was my buddy and we planned to enter the ship this time and have a look around.

We swam into the middle of the ship on a mid deck and it was very dark. Lindsey decided not to follow me so I turned back and we swam up to the bridge.The Bridge is still recognizable and the captains chair is still there and will undoubtedly be the source of many photographs.

information on the bridge

The bridge console

After the bridge we swam back along the top deck and found this little array of plugs and things that will probably become a haven for marine life in the future.

We ascended up the mast this time and the top of the mast is in about 10m. We stopped @ 9M for 1 min and again a safety stop @ 5M for 3min.

On the day it was very business as usual but now I look back these were probably the two best dives i have ever done. The ship is a magnificent dive attraction and will take many dives to become familiar with the layout and will only be enhanced as the marine life moves in.

The inaugural Abyss dive on the HMAS Adelaide crew

After the dive i had fish and chips with Keith, Jenny , Brett and Michelle. I went to the top of the nearby lookout and took a picture of the wreck location. It is difficult to see the buoys in this picture but this is where she lays off Avoca Beach.

The location of the HMAS Adelaide from the surface

211-212

PADI Advanced Diver Course 7/5/11

2011-05-09T23:02:00.007+10:00

I did a write up of this weekend but it all got lost in the blogger crash on May 12th- Maybe I'll write it up again... or maybe not. Here are some pictures from the weekend.


Hugues Brastel

Duncan Fish

James Mathews

Daniel Anderson

James Dean

205-209

Open Water Course Lilli Pilli and Camp Cove

2011-05-06T13:22:00.000+10:00

Another open water course this weekend with 2 students who unfortunately did not complete all the requirements during the weekend so will need to come back for their final dive before certification.


Theresa, me and Anthony

Saturday was a wet and miserable day and all our clothing got soaked while we were in the pool.

Sunday was a great day at Camp Cove and we completed Open Water Dives 1,2, and 3.

202-205

Open Water Course, Lilli Pilli and Camp Cove

2011-04-19T11:42:00.000+10:00

Another Open Water course this weekend in what started off as a very wet Saturday morning but ended up as a pleasant sunny Sunday afternoon.

Ulrika, Olaf, Emma, Bret, Andrew, Adam and me

Our Saturday afternoon dive let me touch a Wobbegong on the tail, he was inside the Shark Net at Lilli Pilli. I have no idea how he got in there, unless someone caught him on the pier and dropped him in.

Day 2 was at Camp Cove and we had a lot of fun with the Octopus and Juan and Kali joined us for the course.

Juan, 2 scuba refreshers, Kali

3 dives at Camp Cove in my new wetsuit Vulcan 7/6 semidry -awesome wetsuit I highly recommend it.

197-201

Advanced Open Water Course, Oak Park, Royal Shepherd and The Centurion

2011-04-11T06:05:00.006+10:00

Four open water divers became students again this weekend to undertake the Advanced Open Water Course with Abyss Scuba Diving. This time there would be no mask floods. This was about learning different types of diving and increasing their in-water skills.

Patrick, Corinna, Petra and Jonathon were going to complete five adventure dives during the course after having completed all of their theory online. The first day took us out to Oak Park where Sydney put on an awesome day .

Petra hovering

Patrick hovering

First adventure dive was Peak Performance Buoyancy. After a dive briefing we headed out with our 3 submersible rings for the course. We completed a surface buoyancy check and removed more weight from the divers than I could safely carry (I think we removed about 18lb in total), so I put some on the sand to take back after the dive. We descended and completed a fin pivot into a hover, before having a swim around: A number of Blue Gropers came to see what we were up to and stayed with us for the duration of the dive. They are always so curious as to what we are up to. After a lot of practice hovering again we had some fun swimming through the rings at different depths. I think everyone got a lot from this dive and the skills learned here were practiced throughout the weekend. Patrick particularly liked hovering upside down and practiced it on every dive.

Second adventure dive was Underwater Navigation: After an on-land compass usage refresher, a good discussion about natural navigation and a practice of our navigation patterns for the dive, we went for our second dive. The visibility was excellent at Oak Park and it probably made this course a bit easier because we could see 20m. Everyone learned how many kick cycles they need to travel 30m and approximately how long it takes them to travel that distance. I was really impressed with everyone's square navigation. There was time on this dive for playing with the Blue Groper again, who wouldn't leave us alone, and practicing our hovering techniques.

ball of catfish

Last adventure dive for Day One was the Underwater Naturalist dive: The students had to identify 2 plants, 4 invertebrates and 5 vertebrates. This was easier than it sounds and I only caught one person out with the sponge, which is an invertebrate animal but most people think it is a plant. This was a great dive and we saw so much. We saw the biggest ball of cat fish, they were about 2m long. Corinna has a knack for spotting Moray Eels which she displayed magnificently on this dive. Sam joined us and took plenty of photos.

Cuttlefish on the Underwater Naturalist dive

Sam capturing the kodak moment

One of the many vertebrates that we found

Day Two had 2 adventure dives in Sydney Harbour, Deep and Wreck. We met at Camp Cove at about 9:45am and geared up before waiting to be picked up by our boat for the day. The boat arrived for us at 10:15am so we swam out and headed out to our deep dive for the day on the wreck of the Royal Shepherd.

We descended the anchor line and tied my reel off at the bottom of the anchor. We headed in the direction that the anchor had been dragging in the sand and found the wreck about 20m from the anchor.

Royal Shepherd in better condition

On Monday 14 July 1890 at 11.15 pm the SS Hesketh, a heavily laden collier heading into Sydney Harbour, collided with the Royal Shepherd and she sank within 10 minutes, luckily no lives were lost.

Petra and Jonathon at the propeller of the Royal Shepherd

We explored the propeller, flywheel and boiler of the old steamer. We made note of some changes in colour at depth and had a bit of fun with an egg. There was a wobbegong sitting in the flywheel and he blended in very well with his surrounds. We ascended and hung on the anchor line for our safety stop before surfacing.

Corinna near the propeller of the Royal Shepherd

Corinna at the fly-wheel of the Royal Shepherd

Patrick at the boiler of the Royal Shepherd

Corinna at the boiler of the Royal Shepherd

Map of the Centurion - Courtesy of NSW Heritage Office

We had donuts, tea, soup, biscuits and jellies for lunch before heading over to our second dive for the day, the wreck of the Centurion. We descended the line and everyone was now excellent at maintaining good buoyancy and we all hovered around the wreck like blowflies, rather than dragging along the bottom kicking up sand. Everyone identified various hazards around the wreck with our distinctive nose wave signal and we read the plaque and fed the fish while we were down there.

The plaque 18m below the surface on the wreck of the Centurion

Jonathon on the wreck of the Centurion

Moray Eel on the Centurion

Sergeant Baker got very excited when we fed the fish with Snappy Tom

We ascended the anchor line and performed our safety stop before returning to camp cove with 4 newly certified Advanced Divers. Well done!

193-197

OWSI Lilli Pilli and The Steps

2011-04-04T11:59:00.030+10:00

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.

189-192

OSWI - Lilli Pilli & Camp Cove

2011-03-28T10:03:00.004+11:00

Another OWSI course this weekend with no photographs this time:

San Souci- pool
Lilli Pilli - Saturday afternoon
Camp Cove Sunday- a late day!

Robbie and Kate

Simona and Christian

Robbie Girdler

Kate Silver

Kelpie who didn't tag himself on FB

185-188

Poor Conditions cancel diving

2011-03-21T07:50:00.001+11:00

March 19th was scheduled to be a dive at Voodoo but on the day a reported 4M swell from what appeared to be every direction closed out most sites.
The King tide from the moon being the closest it has been to the earth for 20 years meant The Monument and Sutherland Point would have been out of the question.

All things considered, despite the huge rainfall it was a dry weekend as far as diving was concerned.

Open Water 5th & 6th March 2011

2011-03-07T20:00:00.003+11:00

This weekend Brett Poole and I took 5 students through their PADI Open Water certification and 1 person on a DSD (discover scuba diving)

(Left to Right) Kate, Soojin, Ben,Alex, Brett, Maria, Me and Jeff

The weather was quite cloudy and the swell was up which is good and bad respectively for diving. We spent the first 2/3 of Saturday in the pool completing confined water dives 1-4 before heading off to Lilli Pilly for our first open water dive.

The whole crew off for their first open water dive at Lilly Pilly

The visibility was quite good and I managed to get a few pictures of the students on their first dive. Brett and I took the group along the shark net at Lily Pilli and out across the reef. There are some really nice areas along here and the visibility was about 5M which was OK given the ocean conditions and the rain.


Jeff DeLong


Alex Overholt


Maria with Alex in the background

Soojin Chung with Brett just out of shot


Kate Godwin


Ben Godwin

Alex, Jeff, Maria and Brett

Day 2 had a perfect diving day for us at Bare Isalnd. The visibility was 15- 20 M at times, a treat usually only reserved for the colder months.
We completed open water dive 2, 3 and 4 and everyone successfully entered the ranks of PADI open water scuba diver.
They are a really nice group of people and I would love to go diving again with them. I know Maria, Jeff and Alex are all going back overseas soon so I wish them well and hope they have many great dives.

Me, does my face look fat in this- Newsflash! :)

181-184

Oak Park & The Blue Groper

2011-02-22T09:26:00.002+11:00

Saturday 19th February 2011

Jane - geared up and heading down to Oak Park, Jibbon Street, Cronulla for a dive with Colin.

The Blue Groper followed us around and he is really friendly.

The Blue Groper just kept swimming up close and was really curious.

This is a cuttlefish that Colin found under a rock ledge.

'Diver' hair - ready to go in for a second dive.

This is Colin with the Blue Groper.

It's all about the Groper - they are so friendly

This cuttlefish didn't look too friendly - Colin was checking him out

This 'slug' was really colourful and about 4 inches long - pretty amazing

179-180

Oak Park

2011-01-29T22:45:00.006+11:00

Double Dive as DM:

Wobbegong x 2 , cuttlefish

IOU 1 update

174-175

Week later The Steps double dive as DM :

176-178

ShipRock & Oak Park

2011-01-29T22:45:00.005+11:00

Double dive as DM:

IOU 1 update

172-173

SHell Harbour

2011-01-29T22:42:00.003+11:00

Double dive at the Gutters and The Gravel loader:

IOU 1 update

171-172

The Steps

2011-01-09T17:21:00.003+11:00

A great double dive at the steps today with my new buddy Marty. I had some problems with the camera today, mostly around the flash. I think the fibre optic cable may be damaged as the flash only fires sometimes. I asked Marty to check if my flash was working before the first dive... it wasn't.

Here is a collection of photos from todays 2 dives.

Moray Eel

Goat Fish

Cuttlefish

Nudibranch

Port Jackson Shark Egg

Nudibranch

A New Nudibranch (I've never seen this one before)

Add caption

Comb Wraisse

Weedy SeaDragon

Sting Ray

Two great dives again in Sydney. Here is a slideshow of all of the days photographs.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

169-170

OWSI

2010-12-31T13:38:00.005+11:00

Another open water course completed yesterday (29 & 30 December 2010)

MATTHEW O KEECH
JOHN R FINGLETON
CALOGERO M PANVINO

165-168

Open Water Course

2010-12-23T14:25:00.001+11:00

We started with a pool session in Lilli Pilli Pool where there was some concrete grinding going on nearby that made it very difficult to talk to the students in the pool. One student had to repeat the tread water session at the end of the skills and everyone completed their closed water dives succesfully.

The wind was howling from the West and the mouth of the Georges River was like a washing machine as we left the pools to travel down to Oak Park for our first open water dive. I was amazed to find Oak Park as flat as a mill pond. There was not even a ripple near the waters edge as it is completely sheltered from the Westerlies.
We had a great first dive and was visited by very friendly blue gropers, goat fish and even saw a small bull ray departing as we approached.

Day 2 was at Bare Isalnd where we had our final 3 dives. The swell from the South East was quite large and at high tide it was a bit hairy getting out on the East side of the island.
After the first dive the swell settled as the tide dropped so we completed all three dives on the East side.

Another 3 successfully entered the ranks of Open Water Scuba Diver.

160-164

Busy time for diving

2010-12-09T20:37:00.005+11:00

I have a few OW courses booked for the next few weeks but my next shore dive is Sunday December 19th at Windy Point.

I hope to see you there

I have no idea where the name Windy Point comes from, perhaps because to dive here you need calm seas, normally present when there are strong westerly winds. Head past Cronulla as if going to Oak Park. Drive down Ewos Parade past Shelly Park and turn left into Rostrevor Street. Park near the end and walk down the small access path between the houses to the waterfront.
The dive site is seen as soon as you reach the concrete walkway. There is a path down on to the rock platform straight ahead of you. Go to the right once you reach the rocks and zigzag to the bottom of the platform. There are a couple of good entry and exit points, depending on the tides. Try either of the small inlets or the small point in between. A good exit point is the flattish rock to the north-east. Check that the conditions are okay for entry and exiting before gearing up as this can be a difficult spot to exit in north-easterly winds.

Courtesy Michael McFadyen Site

OWSI - Oak Park & Bare Isand 4 dives

2010-12-07T22:16:00.002+11:00

Another weekend of Open Water Instruction. Things are getting really busy now the summer has arrived and the class numbers are huge:. With plenty of instructors on hand Abyss are able to still maintain the instructor/student intimacy and deliver an excellent training package for new studensts.

I certified 2 students this weekend : PAUL ARUNDEL and KRISZTIAN KORMO. They both breezed through their confined water dives and quickly took to the ocean without any drama. After our ocean skills were completed we still had time for a few swims which was just like diving with certified buddies.

Paul, Me & Kris

Open Water Scuba Instrucor

2010-11-29T18:55:00.006+11:00

Another weekend of Open Water Scuba Instruction this weekend:


Heather, Dan, me and Chris

I was lucky enough to have 3 really great students that had no problems getting through all the skills required for PADI Open Water certification . I did have some problems finding the pool as we have changed venues over the last few weeks but nobody told me, so I sat in Cars Park for 15 minutes wondering where everyone else was!

I will start to keep a record of students that I certify as I think it is a really great step and may be the start of a great diving career. I still remember the guy that I completed Open Water certification with in 1986, he was Terry Morrison of Tweed Dive Shop in Tweed Heads. I assume he has retired by now as he was no spring chicken in October 1986. I was certified by the National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI) and it was quite a different process to what we teach today.
As I recall it was 2 full weeks of training 1 week in the marina in about 2M of water and 10 open water dives in various locations (Cook Island was the main location for most of the ocean dives). I remember the theory exam was quite in depth and we needed to know stuff that I never touched on again until Dive-Master. After certification with NAUI we were certified to go to 40M, which in hindsight is not really the safest approach, although the training was more rigorous than open water today. I think the current PADI approach encompasses a better staged approach to get people more easily into diving. You really had to love it in those days to get through the courses.

Here is my original diving certification. The photo had to be in Black and White in those days (yes we did have colour!) and I had hair!

Certified by me this weekend were:
HEATHER MACGILLIVRAY
DANIEL RICHARDS
LUKE VOLKER

Thanks to Emma and the staff at Abyss for their usual support and encouragement.

Lessons learned this week:
Make sure the teaching locations haven't changed since last time:
Have a full set of slates for any eventuality
Remember to pack your regs for the second days diving
Don't wash gear in the rain

The Steps

2010-11-20T23:58:00.005+11:00

A double dive at the Steps today where Della and I were the DM. Sydney put on a magnificent day and the water temperatures are really climbing with my computer reading 18 degrees on the first dive.

High Tide was before 8am with Low tide about 2:30pm so we had an outward current for the first dive and headed West.

The visibility was about 5M and we saw a few rays and we were accompanied by a blue groper for a big part of the dive.

There were heaps of Nudibranchs and with the low visibility they were the best photograph opportunities of the day.

View The Leap/Steps Dive Site in a larger map
Map courtesy of Mihn Tran Visit www.minhtran.info for more information or follow link in the side bar

Above is one of those blue hairy Nudii's in a nice sponge garden

Today's interesting event occurred when we found that we had brought 2 unfilled tanks for one of the divers on the club shore dive. We decided to give the diver one of our tanks each and sit out one dive each. As Della wanted to take the second dive towards the East she stayed on the shore to DM for the first dive.

We found some large starfish.

I took 6 divers with me towards the West and we had a relatively short dive (38 mins max depth 11.8M). One diver was down to 50 bar by the time we hit the surface while another diver, who had his own 125 cf tanks, still had 150 bar. I decided to use the 125 cf tank with 150 bar in and join the second dive. The second dive was longer and a bit deeper (49 mins 12.6M) but I still hit the surface with just over 50 bar

Nudi's galore!

This is a sea slug egg

Yet another Nudibranch


School of Eastern Pomfreds

The Monument and the tide

2010-10-20T12:59:00.019+11:00

Jane and I went to the Monument in Kurnell for a shore dive on the 8th October.

For more information on the site see http://sydneyscubadive.blogspot.com/2010/06/monument.html

We found the usual Nudibrancs

There was a very strong current on the dive today which was quite surprising given that we were in the water about 30 minutes after high tide. There was a spring tide which saw a low of 0.4M and a high of 1.7M. followed by a low of 0.3M This caused a huge volume of water to want to move out of the bay in the 6 hours between high and low.

A Whitear Fish (Guess how he got his name?)

It was like trying to dive on a very windy day. We had to hold on to the rocks to maintain position and swimming forward took a lot of effort. While trying to hold on to take a photograph we were getting hit with loose kelp 'blowing' past like tumbleweeds

Mosaic Starfish

Obviously this site is impacted by the size of the tide, so it is something to bear in mind if you are considering diving here.

Octopus holding up shells for privacy

Bare Island

2010-10-04T08:54:00.013+11:00

The October long weekend brought heavy rain to Sydney and flat seas which makes great diving conditions. The rain coupled with the NRL grand final saw only a handful of divers out today.
Today the DM was Oscar and my dive buddy was Hollie . The visibility was really good, considering the rain we have had,. I guess the storm run off hasn't hit the bay yet, or the storms of recent weeks have cleared the water up? Whatever the cause the visibility was about 10M which is great for Bare Island.

We found various Nudibranchs, Moray eels, heaps of Port Jackson Shark eggs, starfish and the friendliest blue groper.

Blue Groper

Nudibranch

Moray Eel

Port Jackson Shark egg

I love the sponge gardens to the West of Bare Island. The great visibility really gives you a better appreciation of just how beautiful this area is. Usually in 2-5M viz you don't get to take in the volume of this area.

Sponge Gardens to West of Bare Island

Starfish

Interesting Plant with an anemone in the centre

Another Nudibranch

Our first dive was to the East side of the Island and I found an Eastern Blue Devil Fish in the large overhang. I took several photos but something went wrong with my camera. I think the strobe maybe wasn't getting in the crevise because the pictures came out like there was no flash. I checked at the time and the strobe was firing and all my other pictures came out so something about the position of the camea and strobe must have affected the picture. Here is the poor result!

Eastern Blue Devil fish with no flash!

And another Nudibranch

Mosaic Starfish

The second dive of the day was to the west side and was a very nice dive. Holly and I found a friendly blue groper that stayed with us for most of the dive. Every time we went to look at something he was right in there seeing if he was getting a feed. We surfaced out over John, Merrick rock after a 3 min safety stop and had about a 100M surface swim. We choose to do this to spend more time in the sponge gardens and because we knew that the bay was like a millpond. Obviously if there had been a swell hitting the island then this would not have been a good idea.

Hollie and the Blue Groper

Here is a slide show of all today's photos from the 2 dives at Bare Island:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

All up 2 good dives on one of Sydney's most popular dive sites.

Bare Island

2010-09-26T22:53:00.003+10:00

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.

Voodoo and The Steps

2010-09-15T13:53:00.006+10:00

The shortest dive at Voodoo ever!

Voodoo is at the end of Sir Joseph Banks Drive in Kurnell. Named by surfers after the almost supernatural sets unleashed upon it, Voodoo should only be attempted when the wax heads are elsewhere. Like Cape Solander, this site should only be done by experienced divers and only when conditions are exceptionally placid.

Carolina and her husband (sorry forgot his name)

I was the DM and unfortunately, out of the group of 12 divers, we had 5 Open Water divers and one person fresh out of his Open Water course. After assessing the conditions and taking on board the advice of 2 other experienced DM's we decided to give it a try. We had 2 instructors and 2 regular diving DM's with us so we figured we could handle getting the novices through the cauldron into the ocean.

We managed to get everyone out into the Ocean without event but as this site is so infrequently dived I had a full group of 12 divers wanting to accompany me. This was not too daunting given the visibility was probably up to about 10M. I told everyone to keep close and I stopped frequently for a head count.

Carolina photographing Nudibrancs

10 minutes into the dive we came across a pack of PJ's and everyone got a photo opportunity. The novice diver signaled to me at this stage that he was at 100bar and we needed to turn around. I had briefed the other divers that I would have to turn around based on the fastest user of air and 5 decided to leave me at that stage and carry on, 7 divers turned around with me and we returned to the exit point. Total dive time 23 minutes including a 3 min safety stop.

The swell had come up a bit, Tom (a DM) went in first to lead the way and I stayed and sent the pack in single file behind him. There were 2 people on shore who helped the divers out of the water and we got everyone out without incident. Although the exit was exciting the dive was just way to short and we really need to make this an "Advanced Dive". This is not a good site for novices to cut their teeth, they would be just as excited blowing bubbles at Oak Park, Bare Island or Camp Cove.

Nice Nudie

Carolyn had called the shop while we were in the water because I think she expected some sort of injury looking at the divers and conditions, but no one so much as broke a finger nail. I had no intentions of repeating the first dive and the conditions were getting worse so we went around to The Steps for the second dive.

Octopus

The Steps was very calm and a much nicer dive given the group that we had on the day. Here are a few photos from the day but as acting DM I tend to pay more attention to head counting than photography so not many good opportunities this week.

Port Vila, Vanuatu. Wreck of the Konanda

2010-09-10T14:28:00.005+10:00

I've just got back from a cruise around the South Pacific and was lucky enough to get a chance to dive the Wreck of the Konanda in Port Vila, Vanuatu.

On 20 January 1955 a vessel called MV Konanda was launched from the D ramp; J Boot shipyard in Aphen, River Rhine, The Netherlands. The ship was built for the Adelaide Steamship Company.

MV Konanda as a working ship

The new ship was 153.25 feet (51 metres) long and 29.91 feet (9 metres) wide with a depth of 8.91 feet (3 metres). It had a tonnage of 414 gross (145 net) and was registered with Lloyds as 1196736. The ship was put into service carrying raw sugar between Cairns and Mourilyan and Goondi in Queensland.

MV Konanda about to be scuttled

During 7th amd 8th February 1987 she was wrecked by Cyclone Uma and declared a total loss. The written off vessel was sold to Iririki Islands Resort to be stripped and sunk as a dive attraction. The picture above shows her before she was scuttled. refence: Michael McFadyen's Scuba Diving Website

We used Nautilus Dive in Port Vila to take us out to the wreck and give us a local orientation briefing of the site. They were very good in terms of friendliness and site knowledge but they did lack some of the standard safety procedures that I am accustomed to in Sydney. Nothing major, but noticeably they overlooked hazard warnings, buddy check reminders, lost buddy procedure, dive time maximums and air tank minimums in the briefing. They did have 2 DM's with the group and handled everything really well and it seemed like a well trodden path.


Top of the Mast of the MV Konanda now encrusted in coral


Jane with the mounted telescope


Entering The Wheelhouse

The Stern appeared eerie in the poor visibility


Inside the wreck

inside the wheelhouse

Jane on the deck of the Konanda

Small clusters of coral are growing on the handrails

The visibility wasn't great with about 5-8M max but this added to the spooky feeling I always get on wrecks.
We met some other people from the cruise and a nice guy named Steve gave me some video footage that I have cobbled together with my footage to create this video from the day.

Steve, if you read this and want to go diving or if you want copies of my photos from the day let me know?

Dry Suit Diving

2010-08-25T09:51:00.005+10:00

I took the Dry suit course last weekend and had a familiarisation session in the pool followed by 2 ocean dives at Oak Park

Sam was the instructor and Ben and Chris were the other participants on the course.

Sam, Chris, Me and Ben

Overall the drysuit was good but I don't know that Sydney shore diving warrants the expense and trouble of a dry suit. Sure it gets cold in July and August but a good 7mm semi-dry with a hood is really all that is needed to keep diving.

Chris, Sam, Ben and Me in the dry suits

I found that my kicking action under the water had to be adapted as I tended to pull my legs in towards my body due to the air and extra buoyancy in my legs in a dry suit.

The extra weight required for a dry suit is quite something. I usually dive with a 7/5mm wetsuit with 8lb but with the dry suit I needed 24lb which makes the walk from the shore to the car a chiropractors nightmare.

Sydney put on a typical sunny winters day for the course that lessened the value of the dry suit. On the day If it had of been 12 degrees and windy the dry suit would have offered so much more value, but it was 20 degrees and sunny with factor 30 sun protection needed more than a dry suit.

The "Onesy" (1'sy) underneath the drysuit is a great piece of clothing and caused great amusement at times.

Sam, Colin & Ben in the "Onesy"

If I were to regularly go diving further south on a boat in the winter or take up Cave Diving then I would consider owning a dry suit. but for Sydney shore diving a good 7mm Vulcan wetsuit seems to offer me better value for my needs.
I know that I could moderate the temperature for year round diving with a dry suit by selecting different undergarments but my back just would not cope with all the extra weight required.
I recommend trying a dry suit in a course if you want to find out more or if you find it too cold in the winter to continue diving it would be a great solution as they are most definitely warmer than wetsuits. But for a rugged old Pom like me the water just doesn't get that cold in winter.

Shiprock and Oak Park

2010-08-15T11:36:00.006+10:00

Two good dives yesterday first at Shiprock and then after the mystery of the Key was solved a trip down to Oak Park for the second.
Shiprock can normally only be dived for the short period between 25 minutes before and about 30 or so minutes after the peak of high tide (you can also dive at low tide but I would not recommend it). At other times, the water is subjected to very strong tidal currents and very poor visibility. Located at the junction of Burraneer Bay and Port Hacking on Sydney's southern outskirts, the name comes, not surprisingly, from a large rock on the shore's edge which, when viewed from the water, resembles a ship.

Shiprock ia an aquatic reserve and there are always interesting things to see here.

A Stripey (Microcanthus strigatus) hiding in the rock wall

A pair of pygmy cuttlefish

A stripped dumpling squid

The flora at Shiprock is very colourful


Inside the bubble cave, the water isn't green it is just the effect of the white balance

Molly at Oak Park wanted photographs underwater

Molly with the friendly blue groper

A nudibranch

He accompanied us for most of the dive

Molly with an inquisitive Comb Wrasse

Molly on the surface after the dive

After the dive at Shiprock my car key had completely vanished. Everyone helped me search and after a few frantic minutes it turned up in the lunch bag. Logic told us it had to be near but despite frantic searching it eluded us for several worrying minutes. Gavin and Brett had their keys in my car.

When we arrived at Oak Park we had a nice lunch on a magnificent Sydney August afternoon before going on our second dive. Molly was my buddy and she wanted some underwater photographs and I am always looking for a subject so we got along well.
Visibility was slightly worse at Oak Park with maximum of 5M. There is always interesting things here and the Blue Gropers were very excited to see the divers in the water. They followed us around like over stimulated Labrador puppies.
The exit was exciting in some nice surf but everyone got out without event and was richer for the experience.

Two great dives again in Sydney. Here is a slideshow of all of the days photographs.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

OWSI

2010-08-09T12:59:00.004+10:00

No recreational diving this weekend as I spent the weekend on an Open Water course.

I am DM on the 14th at Oak Park.

Maybe some photos and a dive report next week.

Cape Solander- The Leap

2010-07-31T19:09:00.015+10:00

We arrived at Cape Solander to find the gates locked to the shore area. We called the Park Rangers who told us it was too wet so they were not allowing cars down the track. We walked down the road anyway to check out the site and the length of the walk. We saw 3 seals basking on top of the water about 5m away from the rocks. It was a little rough with waves sending spray 5M into the air and the cars being so far away we decided to head down to the Leap instead. Strangely enough it was about as calm as I have ever seen conditions at the Leap so the swell must have been hitting Cape Solander but not the Leap.

Here is Michael and Marek entering the water at the leap: Look how calm it is!
My buddy was Gavin and we decided to limit our dive to 50 minutes

We found quite a few Port Jackson Sharks (PJ's), Here is Gavin with one.

I am trying slideshows rather than individual photos. This pictures on this slideshow were all taken on the 2 dives today.

The water was great today. My dive computer registered 14 degrees on the first and 16 degrees on the second dive and I have to admit that I didn't notice the cold at all. My lavacore hood is doing a great job of keeping me warm. I think the greatest heat advantage comes from the hood preventing water trickling down my neck, with the water flow in my wetsuit minimized I am warm and toasty after a few minutes.

We found an assortment of usual and unusual creatures.
This is a sort of underwater tortoise I believe is called a Baylene ? Anyone know what it is?

A ball of catfish: What was quite funny is when the camera flashed the ball of heads, tails and side bodies turned into a mass of faces as all the catfish turned towards the camera as if to say "what was that?"

There are some beautiful fans and sponge gardens on this dive.

We found a cute pygmy cuttlefish and some very nice nudibrancs along the way.

I found a bottle with 1955 stamped on the bottom, it was probably thrown from a passing ship and has remained in good condition on the bottom for 55 years. I left it there as it is a little piece of history only for divers to admire.
A lot of PJ's and many starfish made this another great dive.

Note to self: hold my camera in front of me when going through swimthroughs. I kept getting stuck in a swimthrough that I should have been able to fit through and Gavin told me later that my camera was floating behind me and jamming between the rock and my tank - Ouch!

Dive profile: First dive 20M 52minutes: Second dive 15M 50 minutes:

There were only 6 divers out today! Where are you winter divers? It really isn't cold. I am DM at Oak Park on 14th August, that is my favourite dive site and there is so much to see and do.

Bare Island 17th July 2010

2010-07-19T18:01:00.007+10:00

A single dive today at Bare Island in Botany Bay. Mikhail (sic?) was my buddy and Carolyn was the DM (pictured above).
The visibility was excellent as the winter brings clearer water from the ocean.

A White ear nestled in a sponge

There are some beautiful sponge gardens on this dive and some fantastic creatures but the construction works in the bay has left a coating of silt on most things.

We came across a few sleeping Port Jackson Sharks in a swim-through and we found this one out on the sand taking in the view.

I found an interesting fish who reacted amazzingly to my flash. He put out these huge blue and black wings and threw up his feather fins. Does anyone know what he is?

We found an octopus in his lair - He thought Spain would win the World Cup as well but didn't want to get involved in a big media circus.

and the usual nudibrancs, starfish and .... dont know?

Can anyone tell me what this last one is?

Great dive as usual at Bare Island. I think I am going to look into dry-suits as I wasn't cold on the dive but took a while to get warm once I got out. The dry-suit divers had no such problems and I think if I am going to do 2 dives for over an hour in July and August it will be worth investing in a dry-suit.

Magic Point Shark dive 10th July 2010

2010-07-19T17:39:00.004+10:00

I was DM on the magic point shark dive so I didn't take my camera with me so no photographs of this dive.

I must admit the dive exceeded my expectations with sightings of 9 (some counted 11) Grey Nurse sharks. We also saw an Angel shark and a large sting ray.

I would recommend this dive as the boat trip is relatively painless with pick up from Long Bay and a 5 minute boat ride to the dive site. On this day the visibility was excellent with up to 20M.
I used a waterproof bag to take my towel, sunscreen and a few other divers personal belongings to the the boat (it is a swim out to the boat -no gangplank) but you really don't need anything once you are on the boat other than your dive gear.

Here is a video some others took on this dive- it needs white balancing hence the green hue but I shouldn't be so picky :)

Oak Park - Amazing winter diving in Sydney

2010-07-04T15:22:00.017+10:00

With the colder water the creatures of the deep are feeling amore. We witnessed territorial disputes amongst the cuttlefish and found 2 cuttlefish getting jiggy.

Santiago and me before the dive

My new slave strobe, learning to focus and adobe Photoshop is starting to pay off with great improvements in my pictures from yesterdays dive.

Here is a slide show of the days photos.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

The water is getting colder with my computer registering a temperature of 14 degrees. This is probably surface wind chill temperature but it does feel colder than previous weeks. I invested in a new lava core hood ( Lavacore by Pinnacle - Oceanic ) and I must say I did like the improvement in head heat. It seemed to add a little buoyancy and was nowhere near as restrictive as a neoprene hood. If you are worried about the cold then you should try one of these hoods, I found it a great improvement in thermal comfort.

My buddies were Mihn and Santiago with only 3 other divers out. What happened to all the winter divers.?

Still it is good to get parking on Jibbon street near the beach. Here is my favourite photo from the day.

2 male cuttlefish vying for the rights to the nearby female

Here is the video of the winner taking his prize "Bow Chicka Bow Wow"

Adobe Photoshop Auto White Balance

2010-06-29T19:05:00.011+10:00

How good is Adobe Photoshop?
I have heard the term 'photo-shopped" before and I tried the product for the first time today and must say I am very impressed with the results.
Here a a few before and after "white balanced photos": I'll explain how easy it is at the end of this post.

Before Photoshop auto white balance

After Photoshop auto white balance

Before Photoshop auto white balance

After Photoshop auto white balance

Before Photoshop auto white balance

After Photoshop auto white balance

Before Photoshop auto white balance

After Photoshop auto white balance

In Photoshop this is very simple to achieve:

Here are 3 simple steps to achieve the results above. I use the keyboard shortcuts to make things quicker

In Photoshop

Open a file that you want to white balance using "ctrl + o" or [pull down menu: file > open]
Select "ctrl + L" to select the levels options or [pull down menu: image > adjustment > levels]
click on the "auto" button" or "Alt + a" and voila the above effects are achieved.

Simple and brilliant!

Oak Park 26 June 2010 New Slave Flash

2010-06-26T16:16:00.010+10:00

All the pictures on this post were taken today using my new strobe slave attachment. I am very happy with the results, but I still need to work on the white balance and focusing.

My buddies were Brett Poole and Tom Acott. The Dive Master was Garth Donkin (pictured below greeting us back from the second dive). I'll write more descriptions about the pictures over the next few days.

Located at the end of the Cronulla Peninsula on the southern outskirts of Sydney, Oak Park is a very popular dive location, especially for learners and novice divers. Oak Park is an excellent "easy" dive for beginners and experts alike and is also a top night dive. This dive site begins at the end of Jibbon Street, Cronulla, adjacent to Oak Park. You can get more location information by clicking here

Giant Cuttlefish

Tom with a Blue Groper

The dive site itself is basically a wall which runs in an arc from the shore, first towards the east and then north-east and finally north. The wall is about two to three metres high and has numerous low caverns or overhangs that are home to many beautiful fish. This site is also home to the friendliest blue gropers that you will ever find on a shore dive.

Brett smiling for the photo

The site is fairly protected from southerly winds and seas, but very big swells from that direction and basically anything from the east or north can wipe out this site from an entry/exit point of view.

Starfish of some sort?

After prolonged periods of heavy rain, Oak Park can be affected by storm water from Port Hacking, the mouth of which is only a few hundred metres away.

Nuidibranc

Visibility can range from 3 up to 15 metres, averaging 7 to 8 and is marginally better on an incoming tide.

Angel Shark

After arriving at the site, you should walk down towards the ocean and while standing above the ocean pool to the right of the beach, examine the sea conditions.

A Shrimp

Entry and exits can be made from two spots. Normally, I enter the water from the small inlet behind the north-east corner of the pool but at high tide I generally use the right hand (southern) side of the pool as even small swells can roll over the platform, with the potential to knock you off your feet. After deciding on your entry point, gear up in the street or park and then walk down to the water's edge.

Smiling Blue Groper

Another Nudibranc

A ball of catfish

Oak Park- Google map showing entry exit points, reef and cave location

View Oak Park - the cave in a larger map

The Monument

2010-06-14T06:22:00.010+10:00

On 29 April 1770, Lieutenant James Cook, RN, in HM Bark Endeavour entered Botany Bay and stepped ashore at Kurnell.

Cook and his crew, including the famous scientist Sir Joseph Banks and his assistant Daniel Solander, explored the area of the bay and originally named it Stingray Harbour because of the large number of rays they caught. Cook stayed eight days and then headed north.

Both headlands of Botany Bay are part of Botany Bay National Park. The southern side is known as the Captain Cooks Landing Place section of the national park and is accessed from Captain Cook Drive at Kurnell. A fee is charged to use the park's facilities. There is a monument on the shore to commemorate the landing of Captain Cook and the reef North of this location has become known as The Monument dive site.

This is a really good site if the visibility is good and we were lucky in that the visibility was about as good as it gets at the Monument.

View The Monument in a larger map

The Monument is a very easy dive site, with the relatively longer surface swim being the hardest part. Due to its location right in the bay, viz can be a little worse here than the other sites around Kurnell. But it is still a very nice relaxing dive with usually lots to see. Once you enter the water you snorkel out over kelp in a north easterly direction. There is a red navigation marker out in the bay and if you head towards it you are going in the right direction.

Eastern Frogfish at the Monument

Once you become sick of snorkelling you can descend as sometimes large rays are seen swimming over the kelp. You will be in about 4m of water, keep following your compass till you come to a drop off. Drop over the wall for the main part of the dive. If viz is poor the top of the wall also makes an interesting dive. Swim along with the wall on your right.

Phil and Jess - Sophia and Eric in between dives

Monument's a great dive to take a torch, as they're overhangs hiding blue devil fish, wobbegongs, Port Jacksons, Giant cuttlefish and even the occasional banded coral shrimp.

The Monument entry point

This is a good dive to do as a drift dive if you have an outgoing tide, you can drift from the monument around to Sutherland point or the Steps.When exiting at the Monument make sure you swim up into the channel as there are many sea urchins on the rocks everywhere else.

There are some very timid turtles in the area and here is the proof. This was taken yesterday at the Monument.

Here is a map of the Monument dive site (area in blue on the Google map above) showing the reef, overhangs and surrounding area.

(courtesy of Jemma Donkin)

PADI Open Water Instructor Exam - passed

2010-06-09T15:00:00.001+10:00

Well I passed the 3 day instructor exam and to be honest it was nowhere near as hard as the Instructor Development Course.
I made a few mistakes on my open water presentation, more due to nerves than anything else, but still passed with flying colours.

My advice to anyone preparing for the exam would be to

know your PADI standards, I saw a few people fail on the standards exam and I think it may be because everyone worries more about the diving theory than the Standards.

in any water presentations don't stop until you are cut. Our examiner would always cut the presentation once he had seen the required proficiency. I saw someone fail by not getting all parties to donate and receive air using an alternative air source. They told the examiner they were finished and he shrugged his shoulders as if "are you sure?". They said "yes" and failed!

This is the traditional "Jager Bomb" the final rite of passage for Abyss Instructors.

Camp Cove 29 May 2010

2010-05-30T21:15:00.001+10:00

Two training dives at Camp Cove on Saturday. We covered the OW Open Water skills and Search And Recovery OW skills.

I sit the IE (Instructor Exam) next week and maybe then I can get back into some recreational diving.

Instructor Development Course

2010-05-24T06:52:00.000+10:00

This weekend I started a 16 day Instructor development course.

The schedule is arduous, starting each day at 8am and finishing no earlier than 7pm for 16 straight days. We are scheduled to have 1 day of next Monday if we are on track.

Day 1 was in the pool from 8am until we eventually got kicked out at 4pm reviewing skills.

Day 2 was in the classroom from 8am until 7pm going over the Diving Knowledge exams and an introduction to the PADI standards.

I'm just leaving for Day 3...

Camp Cove

2010-05-16T09:36:00.000+10:00

Most of Sydney sites are closed out due to bad weather but Camp Cove is nearly always available as a dive regardless of conditions.
I forgot my camera so no photos today. My buddy was Phil, the DM was Damien and his buddy was Dave.

First dive we went the usual right (nor-east) direction- few interesting swim-through's, and an octopus with an eel. The visibility was quite poor and the area itself was full of boats due to Jessica Watson's return through the heads from her solo voyage around the worlds.

Second dive- We took a 240 degree heading from the beach until we hit a reef and then followed the reef in a South-westerly direction. quite an interesting dive but again visibility was not great.

Forster & Seal Rocks - Big Rock and Little Rock - 01/05/10: The Pinnacles & Point A 02/05/10

2010-05-03T13:09:00.012+10:00

A wet and miserable day is a great day to go diving and this was a great day to go diving.(wet and miserable)
We put our gear on board the dive boat at Forster Dive Centre and drove 40 minutes down the coast to Sugarloaf Bay where the boat picked us up for a 20 minute trip out to Big Rock. It takes the boat over an hour to get to the dive site and in a effort to reduce sea sickness the dive operators use this drive- cruise method of getting you to the site.

The Dive operators were a very professional outfit and I liked their approach to dive safety and their excellent briefings. I would recommend them to anyone intending on diving this area, here are their details:

Dive Forster @ Fishermans Wharf

NSW Australia

Phone 02 6554 7478

We did 2 dives on Seal Rocks. The first dive on the imaginatively named "Big Rock" and the second on the equally imaginatively named "Little Rock". The 2 rocks collectively are called Seal Rocks because of the huge Seal population that used to live here. Unfortunately the Seals were all shot by local fishermen because they were eating their fish, so today there are no Seals on Seal Rocks. This area is now a marine sanctuary and fishing is not permitted, although we did see spear fisherman on our return voyage and the Dive Operator stopped and told them he would report them. This led to a hasty disappearing act on behalf of the spear fishermen.

From Left to Right- Me, Gab, Jeff, Danielle, Su-Ann & Brett

Here are my buddies from Abyss, We had a great weekend and the weather came good on the Sunday when we took this picture.

Grey Nurse Shark

One of the funniest moments of the weekend was on the second day on a dive called Spot A. The Grey Nurse Sharks are very timid despite their ferocious appearance and they will rarely approach the divers. As can be seen from my video above, they keep their distance and will quickly disappear if they perceive any threat. One medium size shark (about 2M long) slowly swam towards the group of divers in front of me. I saw Jeff seize the opportunity for a good photograph and start to move towards the shark, fully expecting that it would change course at any moment. The shark kept swimming towards him and with mouth agape swam inches over him. By this time Jeff had started flapping and retreating, the shark was just showing us who the boss is in this environment I guess. I was laughing in my reg and we were only in 12 M of water so I wasn't narked..
Here is the photo Jeff took as this was happening , amazing!!

At Spot A we came across numerous Wobbegongs and they were out cruising looking for food. Normally, in my experience, Wobbegongs are viewed still in a cave or hidden under rocks but at this site they were swimming in open water.

Wobbegong (Carpet Shark)

This picture was taken at Spot A by Jeff. There were many wobbegongs and they are well camouflaged in this environment. They can be easily knocked or kicked with fins if you don't notice them and they will give you a bite if they are threatened.

There were Grey Nurse sharks in all 4 dive sites; Big Rock, Little Rock, The Pinnacles and Spot A

Another Grey Nurse Shark

Thanks to Su-Ann Foo, Jeff Squires and Danielle DeJong for the photographs above.
Here is Su-Ann having a bad hair day without her hair clip

Here is a map of Seal Rocks -Big Rock

Dive Forster @ Fishermans Wharf

NSW Australia

Phone 02 6554 7478

Email ron@diveforster.com.au

and Little Rock

Dive Forster @ Fishermans Wharf

NSW Australia

Phone 02 6554 7478

Email ron@diveforster.com.au

South West Rocks

2010-04-19T07:42:00.002+10:00

My Easter break took me up to the northern NSW coast to a place called South West Rocks. There is a small rock island off Smokey Cape Lighthouse called Fishrock. Some of the best diving in Australia is to be had here and I would highly recommend this trip to anyone who enjoys their diving. For me this was better than the Great Barrier Reef for one particular reason -Sharks.

Underwater Navigation

2010-04-10T18:51:00.000+10:00

Today was the first day of the underwater navigation specialty course. We started in the classroom. The Instructor was Carl, ans other participants were; Keith, Michelle, Alex and 'Pixie'.
After going through the knowledge reviews we headed to Oak Park for a double dive with lots of skill assessments.

Dive 1 saw us calculating our time and kick cycles over 30 M. Then we performed a 5 minute swim in blue water at 5 M and set a reciprocal course to the flag. We then took visual and compass references over "split rock" to see if we could relocate the site on the second dive.

Before Dive 2 we plotted a rectangle with an equilateral triangle on top "house shape" which we attempted to reconstruct using 2 separate teams in the ocean.
Our first attempt was a disaster and we actually ended up losing one of the marker flags:
Our second attempt was much better and we managed to layout the flags and navigate fairly complex patterns across the site.

We went back to the surface of "split rock" using the visual aids from the first dive. I was quite pleased to descend within 5M of the target even with a moderate surface current.

The course covers a lot of "common sense" and anyone who has been diving a while will already know a lot of the subject matter. It is really good to practice these skills in a course environment as you get a better understanding of your abilities. I was quite surprised at my lack of ability to use my compass very accurately and this course has helped me to sharpen those skills.

The Steps double dive

2010-04-05T08:50:00.001+10:00

I was Dive Master today and gave the dive briefing. There were quite a few new divers in the group so we decided to cancel The Leap and do a double dive at The Steps.
At the shop in the morning about 5 of the divers were really unsure about how much weight they would need and admitted to not having been for a dive in over 3 months. The tide was high and there was quite a bit of white water on the rocks. If we had a group we were familiar with then we would have done The Leap but with all the fresh faces it wasn't worth the risk.

Double Dive at the Steps without incident but I did forget my camera so no pictures or video this week

Dive 1: I took a group of 5 East through average visibility. A big friendly Blue Groper accompanied us most of the way. We saw weedy Seadragons, nice sponge gardens, a few Nudibrancs and Leatherjackets. We took our safety stop on the white rocks and had about 100M surface swim to the exit with the current.

Dive2: I took a group of 7 West as we had past high tide and the current was now heading East. We saw large schools of yellow tails, various species of LeatherJackets, Eastern Blue Gropers and Green Gropers (females). We swam back through the shallower swimthroughs and surfaced with one diver down to 50 bar. Most others still had half a tank so it pays to go off on your own sometimes.We had about a 50M surface swim with the current to the exit.

Next Week Underwater Navigation course.

Dive Master Intern week 2

2010-03-29T09:10:00.002+11:00

I completed my second open water assist this weekend. The Dive Instructor on day 1 in the pool and 1st ocean dive was Andrew. Day 2 the DI was Jamie for the 3 ocean dives and ocean skills.
The successful candidates were Santiago, Andres, Paloma, Laura, Georgian and Harry.

They were very competent and there was no panic moments in the water. Jorgen did get a little shaky on the mask removal in the ocean but he calmed down and dealt with it really well in the end.

Dive Master Intern

2010-03-22T16:01:00.001+11:00

This weekend I had my first Open Water Assist. This is where I am an assistant instructor on a "learn to dive" course.
We spent the first Morning in the pool going through the skills and late in the afternoon went for their first Ocean dive at Oak Park.

Day 2 saw us with 3 ocean dives covering all the skills learned in the pool repeated in the Ocean, plus some navigation techniques. The Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent is really interesting to watch in the ocean and it is amazing how much air new divers use when asked to kneel down and remove their mask

The Monument mapping

2010-03-15T10:15:00.003+11:00

We went to map the monument site yesterday as part of our Dive Master course. We have done 2 previous familiarization dives on the site and we sat down to plan the best method of mapping the site.

Due to various circumstances there were only 3 of us available to map that day so we had to dive as a group of 3. My dive buddies were Gemma and Garth.

The whole dive plan took well over an hour but after a great deal of discussions, scribbling, head scratching, crossing out and redrawing we eventually came up with a plan that we all agreed would work. The plan was to descend in about 3M swim North until we dropped over the wall, then swim to the deepest part of the map and drop a buoy. We would then swim perpendicular to the wall away from the buoy for about 7M with a rope and drop it weighted at that point.
We then planned to swim back to the buoy and swim the length of the wall while Garth counted his fin cycles. When we reached the other end of the wall we would repeat the same procedure with a second buoy. This would give us a 7M x dive site length rectangle to map.
The plan was then to set of on a compass heading + 90 degrees from the perpendicular bearing ..... You can see why we had a lot of discussing to get this plan together.
We would take depth and geographic references every 2M and swim the rectangle in a 'U' pattern.
Finally we would ascend at the first buoy and take a surface bearing on the 2 buoys to measure the angle of our map in relation to the compass.

View The Monument dive mapping in a larger map

Anyway we got in and were nearly swept out to sea in a 7 knot current and quickly called the dive off. We realized there was no possibility of being able to map the site today with the strength of the current. Apparently there was a king tide or something similar and the volume of water leaving the bay 30 minutes after high tide was incredible. We had to hold onto rock just to maintain our position and it just wasn't practical to try to swim against it.

We plan to try again on Good Friday.

Dive Master Course

2010-03-02T17:13:00.000+11:00

I am completing my divemaster course over the next 3 weekends so I will not be blogging any dives. I am toying with the idea of having specific pages dedicated to dive sites, giving information and maps. I have noticed a lot of the traffic on the website is from people looking for specific dive site information.

I am going to map The Monument, I'll post progress on the Dive Master course soon...

The Leap and emergency services 20th Februay 2010

2010-02-22T21:50:00.007+11:00

The surf conditions were a bit rougher than usual for this dive as you may be able to see from my video below. Before the dive the 2 DM's, Marlin and Richard briefed the group and we split into 3 groups. We were in the more experienced group and entered first as it was most likely we would have the longest bottom time. Richard took a group of 3 confident divers, new to this site, and Marlin took a group of 6 complete novices, who were just certified this week.

My buddy was Brendan, Mihn and Jason were the other buddy pair in our group of experienced divers. We descended and the visibility was poor with only 2-3 meters in some places. The dive itself was relatively uneventful but we did surface about 100M West of the steps and had to swim back to the exit.

The exit was very scary and we aborted our first attempt as a set hit us just as we got near the rocks and we found ourselves in a 2M swell of white water at that point I called an abort. Brendan was a bit shook up so we swam out to deeper water and composed ourselves. I suggested we would make one more attempt to get in and then we would have to swim around to the Monument beach. Anyway we got in comparatively easy the second time as the swell was much calmer on this attempt, timing was important.
I realized that we would have trouble getting the beginners in here so we secured our gear and got ready to guide and assist the other divers to exit the water. Minh and Jason got in relatively easy with our help as we secured them and kept an eye on the incoming surf, directing them when to hold on and when to crawl.

The dive itself was pretty uneventful and the visibility was poor

Richard and his group of 3 surfaced a long way from the exit to the East which was strange as we had overshot to the West. With 4 divers on the shore we got them in but it was quite hairy at times although no-one was injured.

We kept a look out for Marlin and her 5 novice divers but after 20 minutes of no sign we knew something had not gone to plan. Richard and Jason went around to the Leap to see if they could see them and Mihn and I waited at the Steps. We spotted 2 divers on the rocks to the East scrambling through the surf. We went down and helped them climb up at the bottom of the steps, about 150M East of the planned exit point. They were a bit shaken but not hurt. They said that the rest of the group had been having difficulty descending on their dive so they had left them. They also said that the current had forced them to the East and they could not swim against the current so they had to exit where they did. The current had obviously changed a lot earlier than predicted. High tide was 1PM but at 11:45am we had what appeared to be a strong current heading out to the West? In the worsening conditions we knew that there are no safe exits West of the Steps.

Mihn and I realised that the other group were in trouble, if the current had changed then they would be unable to exit at the Leap and the conditions were getting worse. We grabbed our mask and fins and headed around to the Leap. We met Marlin at the top of the Leap and she was visibly shaken, she had some blood on her face and she asked us if we knew anyone who had a boat. We established that we did not have access to any waterdraft in the immediate vicinity and went down to the water. We established that no one was in immediate danger and they were stuck as a group in the ocean with no possible exit. They seemed cheerful enough and no one looked to be panicking or stressed.. Richard and Jason had managed to get Marlin out on the rocks at the Leap. We could tell that it wasn't a pleasant experience and Jason had ended up falling in with the other divers and now he was out there with them without fins or a BCD. Marlin had obviously had a fairly rough exit on the rocks and did not want to attempt to get any of the novices out the same way.

Marlin called the shop and asked for advice, in the mean time Richard had called the Emergency Services (EMS) from a rock fisherman's phone. The shop advised to try to get a rope and pull them around to the Steps but the conditions were getting worse and even the Steps would have been risky in these conditions.. The EMS called back to the rock fisherman's phone several times to assess the urgency of the situation. There was no immediate danger but they had no means of exit and they were drifting towards the East (out to sea) despite swimming towards the West. After about 15 minutes the Police rescue boat arrived and pulled everyone to safety. The group were very calm and did not appear to be in any immediate danger, but if they had tried to exit in these conditions then they may have met misfortune.

A very exciting day out of the water with a strong lesson learned about the treachery of the sea and unpredictable conditions. Also I think novice divers need to have alternative exits, where possible, on either side of the entry, especially if the entry is not an exit. Luckily no one was hurt and we all gained an appreciation for the changeability of our chosen sport environment.

The Leap to The Steps Map

View The Leap and The Steps in a larger map

Oak Park 13 Feb 2010

2010-02-13T19:46:00.006+11:00

My buddy was Keith and the Dive master was George. There was a surf competition on when we arrived and the inclement weather had driven all the sunbathers away. There was quite a big swell and high tide was about 2 hours before we dived so we encountered quite a bit of surge and current on the way back in.

Keith with the very friendly blue groper. Ignore the date, I forgot to reset it when putting the batteries in the camera!

We went out to the cave and had not reached our turn around air so we went over the reef to see if we could find "fish soup". Unfortunately we didn't find it but we did startle a few fishermen. We watched a moray eel getting pretty excited with the fishing lure.

The journey back was quite hard and I could not regulate my breathing. I started to get perceptual narrowing which I recognised and just stopped and calmed down for a second. We saw a huge wobbegong and a numb ray on the way back but I was focusing (perceptual narrowing) on my breathing. The more I thought about my breathing, the more erratic it got. I tried to slow my breathing down but got anxious and gasping. I had my regulator tuned down too low and was struggling to fight the mild current. I recognized the issue and just calmed myself down and everything was OK. I surfaced near the exit point with 50 bar in the tank,

Timid Moray eel

The second dive was much more relaxed, we went out to the cave and had a look for the big Wobbegong we saw earlier. We found him, schools of king-fish and a huge eagle ray. All up 2 very good dives and Mid February seems to bring in the big fish to this area.

Here is a composite video of the 2 dives today.

Location information: (Open in a larger map to get more detail or zoom out)

View Oak Park - the cave in a larger map

Shiprock Night Dive 10 February 2010

2010-02-11T10:39:00.007+11:00

Dive Location

View Shiprock dive site in a larger map

This is a great spot for a night dive but you do need to be aware and watch out for boat traffic.

This site is a marine reserve so you should not take anything and leave the site exactly as you find it. We saw 2 huge Wobbegongs (Carpet Sharks), cuttlefish, lots of eels, I think they like the dark and I particularly liked the Christmas tree plants (?). I don't know there correct name but when you knock them they glow brightly with little green balls for a few seconds.

My buddy was Lawrie and the DM was Carl. This is a great night dive site that has to be dived on the slack tide, the currents in this channel are too strong to dive on a changing tide (unless you plan a drift dive)

Shellharbour- Bass Point & The Gravel Loader

2010-02-08T20:18:00.001+11:00

Double dive at Shelharbour, about 90km south of Sydney. My dive buddy was Mihn and the DM was Cem.

I tried the sport setting on my camera and adjusted the white balance to fluorescent and the images appear clearer but there is still a green hue. The first dive was pretty straight forward and we did get to see two little port jackson sharks and a few nudibrancs.

The second dive was on the Gravel loader. It is a huge man made jetty that goes out to allow the big ships to load their gravel. Here is Mihn with the Gravel loader in the back ground before we submerged.

I have been a bit slack in updating my blog lately as can be seen from the date of the dive and the date of the post.

Hopefully this will improve soon

Here is the video of the 2 dives from this day rolled into one with a soundtrack selected by Youtube's random generator.

The Leap and the Steps (Kurnell National Pak) 23 January 2010

2010-02-08T11:21:00.006+11:00

I had a bit of a run in with a film crew who had hogged all the road and parking spaces before the dive but I managed to settle down before entering the water.

View The Leap and The Steps in a larger map

We did have one diver who had blood shot eyes and felt physically sick after his first dive, He didn't look too good at all and at first we thought it may have been CO2 retention but the blood shot eyes were getting worse so we called DAN and they had a chat and asked him to go to hospital for further checks. I suspect it may have been a pre-existing condition exasperated by the diving as we had only been to about 12M and he was fine until he started to ascend (It may have been sinus related- hence the bloody eyes?). It turns out Brendan (the diver in question) had a sever case of Mask Squeeze and as he hadn't equalized his mask correctly he had burst all the capillaries in his eyes. He was fine after an hour or so.

Here is a video of the complete dive, A bit long but captured for the record and there is some good Weedy Sea dragon footage in here.
My Dive buddy was Mihn and the DM was George.

Oak Park 9th January 2010

2010-01-21T09:15:00.002+11:00

Double dive at Oak Park but forgot my camera so wasn't really motivated to blog the dive.

My buddy was Rod on the first dive and a third diver informed us he would be joining us for the second dive, after he had been paired with someone whom he decided to leave to his own devices (hmmm...)

The third diver told me he had dived Oak Park over 250 times (hmmm..) and then said that if he looses us he would not surface as there is too much danger of boats in the area (hmmm...).
I asked what he planned to do if he lost us or vice versa and he said it wouldn't happen as he would "stick to us like glue". Rod and I agreed to surface if we got separated.

Before diving we agreed a dive plan to head out to the cave and return. As this was Rod's first open water diving since certification he was using quite a lot of air, so we planned to keep moving out to the cave to ensure we made it, as Rod was very keen to see the cave.
Anyway 5 minutes into the dive the third diver finds a moray eel which he points out to us and we acknowledge. Rod continues to head towards the cave as this was the dive plan. I signaled to the third diver to keep moving but he was too fascinated with the moray eel. As I was losing sight of Rod I followed him to keep him in my vision and signaling to the third diver to follow. He ignored me and then saw another buddy pair of divers that he swam towards and took them to show them the moray eel. (grrrr....)

I used my underwater rattle to signal Rod and he came back. I must say I was worried that this "third diver" loose cannon was going to end up a DAN statistic if anything malfunctioned. He had decided to tag along with us and I felt responsible. My instinct was to leave him but I had visions of standing on the waters edge looking anxiously for him as the rescue helicopters circled and I would have found it difficult to justify leaving him.

It was all shaping up for disaster with a novice diver and a total idiot in the water with me. We waited 10 minutes while this guy showed everyone his eel. Really for someone with 250 dives on one site he did seem to be over enthused about a moray eel (hmmm...)

We never made the cave but we did all return safely. I will be avoiding this 'third diver' if I ever come across him again.

DIVE LESSON
Beware the self professing expert that refuses to follow basic open water protocols!

Bare Island 2nd January 2010

2010-01-03T07:32:00.001+11:00

Two dives today at Bare Island. My buddy was Marcus who I have dived with previously at Voodoo and the dive master was Marek.

First dive was quite eventful. We saw Blue gropers, giant cuttlefish and an octopus who had captured a shell fish but the shell was too big to fit inside his cave. He sat like with a tight grip on the shell but couldn't get it to squeeze into his lair.

Octopus with shellfish too big for his lair.

During the break between dives a huge storm came in which was actually quite refreshing after the heat before the first dive.

Coolooli & The Apartments

2009-12-10T12:22:00.004+11:00

One of the largest vessels scuttled on the Long Reef Wreck Site is the bucket dredge Coolooli. Built in 1955 at the NSW Government State Dockyard at Newcastle (NSW), the Coolooli was unpowered. She displaced 150 tonnes and was 50 metres long and 10 or 11 metres wide. The dredge was owned by the NSW Maritime Services Board and used to keep NSW ports navigable. Sometime before 1975, it was laid up. On 19 August 1980 (one record says 29 August), the Coolooli was sunk as part of the reef and now lies on its starboard side on sand in 48 metres of water.

Reference Michael McFadyen's website.

With only an 8 minute bottom time plan this was a very short visit to the Coolooli. We descended the anchor line and I must admit that at the time I didn't realise it but with hindsight I can see that I was very "Narked".
From the top of the wreck we were in 40M of water and dropped down to 44m as we circumnavigated the wreck. We saw a Wobbegong but all too soon it was time to ascend.
My computer showed 1 minute until no decompression limits were exceeded so I signaled to my buddies and started to ascend. From my very fuzzy memory of the dive we did spend a lot longer hanging on the anchor line at 5M than we did on the actual wreck. While performing our 8 minute safety stop I started to get a headache again similar to what I experienced on the Valiant. I concentrated on expelling air as I did not want a repeat of the CO2 retention issue I had back then.
After surfacing we boards the boat "Hoochi Mumma" and I was as sick as a dog. I have no living memory of ever vomiting so much! It was a very unpleasant experience and went as quickly as it came. I have a suspicion that I was suffering from CO2 retention or "Hypercapnia" again as I felt fine after about 5 minutes. I do not think it was sea sickness related. It could be "Alternobaric vertigo" but I am not sure and self diagnosis on websites will inevitably lead to the incorrect conclusion. I will monitor this as I do not want to find myself in this situation again.

5 minutes later I felt fine and waited for the TEC divers to surface. We watched them hanging on the deco line for about 40 minutes.

We headed off to the apartments after that and I took my camera on this dive and tried some new setting to see if I could address the colour and blur issue I have been experiencing over the last few weeks.

Back of the Hoochie Mumma

A friendly Blue Groper

The sport and fluorescent setting seem to improve the clarity and colour.

A full schedule has prevented me from giving a full update but I think this was a one-off trip for me. I won't be hurrying to visit the Coolooli again given my issue with CO2 retention.

My experience justifies the rationale about only going deep if you have a real need and it shouldn't be done for the sake of going deep

Wreck of the Bombo video

2009-12-03T20:16:00.000+11:00

The Wreck of the Bombo video with colour correction, edited and soundtrack added.

Jervis Bay Complete Video

2009-12-02T00:45:00.000+11:00

My first underwater Video production using Corel Video Studio 12