Shellharbour- Bass Point & The Gravel Loader

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jervis Bay Complete Video

My first underwater Video production using Corel Video Studio 12