Happy Monday!
Just wanted to let everyone know about the awesome weekend of diving some
of us had this past weekend!! On Saturday, eight of us headed down to
Flinders Pier for a shore dive. It was great to see so much enthusiasm from
some of the new members. We buddied up and explored all the fun things
under the pier: saw 6+ weedy sea dragons, a decent amount fish of all
shapes, sizes and colors (do not ask me what kind they were), some little
crabbies, and the highlight was paying a visit to the two giant smooth
stingrays that like to hang out at the pier. They were both around 2 meters
across, and we chilled out and watched them flapping and faffing around
with each other.
On Sunday, Jorge, Sally and I headed out at 6:00am to meet Steve, Will and
Erwin down at Queenscliff for a day of boat diving. It was cloudy and
chilly in the morning but it turned out to be one of the best days of boat
diving I've had!! The ocean was looking good so we were able to go out the
heads and check out the HMS J4 submarine wreck which lies at around 27m. We
were joined by boats from Dive Victoria and Red Boats but that didn't stop
us having an awesome dive - we were able to escape the crowds by heading
into the sub and exploring from the inside :) We checked out the torpedo
tubes at the bow and Steve pretended he was captain in the conning tower.
Vis was excellent at around 20m, there was a bit of surge but nothing
unmanageable. Overall an awesome dive!
We decided to head back into the bay and do some drift dives for the
afternoon. Erwin caught a massive cray, probably 3.5-4kg!! After waiting
for a few ships to pass, a few of us jumped in for a final drift dive, and
found ourselves in a super fast current that apparently is typical of
around Easter time in the bay. We had to focus on hanging on and not
bumping into each other, but what an exhilarating ride!! We came over a
ledge at one point and found ourselves right on top of a 1.5m shark, what
we think was a juvenile bronze whaler - we surprised him as much as he
surprised us, and by the time any of us realized what was happening we had
drifted away and the shark had sped off. Vis was also pretty good!
The water temp was around 20 deg so it's already starting to cool off from
summer. If you want to get some warm dives in, now is the time to do it
because it's only getting colder from here! Keep an eye out for emails of
people running shore and boat dives, and the Eden Easter trip is coming up
over Easter break. Thanks for everyone's help this weekend in running the
dive trips smoothly :)
Yay diving!
Cheers,
Katie
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