Where's Nelson Bay? It's about a 3 hour drive north of Sydney. And because I signed up early, I caught a ride up to Nelson Bay with the Pro Dive Coogee van which conveniently picked me up in the city.
It was a fun group of people and a good range of ages - Adrian the dive master/instructor (who is awesome), his girlfriend Candice (both from Canada), Stefan from Switzerland (don't ask if he's German he gets quite insulted) who's here in Sydney for 10 weeks learning English, Greg, Daniel (who's just barely legal to drink at 18) and Chris.
On Friday night we arrived at this youth-hostel like house which was filled with bunk beds and a definite retro 80's feel (complete with a sofa that's cookie-monster blue with a funky backboard). We had drinks at the RSL (Retired Service League) directly across the street (there are RSL's everywhere across Australia and they're usually situated in the most scenic spots) which is part casino / community gathering / pub and cheap meals (a roast dinner costs $10.50). Upon registering with a photo ID and entering the RSL, it was very evident that Nelson Bay and/or the Nelson Bay RSL is not a very ethnically diverse establishment... but all very friendly and upbeat.
On Saturday our first dive was a shore dive in Halifax Park. It'd been a very long time since I've done a shore dive - it certainly is more physically exerting to do a shore dive than to just step off the back of a boat. All went smoothly and there was a ton of fish, several rock fish, a 4-foot spotted white eel and rather large nudibranch, very large grouper and a few stingrays. Dive: 52 feet/16.1m, 38 minutes, water temp 24C/75.2F.
The second dive was at Shoal Bay - but it was aborted. We had on all of our gear and surface swam for about 200 meters in fairly strong current but there was nothing to see and we never even put our regulators in nor tried to goto depth. So we turned around and swam right back. It was exhausting!
So our dive master Adrian drove us around to the other side of Shoal Bay and we did successfully complete our second dive where we saw a pair of cuttlefish and a fiddle ray (a GI joe camouflage colored stingray). Dive: 13 ft/4m, 51 minutes.
And because three of the group were doing their Advanced Certification (which I already have) we also did a night dive. And since it's done at high tide we did this dive after dinner at 10:30 p.m. I have to admit night dives have not overly impressed me as I fail to see a whole lot of cool sea life. And this dive was no exception - I didn't see much, only the luminescent sea life when we turned all of our torches (flashlights) off. Dive: 9.2m/30f, 30 minutes. After we cleaned up this meant we didn't get to sleep until after midnight.
Which made waking up at 6 a.m. Sunday morning really, really tough! We arrived at the Let's Go Dive Shop to get our tanks refilled at 7 a.m. and eventually got on a boat which took us out about an hour to "North Rock" for our first dive. On this dive I saw a 2.5m/8f grey nurse shark with what I was astounded to see several fins on the top (2 plus a fin shape on the back fin) and bottom (2 fins) and the beadiest eyes I've ever seen. We weren't that far from the shark, but it made no move towards us - we really just intently stared at each other then moved along. Dive: Max depth 18.9m/62ft, 40 minutes, 69.8F.
Our second dive was at "Looking Glass" where we swam along this "swim through" that reminded me a lot of that cave in the first part of Little Mermaid where it's long, wide and tall and you swim along the wall single file (up and down and around rocks) until we reached the end where there were 2-3 sharks, eel and a large puffer fish. It was like a fish tank of sealife.
And my coolest, most fun word to say now - Wobbygong - I saw one just after we came out of the swim through. A wobbygong is a carpet shark or as I'd describe it - a shark, that had a flat, stingray shaped head with stubbly whisker on its chin and the funkiest thing is it's GI Joe camouflage colored! Dive: 16.8m/55f, 42 minutes, 69.8F.
I didn't have an underwater camera but here's an image of a wobbygong from Google images:
Glad to see that you're back to diving! Kai loves Sharks now! What happeend to your underwater camera? Did you find one that you want me to pick up yet?
ReplyDeletecommendable job with the post!! The pictures are quite awesome!
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