An absolutely magic dive. Amzing visibility, easily 25 metres. The cave was a far swim in a strong current, but the life on the way was nothing short of amaing. Numb rays, rays, old wives, nudibranchs, sea fans, eels, catfish, jellyfish and even an eastern blue devil fish.

The cave was interesting with the ceiling covered in the mirror surface created by trapped air bubbles.

Some great multi coloured sea fans - a couple of different colours had grown from the same rock and had ended up fusing together - the colours mingling together...

Mon 26 Jan 2004 | /Diving/Australia/NSW_-_South_Coast | permalink

Henry Bolte, Eden

The Henry Bolte is a bit more broken up, but the result is lots more fish life because the wreck provides a greater range of nooks and niches for life. Still, a reasonbly enjoyable wreck with visibility this good.

Sat 24 Jan 2004 | /Diving/Australia/NSW_-_South_Coast | permalink

Tasman Hauler, Eden

The wreck of the tasman hauler was quite fun, as far as wrecks go. The huge propeller, several metres across, presents a nice swim through, even for someone like me who is not trained to be entering wrecks.

Excellent viz, and some nice growth and fish life to explore once the rusting huck of steel lost its appeal...

Sat 24 Jan 2004 | /Diving/Australia/NSW_-_South_Coast | permalink

Henry Bolte. Eden (Night)

Deepest night dive I've done, and certainly the eariest with the wreck looming up here and there, and the lights of other divers appearing and disappearing at random through the holes in the wreck.

Sat 24 Jan 2004 | /Diving/Australia/NSW_-_South_Coast | permalink

Jervis Bay, Gorgonia Wall

Compared to last time I was in Jervis Bay, this dive was a tremendous let down. It seemed that all of the marine animals had just up and off somewhere better, leaving just empty water and flies.

To make matters worse, I forgot to plug in the power for my alpha light - so i had no light to explore under rocks and crevises, which is what I usually do when the good stuff isn't just there ready to be seen.

Oh well, you get that. You also get no images ;)

Fri 09 Jan 2004 | /Diving/Australia/NSW_-_South_Coast | permalink

Jervis Bay, Pyramid Rock

A bit better with the light. Similar low levels of life, but if you hunted for it, it was there to be found.

I found a couple of Nudibranchs I had not photographed before. This was also my first dive with my new steel tanks.

Fri 09 Jan 2004 | /Diving/Australia/NSW_-_South_Coast | permalink

Monague Island

The seals were even more playful today, and there were lots more in the water. They were coming right up to me - you could look into their large round eyes.

A current picked up soon after we got into the water with them, and Lennard got seperated from me. I looked around for a minute or two, but ended up having to tell Greg I'd lost him. This cut the dive a bit short.

Sun 09 Nov 2003 | /Diving/Australia/NSW_-_South_Coast | permalink

Montague Island, Lady Darling

The Lady Darling is an old boiler ship, wrecked in 1888, and only found in 1998, its in pretty good condition. Plenty of life has grown up on it, but it must get a fair current over it, nothing very large is growing there.

Its home to few large snapper and wrasse.

As far as wrecks go, this wasn't that bad. I'm not a huge fan os rusting hunks of metal, but I enjoyed this dive, nonetheless.

The profile is near perfect for a deep dive. A full 5 minutes safety stop. The Computer briefly went into deco just before ascending while I was waiting for Phil to come back to the anchor.

Sat 08 Nov 2003 | /Diving/Australia/NSW_-_South_Coast | permalink

Montague Island, The Gut

The Gut is a little bay on the side of the island formed where the two larger lobes come together and are joined by a narrow strip of land.

What a fantastic dive! Near perfect visibility, loads and loads of life - rays, sharks, wobbegongs, wrasse, large fish, eels.

At first the site looked quite barren - just large boulders with no plant life or sponges. This didn't seem to bother the truckload of large life that was loitering around though.

On the short snorkel back to the Nitro, we saw a ray on the bottom - we had enough air to go down and take a look. It turned out to be a quite large eagle ray sitting exposed on the rocks.

Sat 08 Nov 2003 | /Diving/Australia/NSW_-_South_Coast | permalink

Montague Island

Seals! What more can I say? These are truly remarkable creatures, and easily the most entertaining you're likely to meet under water.

Lennard and I were quite keen and ended up in the water first, and we spent some minutes with the seals on our own.

The seals would imitate every move we made. I took great delight in doing loop-the-loops and all 20 odd of the seals would do the same after watching me. The same went for barrel rolls.

An excellent experience.

Lennard had trouble with weight, and concentrating on his diving with the excitement of the seals. We cut the dive short and headed back after realising the problem was weight.

Sat 08 Nov 2003 | /Diving/Australia/NSW_-_South_Coast | permalink

Ulladulla, North Bommie and Seal Cave

Ulladulla. Reasonable dive - the promise of a "Seal" in the cave. You'll have to look at the photo's to see what that meant :) I got stuck trying to swim through the cave - yikes ! Was a bit scary.

Eastern blue devilfish, and a few friendly wrasse.

Sun 27 Jul 2003 | /Diving/Australia/NSW_-_South_Coast | permalink

Ulladulla, Lighthouse Wall

Urg. Lots of current and surge. Relatively tough dive for my 100th, but you get that, I suppose. A Port Jackson shark, quite a big one, made the dive worthwhile though.

Getting back onto the boat was my biggest problem - no ladder! The idea was to kick up the side, grab hold of something and land yourself like a penguin. Ha! Fat chance (ie. none for me). I ended up getting out in the end, by dury rigging myself a foot hold out of a rope, so I could stand up high enough to grab something and have some leverage.

Ulladulla has a lot of things in common with Sydney diving, but with a few of the Jervis Bay elements - lots of starfish, more fan and soft corals and gorgonians, etc.

A similar dive to the last one, without the bad visibility and current problems. The dive site essentially a long wall in line with the shore, the top of which is largely boring, bu the wall face loaded with corals and plants and fish.

Towards one end of the wall, it broke up into large boulders everywhere. Lying under one was a massive bull ray - apprarently a permenant resident of the site.

Turning around and heading back the other way we followed the wall again until it broke up into a series of large boulders.

Loads of fish life, lots of large morwong and sweetlip about, and plenty of catfish and scorpionfish hiding in crevices and between the rocks.

Still no nudibranchs. Bugger.