I spent the last weekend diving on Phillip Island with MUUC. It was a joint trip with the mountaineering club and we stayed in a proper (and pretty fancy!) house instead of camping. After quite a few initial problems at the shed on Friday we finally got both the boats and the compressor on the road. While Phillip Island has a lot of stuff to see on the land as well (including the famous Penguin Parade), this was pretty much a pure diving trip for us and we didn’t really do any sightseeing.

On Saturday we did our first dive at George Kermode, a bucket dredge scuttled in 1976. The wreck lies upside down in around 20 meters of water. While some parts of the wreck were quite interesting, I didn’t really care that much for the wreck compared to some other wrecks near Melbourne. The wreck might be more interesting on the inside, we only went for a quick peep with Shawn but did no real penetrations.

The second dive was at the Pinnacles, a popular local site with two pinnacles raising from around 40 meters to 12 meters. Unfortunately, our shot line moved a bit and ended up in the wrong spot. I had already gone down with Shawn before anyone noticed this so we ended up in midwater with nothing special to see. At 20 meters we could barely see the bottom (somewhere around 30-40 meters) but there was nothing else visible. I was already considering heading back up but then Shawn noticed some shapes in the distance and we ended up finding some smaller pinnacles. They were not that impressive though, and while there were two of them, it became clear that they couldn’t be the pinnacles we were supposed to dive as their tops were at around 20 meters. Near the top surge got little annoying and there was quite a bit of current too. Just as we were getting back on boat a pod of 5 or 6 dolphins came to the area. They ended up visiting some of our divers still underwater, unfortunately I only saw them from the surface and didn’t really have chance to take any photos either.

Sunday shaped up to be a better diving day with calm seas and some pretty nice dives. First we went for a return visit to the Pinnacles, this time we got the shot line in the right place as well. It was an awesome dive with superb vis, definitely one of my favorite non-wreck dives in Victoria. While the site is quite deep, we still managed to cover quite a bit of the area. We found some very impressive cliff walls and some nice overhangs. The pinnacles are covered in corals and zoanthids and there was also a huge variety of fish life down there.

The second dive of the day was at Pyramid Rock, a famous landmark near George Kermode. None of us had dived here before and we couldn’t find any real GPS markers, so most of the dive was spent exploring. Unfortunately, we didn’t find any of the more impressive features that should have been down there, but it was still a pretty good dive and quite different to most sites I have done in Victoria. The area was almost completely covered in kelp forests and while there were no proper walls, the bottom was still quite varied with boulders and smaller holes. I also ended up seeing my first Port Jackson Shark just lying on the bottom, unfortunately in a pretty protected area so I wasn’t able to get a good shot.

After the second dive we headed back to Melbourne, cleaned the boats and rinsed the gear. Then I headed to a hostel where I was staying overnight before leaving for Sydney early on Monday morning. The weekend as a whole was another great diving trip with MUUC, too bad it will be a while before I can dive with these guys again as I will be spending a few weeks over in Sydney next before heading back to Melbourne.

Going to add photos later to this post.

I was quite busy during the weekend with the move and the weather wasn’t playing too nice either, so I ended up skipping MUUC’s weekend dives. Luckily we had several visitors and new members interested in a pair of shore dives during the week so I still got some diving done on Wednesday.

There were six of us heading to Mornington Peninsula in the morning. Our first dive of the day was at Rye Pier, there was some current but otherwise it was another great dive at Rye. This was also my first time at Rye with my macro lens and I ended up with some great shots of seahorses, spider crabs and hermit crabs. While the dive went well for the most part, one of our visitors was having some problems with her gear and eventually she had to skip the dive altogether.

Due to somewhat annoying tides we were pretty much stuck doing Mornington (one of the few deeper shore dives on this side of the Bay doable even at low tide) as the second dive of the day. It’s not my favorite pier dive in Melbourne, but I still ended up enjoying it quite a bit. It was nice to explore the pier properly (we did a full round around the outer part) and we did up seeing a couple of seahorses and quite a few fish as well. Unfortunately, the girl who had to skip the first dive was still having problems and despite quite a few attempts to get underwater she eventually had to give up and she ended up missing both dives.

Going to add the photos bit later to this post.

I haven’t had much chance to use my macro lens recently, so it was nice to do a couple of simple shore dives with Joey on Wednesday. This time we headed to Bellarine Peninsula as we were hoping to do Barwon Heads Bluff as the first dive of the day. Unfortunately sea conditions looked bit rough as we got there and we decided to stick to the more protected dive sites inside the heads instead.

First we headed to St Leonards and did a pretty nice pier dive there. It’s pretty comparable to Rye Pier, with plenty of interesting species and lots of macro opportunities. The lone seahorse we saw was pretty good at avoiding the camera, he kept hiding between kelps and always turning away from us. The ones I saw over at Rye were much more cooperative! Fish life under the pier is quite rich and we ended up seeing several shrimps hiding in various holes as well. And there’s quite a bit of junk down there as well, from old tires to tennis balls. While it was little windy on the surface, conditions underwater were quite good and I ended up with some quite nice seahorse and fish shots.

The second dive of the day was at Steeles Rocks near Portarlington. We didn’t really know what to expect and the dive ended up slightly disappointing. Most of the area we explored was very shallow and not nearly as interesting as St Leonards. There were quite a few rocks and hard corals but not that many fish. Luckily we ended up seeing several Fiddler Rays and one of them let me get really close and personal for some nice macro shots.

In addition to actual diving itself I’m starting to get my gear together for my first tech course. I’m probably starting with combined TDI Advanced Nitrox and Decompression Procedures for some longer bottom times and bit deeper dives. I already found a pretty good deal for an used Dive Rite Transpac and Rec Wing, now I just need to hunt for the rest of the needed gear. I haven’t been in water with the Transpac yet but hopefully I have a chance to test it during the weekend.

After the awesome wreck dives on Australia Day weekend, last Saturday was a return to bit more mundane diving with MUUC. Girls were out doing some shore diving on their own, so it was just us boys (and one girl) on the boat. There were several new members with us as well, so we kept things simple and started with a slack dive on Lonsdale Wall.

Unfortunately, my buddy’s (one of the new guys) reg was leaking quite a bit so we stayed in shallow water (max 20 meters) and never got to the actual wall. Despite this precaution, we had to come up quite early as my buddy was pretty low on air after only 15 minutes. We did see some interesting coral formations, some nice fish and one cray hiding in a hole, but with only 21 minutes total bottom time the dive was still somewhat disappointing.

The second dive of the day made up for it though. We went for a return visit to Sven’s Reef near Barwon Heads. While still not quite ideal, conditions were much better than on our previous visit. Vis was better and while there was some surge it wasn’t nearly as bad as last time. I also had a full tank this time around, so we did a pretty long dive with Luke and my buddy from the first dive (who now had a working reg too!).

The reef over there is pretty amazing, there are lots of overhangs, swim-throughs and various holes. With huge schools of fish swimming above us it was some of the most interesting reef diving I have done. The whole area is covered in bommies, of particular interest was a single narrow pinnacle rising maybe five or six meters from the bottom. We spent most of the dive at around 20 meters giving us a long and very nice dive. Bit too many particles in the water for great photos, but I still ended up with some pretty decent ones.

There was also some talk of doing a third boat dive but it was getting bit late already and we would have needed some refills. So we just ended up heading back to the shed, washing the boat and the gear and finished the evening with a barbeque.

Last Thursday was Australia Day which meant a really long weekend for many people over here. I didn’t really take part in the Australia Day celebrations, instead we headed down over to Queenscliff for a long weekend of camping and diving with MUUC. With quite a few regulars away on various trips things were little quiet and there was only 5-6 of us camping and a few others joined us for dives on Saturday and Sunday.

On Thursday and Friday weather wasn’t really playing nice and we couldn’t get outside Port Phillip Heads at all because of rough seas. Another diving club had a rather nasty accident in the area just over a week ago, so we were understandably quite careful. Thursday in particular was quite bad and the only dive I got to do was a wall dive in not so good conditions.

Things got more interesting on Friday. While the Heads were still too rough to pass through the sites we visited were more to my taste. First dive of the day was at Pope’s Eye. I decided to sit this one out as I had already dived there two times in recent weeks. Still, I didn’t want to spend the time waiting in the boat so I ended up snorkeling along the divers. Or perhaps free-diving would be more accurate, as I had left my snorkel back at the camp site (I usually don’t use it with scuba gear). In warm water (around 20 degrees inside the bay) it was quite pleasant even without any exposure protection and it was nice to spend time in the water without all the heavy equipment for once. Pope’s Eye is shallow enough for good snorkeling, too. While the bottom is around ten meters there is a quite bit to see at around five meter mark. In addition to the normal rich fish life I did end up seeing one ray as well.

The second dive of the day was Eliza Ramsden, an old clipper that sank in 1875 inside Port Phillip Bay near the Heads. The 27 meter long wreck is impressive enough and it’s still in reasonable shape as well. It lies in shallow water with bottom around 18 meters so bottom times can be quite long as well. Unfortunately for us swell was quite bad down there and vis wasn’t that great either. It was still a pretty nice dive, just not that good for photography. I still ended up with some ok shots, but definitely nothing too spectacular.

Luckily things got lot better on Saturday and we did some superb dives. First dive of the day for me was the J5 submarine. This submarine lies in relatively deep water with bottom around 36 meters. The sub is for the most part intact and big sections of it are covered in yellow zoanthids. In addition, there are lots of fish swimming around the sub making it a very interesting dive. The conning tower is totally covered in zoanthids and makes for a particularly impressive sight. Despite the short bottom time I found this sub far more interesting than the shallower J4 sub. I got some pretty nice shots during this dive as well.

The second dive of the day was another visit to HMAS Canberra. I went down there with just Luke and we spent quite a bit of time exploring the lower decks. While all the smaller items were removed from the ship before scuttling there is still lots of interesting stuff to see down there. As usual we finished the dive near the bridge and spent some time among the deck structures. This was my first visit to Canberra with my fisheye lens and I was quite happy with the results.

On Sunday we did one more wreck dive. This one was a return visit to SS Coogee with Joey and Luke. Apart from some current conditions were again great for diving. We did have one minor mishap however, as the first time we went down we actually missed the wreck and had to regroup at the surface. Second attempt went better and we ended up close to the bow. We started heading towards the stern and ran into another group of divers near the boilers going in opposite direction. After spending some time around the stern taking photos we had to leave due to deco limit. For me the dive technically ended up as a decompression dive as my computer entered deco mode just as we were starting to head up. In practice that deco time had already cleared when we got to the safety stop depth. While conditions were not quite as ideal as last time the wreck provided some nice photo opportunities again.

For the final dive of the trip we visited a “secret” dive site near Barwon Heads. As we were already out of full air tanks I ended up joining the dive midway with a half-used tank from a earlier dive. Therefore my dive ended up a pretty short one, but despite the poor vis and nasty surge it was still worth it. The site has probably the most interesting bottom formations I have seen in Melbourne with loads of overhangs and swimthroughs. In addition the fish life down there was quite amazing.

Despite the somewhat disappointing Thursday and Friday it was a great weekend of diving. In particular I really enjoyed the chance to visit so many great wrecks and ended up with quite a few pretty photos!

Yesterday I went diving with MUUC again. Despite the warm and sunny weather most people were busy with other stuff and this was actually my quietest morning with MUUC thus far. There were just three of us (Luke, Kath and me) heading out from the shed which made things little tricky with the boat. Luckily we got everything sorted out on the way to Queenscliff and ended up having a great day of diving!

First dive of the day was SS Coogee, an impressive old wreck. Coogee is an old steamship originally built in 1887 and scuttled in 1928 in the Ship’s Graveyard outside Port Phillips Heads. It lies in around 32 meters of water with the bottom around stern slightly deeper than that. Originally Coogee was 69 meters long, but now most of the ship is gone. The bow, the stern (including the impressive rudder quadrant now covered in yellow zoathids) and the two boilers are still in pretty good shape, however.

While sea conditions on the surface were quite rough, underwater things were great with superb visibility! Coogee offers some great photo opportunities and I ended up with some quite nice shots. I’m also starting to get hang of using the strobes with a fisheye lens, adding the diffusors helps a lot. Not that things were exactly perfect yet, I did end up with strobes showing up in some of the shots. But that was pretty easily fixed with some cropping or photoshop magic.

Coogee is bit deep for photo dive, especially with 12 liter air tanks. We got close to deco limits well before running low on air and had to head up after a relatively short dive. Bit of a shame really, I would have loved to spend more time down there. With the depth it’s pretty perfectly suited for nitrox which unfortunately isn’t available through MUUC.

After Coogee and a quick visit back to Queenscliff we headed out for the second dive of the day. This was an OW level dive at Pope’s Eye. Underwater conditions were lot better than last time I was there, visibility was significantly better and current was bit weaker as well. With lots of colorful fish, a visit from a pair of seals and a ray circling around us, the sights didn’t disappoint either. This was the first dive I actually tried the zoom ring I recently bought for the Tokina lens. The ring worked well enough and was pretty easy to use underwater. While none of the photos I took were truly spectacular, I did get some pretty decent shots during this dive as well.

During the day I was also testing some cheap dive torches that I recently bought as spares. They were quite bright (Cree T6 led) and I didn’t notice any issues underwater either, so I was pretty happy with the purchase. Main beam is pretty tight with decent amount of spill as well. With only one 18650 battery they are also quite light and should make excellent travel torches.

I have been pretty slow uploading new photos, my bandwidth is still pretty limited so I try to do the uploads when it doesn’t come out of my own data cap (city library WLAN works reasonably well for this). Today I took the time to get some diving shots from recent dives online, these include Mornington Pier on 30th December, more Seadragons at Flinder’s Pier on 10th January and some Seahorses and fisheye lens shots under Rye Pier on 10th January. I have also updated the relevant posts with photo links.

I also reorganized the Diving section of my photo gallery. Albums are now split to a few different categories which should make browsing a lot easier. Unfortunately, the Gallery software ended up having some problems with these changes. At the moment the only visible issue is the lack of album cover for Finland dives, but I need to see how to fix it anyway as there might be some other problems in the long run.