A bit over a week ago I was on a dive trip to Portland (near South Australia border) with MUUC. Overall the conditions were not that great for diving even if the topside weather was quite nice, especially towards the end of the trip. We had our share of mishaps too, including quite a bit of trouble with the boat engine. While the diving in Portland itself was rather mediocre (mainly because of the conditions), our side trip to Ewens Ponds was a great success.

Portland has several pretty interesting dive sites but unfortunately the conditions over the weekend made it impossible to fully enjoy them. Bit further out around Lawrence Rocks the swell got pretty strong and it was rather surgy underwater. The Emily S wreck was still a pretty interesting dive even if heavy surge made photography frustrating. Vis out there was around 7 m, decent enough. We also did another boat dive near Lawrence Rocks. We were planning to dive the Nursery but unfortunately we missed our mark. We still ended up in a fairly interesting area, but unfortunately the heavy surge made the dive a rather dizzying experience with all the seaweed (and divers!) moving back and worth.

Closer to the Portland harbour the seas were calmer but vis was quite poor after a recent big storm and there was still a fair bit of surge on most sites. We dived some interesting reefs (Nargra Reef in particular) and the Lee Breakwater was pretty interesting dive both during the day and the night. Luke didn’t enjoy the dive quite as much in his wet drysuit though! Some interesting macro life and corals but we didn’t really see any big critters during the trip.

Due to problems with the boat engine and generally frustrating diving conditions we decided to visit Ewens Ponds on the SA side of the border on Sunday. Alex and Dean had already been there earlier and highly recommended the site. The trip didn’t disappoint, diving in the three freshwater ponds was an amazing experience! Water was crystal clear and the visibility was almost unbelievable. The shallow channels connecting the ponds were covered in vegetation and a particularly beautiful sight. There was also a fair amount of fish life, freshwater crayfish and a few lampreys. The two dives I did there more than made up for the rather mediocre dives during the rest of the trip. On top of that it was also a sunny day which was great for taking photos in the shallow water.

There was no diving on Monday, however we did a fair bit of hiking to visit the seal colony at Cape Bridgewater. Up from the cliffs it looked like a spectacular dive site, unfortunately the area is only reachable with a boat (one with a functional engine!). It was a really warm and sunny day and I got my first chance to observe wild kangaroos up close, so I wasn’t even too disappointed about the no diving part. 

Despite the generally unfavorable conditions for photography I somehow still managed to pretty much fill out my 16 GB memory card. It took a while to go through all the photos but it was definitely worth it. The Ewens Ponds photos in particular contain some great shots and my first experiments with over-under photography worked out quite nicely!

• 2012-04-26 Point Gellibrand Snorkeling