On Saturday I did my first dive with the UNSW dive club. It was supposed to be a ‘rediscover scuba’ dive, but in practice it was quite an adventurous dive and definitely not the gentlest way to get people back to diving. Definitely a great dive though!
We met at Frenchman’s Beach (pretty close to Bare Island) and while waiting for our dive boat to arrive we started sorting out the day’s diving. I ended up in the first group of divers and after some deliberation we headed out towards Magic Point, a popular dive site in Sydney. There is a Grey Nurse Shark colony at the site and the area is also home to several other interesting species.
The trip there was an experience in itself, it was quite windy and this was actually one of the roughest boat rides I have experienced. I wasn’t that concerned for myself but I had to be really careful with my camera housing in my lap. This was also the first time I saw someone get really seasick, one of the girls had to sit out the dive after getting quite sick during the ride to the site.
The dive itself was superb, our anchor line lead straight next to the small cave the grey nurse sharks live in. There was three or four grey nurse sharks swimming around the area and large schools of smaller fish as well. While grey nurse sharks can be bit wary of divers, these ones let us get quite close. Unfortunately, at this point I noticed that my camera wasn’t firing! Most likely the internal flash had been knocked slightly off position during the rough boat ride preventing the camera from firing. Therefore I ended up shooting only video during the dive and even that didn’t end up that high quality.
After spending quite a while just watching the sharks my buddy and I decided to some more exploring in the area. We ended up finding a few wobbegong sharks and a couple of giant cuttlefish as well. At this point I was even more annoyed with the malfunctioning camera. Eventually we headed back to the shark cave, spent some more time watching the sharks and then headed back to the surface by the anchor line.
Luckily the way back to the shore was bit calmer. For some reason the second group of divers headed to a different site which was lot more protected from the winds. The rest of us enjoyed a nice barbeque while waiting for the others to get back from their dive and then everyone headed back home.
On Sunday it was Clean Up Australia Day. For us this meant a clean up dive near Malabar Beach. It was quite a mundane experience after the shark dive. The area was quite shallow and heavy waves made most of the dive somewhat unpleasant. There wasn’t much to see either apart from various fish. And even rubbish was quite scarce, the only major thing we found was a small car battery. While getting back to the shore I managed to lose a part from my fin strap as well, luckily I brought my spare spring straps with me to Sydney so might as well start using them from now on.
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